Coven of Sisters imagines Basque Country, 1609, to be riddled with evil, so when Ana and her village girls were found dancing in the night, there was only one explanation — they are witches. When an inquisitor visits the village, the girls are arrested and placed in a small cell, where their minds are tortured with questions and quips. There is no right answer. If they deny witchcraft or the devil, it’s an attempt to lie. If they look at the inquisitor, they are trying to bewitch him. This is a typical, tragic story of the execution of witches based on an undying belief that the devil was trying to infiltrate the lands.
Netflix’s Coven of Sisters – the ending explained
Once the girls catch on that the inquisitor wants to see undeniable proof of the ritual of Sabbath, they each plan what they are going to say and do. Ana is the most convincing; she manages to seduce the inquisitor, using her beauty and gazing eyes to reel him in. Eventually, she pretends to be overwhelmed by Lucifer and repeats sexual moans that get louder. The priest and the inquisitor’s scribe are horrifically disturbed, but the act ironically bewitches the inquisitor.
Coven of Sisters demonstrates how powerful belief can become performative; Ana and her friends became so enthralled by pretending to be witches that they became them, but ideologically, rather than literally. The Netflix film becomes a convention of belief rather than an arena of proof. Both sides are playing their roles, brainwashed by a single idea that witchcraft exists.
There are also strong suggestions that the inquisitor is Lucifer; the more he’s absorbed, the more he becomes complicit in the idea of witches, and the concerns of the peers are telling.
In the end, the inquisitor announces that the girls are guilty and that they will be burned on the stake, but before he carries out the execution, he wants to see the Sabbath ritual. His curiosity has become his own enclosed evil.
https://youtu.be/f5spjUuviok
What happens next?
The inquisitor shackles the girls in chains and brings them to a fire during a full moon, surrounded by animals, food, and objects that the girls described in their investigations. Ana leads the singing and dancing that gets louder with each verse. Eventually, the inquisitor becomes so enthralled by the dancing and singing, it becomes euphoric, as he joins them in a circle — the girls gather around him, feeling him up, and he embraces it. The inquisitor’s peers are understandably concerned. Coven of Sisters becomes a circle of the brainwashed; euphoria is mistaken for witchcraft. The director is claiming that the visual cues, ambiance, and singing led to this experience.
The girls run away in their shackles and end up on the cliff edge. Ana tells her girls that they must fly. The camera pans to the inquisitor who says “fly”, and when it reverts to the cliff edge, the girls are gone. In the end, even the girls believed they were witches.
Of course, they did not fly — everything is about perspective and belief in Coven of Sisters — the ending highlights how strong suggestion can be when coupled with belief. The ending brings an ironic tale — the inquisitor believed wholeheartedly in witchcraft, and the experiences the girls went through were so strong that they succumbed to that belief too.
I think you totally missed a lot of major parts of the movie. The mushroom they gave the Inquisitor made him high and “bewitched” him. Also, the girls didn’t believe in the end, they knew it was high tide because of the full moon and knew they would survive the fall and the Inquisitor likely saw seagulls fly away assuming it was the girls. The entire concept of the movie is that the “witches” true magic was their intelligence and ability to A: show the true “pig” nature of the Inquisitor and outsmart him.
bb is correct. The girls didn’t jump because they believed they were witches, they jumped because it was a full moon which meant high tide. It’s literally in the song. The old lady even sang that exact part to remind them they could jump.
Could another take on the ending be that the tide is high enough for the girls to safely jump into the water? The shot wrote they “flew” suggests that the water is fairly high in comparison to before.
While it is likely that the girls were not witches, there was one scene that could suggest that at least one was a witch. In the scene when the girl returns after being tortured. One of them (I think Anna) treats her wounds with cobwebs. Cobwebs have been known to be used frequently in witchcraft for stopping bleeding.
Cobwebs to treat wounds is a folk medicine, it’s more likely used because they are poor country girls, weavers in fact. It would be a common enough thing most of them knew about it, not that they are witches.
Either way, witches or not, I wish that I could un-see this movie because it sickened me to witness the sadistic torment the girls went through, yes I watched it to then end but I was hoping for a happier outcome to be honest.
I recon the Grey headed old nun was a witch.. when she took off that hat that represented a bent over phallus it symbolised her freedom of male oppression, but the hat could also have symbolised a crooked witches hat made to be white, this suggesting victory over witchcraft, this statement inforced by the church. Her removing that hat is definitely a overall statement, and her silent admission of status as a Crone.
Yes the nun the lady and servant. The three symbolism. I wholeheartedly believe they were the witches. She even gave Ana advice of how to use her youth to bewitch the judge. It was interesting. The judge was Lucifer representation for sure. The church represented by the priest. The judges scribe was his servant. All perspective and perceptio.
This movie represents the few women that faced such ignorant beliefs that there may have been some victories. The old lady was instructing them and I don’t believe because she was a witch but like she stated earlier she was like them when she was younger and this is nothing but a way for men to control women but women truly held the power. THE SONG! The song was the most important element of the movie. It literally saved the young girls. The high tide is mentioned in the song during a full moon and they grew up playing on that cliff and to reaffirm this simple thought, when they were first chaced, one of them made it there and I imagined was contemplating to jump but captured. This movie was very fun but psychologically full of depth. Almost passed on it but so glad it was realistic regarding of not historically accurate! At least they didn’t suddenly transformed into mystical witches, but retained their humanity and out witted their accusers @
They jumped because the smart elder witch sang a song about the tide, and the witches knew by jumping now they can be saved by the tide of the sea. The Inquisitor was high on the drugs from the mushroom and his mind tricked him to believe the women flew, when really it was his imagination, his twisted mind to see what he wants to see with the help of the mushroom which got him to see what he wanted to see. It showed that religion is just perception, just a twist in the mind where people get drunk from wishing so bad to believe in what isn’t really there but it comforts them, makes them feel powerful and totally wretched themselves.
thank god for this explanation that they could have escaped with the high tide…. I was thinking that they simply jumped to be spared death by fire and died on the cliff side! it made me so depressed!