We discuss the ending of the 2023 film Last Sentinel which will contain significant spoilers and plot twists.
Sea levels have risen to catastrophic levels, and worldwide climate changes have skyrocketed temperatures. It’s the year 2063 Last Sentinel, and there are only two continents left in the world, both fighting for the remaining land.
The first line of defense for the continent without rain is a bastion, the last sentinel in the world, standing as a defense with a weapon called “Martha.”
There are four members on the sentinel crew, and they have been waiting three months for their relief. That’s when a ship called the Aurora drifts into their waters, but the crew is mysteriously absent. Pvt. Sully and Baines want to repair the ship and return home.
Their boss, Sgt. Hendrichs insists they maintain their post and wait for relief, while Cpl. Cassidy finds herself caught in the middle.
However, Hendrichs allows two of them to fix the ship and take it back to their continent, only to blow it up the next day.
Last Sentinel (2023) Ending Explained
Who killed Hendrichs and Baines?
We found out that Cassidy was the one who killed two members of the sentinel crew, Hendricsh, and Baines. After Hendrichs is knocked out by Cassidy when he forces the team to blow up the Aurora, he tells Sully that the Aurora was there on purpose and didn’t just float into their waters. Hendrichs shows Sully how the ship’s coordinates coming three months ago came back, and the ship suddenly stopped, but why?
While Hendrichs suspects an inside job, he believes Sully is not the culprit due to his participation in a work-release program from prison. The next day, Hendrichs appears to have committed suicide and jumped out the window to the water below.
Later, the storm is coming, and Sully pulls up the net for fish when Hendrich’s body is caught in the net, and he dies of a gunshot wound to the head.
At the same time, Baines and Cassidy are rummaging through sea trash in the dinghy, searching for supplies. Cassidy returns, claiming that Baines had a psychotic break and swam out into the water but never returned.
We are uncertain but assume that Cassidy kills Baines as a patsy for Hendrichs’ death. Cassidy probably killed Hendrichs because he would piece everything together.
Why did Cassidy kill the crew of the Aurora?
Cassidy kills the crew of the Aurora because she’s a spy working for the other side. She wants the weapon named “Martha” for her continent, which is drowning in water. The movie shows Sully searching the facility for evidence that one of them, Baines or Cassidy, is the murderer. Sully finds Baines’s psychological eval showing he has excellent mental fitness for duty.
When Sully looks over Cassidy’s locker and belongings and finds nothing remarkable. However, he notices the picture of Cassidy’s family that she showed Sully before today. After Cassidy comes back and tells him about Baines, they sleep together.
The following day, Sully explains why Cassidy is guilty over the handheld radio that their side never has rain.
In the picture, her family takes a picture in the rain and is holding an umbrella. That means Cassidy was born and grew up on the enemy continent at war. Sully has had enough of the fighting, so he turns on the weapon after stealing the keys from Cassidy while she sleeps.
When he thinks he detonates, Martha does not weaponize. In fact, it has a message repeating on a loop.
The message reads, “What did the cats, the horse, and swallows do to deserve this?”
What does the phrase, “What did the cats, the horse, and swallows do to deserve this?” mean?
Baine encrypts the weapon with a message that says, “What did the cats, the horse, and swallows do to deserve this?” when activated. He may be referring to a 1946 children’s book by Dorothy B. King called Happy Recollections. The story follows an old lady who keeps swallowing increasingly large animals, each to catch the previously swallowed animal, but dies after swallowing a horse.
In the film, Baine left his wife when she was six months pregnant to work on the sentinel. As we noted, he told Sully he fixed it (we now know he was referring to the weapon) and said, “Cats, horses, swallows.” The meaning behind the story is a metaphor for Last Sentinel’s story, where the more you build up what you consume and take, it will eventually be the end of you.
Baine was most likely being funny or playful by talking about the “swallows” here, and the film ends with a shot of the birds a few miles from the sentinel.
What did you think of the ending of the 2023 film Last Sentinel? Comment below.
