The Road ending is just as bleak as the rest of the post-apocalyptic drama. Director John Hillcoat adapted Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road in 2009. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-Mhee star as a father and son (credited only as “Man” and “Boy") trying to survive after an unspecified extinction event has wiped out most of the population. The Road follows the man and the boy as they head southwards through the barren wasteland in search of the coast and warmer climes, scavenging what little food they can find and having terrifying encounters with marauders and cannibals along the way.

The man tries to protect his son as best he can, but keeps a gun loaded with their last bullet and ensures the boy knows how to take his own life, since death isn't the worst fate for the boy in the post-apocalyptic 2019 shown in The Road. By The Road ending, the pair finally arrive at the coast. However, the man is shot in the leg with an arrow by a paranoid survivor. He kills his assailant, but slowly succumbs to his wound and a worrying cough he’s been plagued with as his son watches him die.

The Road Has A Deliberately Bitter-Sweet Ending

The Boy May Have Found Salvation By The Road Ending

The final scenes of The Road’s ending offer a glimmer of hope — at least according to some. A couple of days after the boy’s father dies he’s approached by a man (played by Prometheus' Guy Pearce and credited as “Veteran”) who is travelling with what appears to be his wife (Molly Parker), their two young kids, and their pet dog. They tell the boy they’ve been following him and his father for some time and ask if he’d like to accompany them, offering a light at the end of the grim tunnel that is the experience of The Road.

Some have a much darker interpretation of this potentially hopeful ending for The Road movie.

However, some have a much darker interpretation of this potentially hopeful ending for The Road movie. It’s posited that Guy Pearce’s character and his companions are actually cannibals rather than the saviors they seem to be and have been following the boy until his father died in hopes of securing their next meal. That said, The Road’s ending is fairly ambiguous, so whether its younger protagonist meets a bleak end or goes on to survive another day of the Mad Max-type apocalypse in the care of a new family is up to the viewer to decide.

The Road Movie Is Bleak But Has Nothing On The Book

Cormac McCarthy's Story Is Much Worse

While The Road movie adaptation is certainly bleak, the book is actually much worse. For example, there's a age in which the two main characters a group of cannibals who are roasting a human baby on a spit. It's necessary for studios to make plenty of changes when it comes to book-to-movie adaptations, and The Road wasn't exempt. That being said, The Road is considered a somewhat faithful adaptation.

The death of Viggo Mortensen's character was borderline unwatchable in the movie, but it's even sadder in the book's ending.

Most changes weren't made to change the plot, but in order to make the ending of the movie more palpable for audiences. A notable example of this elsewhere is the infamous IT novel being cut from every on-screen adaptation. An example from The Road includes the death of the Father. The death of Viggo Mortensen's character was borderline unwatchable in the movie, but it's even sadder in the book's ending.

While both the movie and the book see the Boy staying with the Father three days after his death, in the book the Father actually dies in the woods after attempting to set up a campsite, never getting to see the coast. The horrors of the Marauders are also downplayed in the movie. For example, in the books, some had catamites (sexual slaves of a pubescent age used for degradation and harassment). All in all, these changes were necessary, as some elements of The Road as a book were just too unappetizing to appear on the big screen.

The Meaning Of The Road Ending

The Finale Of The Movie Is Either Uplifting Or Nihilistic

The Road ending is undeniably bleak. However, the entire movie is one with a lot of depth, and there's clear thematic meaning behind the the journey the Man and the Boy take, as well as the Boy being found on the beach after watching his father away. A key theme of The Road is loss. The Man is tormented throughout by visions of his wife, and how she took her own life. Even in the harsh and unrelenting world the Man and the Boy now inhabit, losing her still plagues the Man's mind.

With the death of his wife, the Man's personal world has collapsed, and the same is then true for the Boy once the Man dies at the end.

This is also true of the Boy, though the loss is of his father during the ending of The Road. Despite the Boy's pleading, the Man es away due to his wounds and a possible infection. The Boy is truly alone for the first time, his emotional state mirroring the mostly empty post-apocalyptic world around him. It's not just the wider world that's gone for the Man and the Boy. With the death of his wife, the Man's personal world has collapsed, and the same is then true for the Boy once the Man dies at the end.

Then, of course, there is the question of the meaning behind the family finding the Boy in the final scenes of The Road ending. The meaning of this moment can be read in two different ways, depending on what the viewer thinks happens next. If they take the pessimistic view, that the family have bad intentions for the Boy, then this moment could be said to thematically represent that there's always something left to lose — an incredibly bleak message for an equally bleak movie.

Ultimately, due to the ambiguous nature of the film, the meaning of The Road ending is down to interpretation

However, should the viewer interpret the ending of The Road more optimistically, then the deeper meaning behind the family finding the Boy could be that it's possible to find reasons to hope even in the darkest of times. Ultimately, due to the ambiguous nature of the film, the meaning of The Road ending is down to interpretation, but there's no doubt it leaves viewers with much to process and mull over by the time the credits roll.

How The Road Ending Was Received

The Movie Was Polarizing Thanks To The Ending

The Road was a tough movie for many fans. While critics gave it a Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 74%, the audience score was lower, at 68%, mostly discounted because of the fact its a difficult watch. One audience reviewer wrote, "It is extremely depressing and disturbing, as we watch the humanity drained from every character until they shrivel up, literally and metaphorically." It is an example of those fans who don't find much light in the film's ending, even with the family showing up.

However, critic Peter Travers of Rolling Stone saw hope in the end, arguing that the film's conclusion shows that it is okay to send the young out to fight the world alone:

"The father’s assent is the allowance he makes toward hope. As the father must let go of his promise never to send his son out into the darkness alone, The Road becomes heartening against the odds of what McCarthy called the “dimming” of the world. In this haunting portrait of America as no country for old men or young, Hillcoat — through the artistry of Mortensen and Smit-Mhee — carries the fire of our shared humanity and lets it burn bright and true."

There are also fans who see the family at the end as salvation. In a Reddit thread discussing The Road ending, the OP LuminaTitan wrote, "The film is so bleak throughout the vast majority of it, that the ending pretty much has to end on a hopeful note or else it'd be practically unbearable." Still, some commenters still think the family was cannibals, with hermoniouslexus writing, "When I read the book I felt the family were good but when I watched the movie I felt the family were bad."