Ishana Nacht Shyamalan’s supernatural horror film The Watchers It starts out as an unsolved mystery before taking a massive twist, but the character’s appearance in the film isn’t the most shocking twist in the story. The Watchers is based on a 2021 novel of the same name by AM Shine, and stays relatively in line with the main story beats of the source material. In both the movie and the novel, a young woman named Mina finds herself lost and subsequently trapped in a massive unmapped forest in Ireland.
Mina finds shelter in a bunker with some strangers, who inform her that the forest is full of dangerous creatures, the Watchers, who come out at night to observe their behavior. The WatchersThe big twist is that Madeline, one of the people in the bunker with Mina, was a Watcher the whole time. But while this certainly qualifies as a trademark “Shyamalan twist,” it’s not the most surprising twist in the plot of The Watchers.
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While the “big twist” is obviously the discovery of Madeline as a halfling, A secondary twist takes the cake as the most unrealistic: Mina & Lucy’s reunion. The twin sisters’ joy stemmed from a car accident in their youth, in which their mother was killed. Mina was at least loosely responsible for the accident, and while her mother died and her sister Lucy’s face was brutally scarred, she walked away completely unscathed. Mina’s ongoing identity crisis stemming from this incident played a major role in how much she distanced herself from her sister as they both grew up.
The Watchers – Key Details |
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Budget |
Box Office gross |
RT tomatometer score |
RT popcornmeter score |
$30 million |
$33 million |
32% |
52% |
The twin sisters reconnect after Mina’s remarkable adventure in the woods, and while that’s certainly great for the characters, It is somewhat understandable how her sister takes everything, apparently, completely with strategy. She is very indifferent about Mina’s story, which should be earth-shattering for the average person. Mina has been missing for months in a forest that seems to operate outside the normal plane of existence, and it turns out fairies are real. Her sister takes it all in with little reaction, and the two sisters reconcile after years of distance. Their final conversation is surprising, and frankly a little jarring.
Why Madeline is watching Mina and Lucy at the end of The Watchers
There are several theories that seem plausible
at the end of The WatchersIt is revealed that Madeline, now in the form of a red-headed little girl, continues to watch over Mina. It is not explicitly stated that the little girl is Madeline, but her malformed face is a giveaway that she is a Watcher, and Madeline is the only one who (theoretically) knows who and where Mina is. The reason why she is still watching over Mina is not entirely clear, although it is easy to assume that Mina’s understanding of Madeline’s plight as a halfling makes her worth watching; She is a person worthy of modeling herself after assimilating into humanity.
Alternative theories have abounded thanks to the nebulous nature of The Watchers‘Finally. One of the simpler ones is that the red-headed girl is not actually Madeline, but rather Another halfling who found himself out of the forest. This would prove that the halflings are already infiltrating humanity, with Mina, Ciara and Madeline’s escape perhaps acting as the impetus.
One of the more convoluted theories is that Mine is half myselfGiven her proclivity for imitation and many other little hints provided throughout the movie. In this case, the red-headed girl is probably Madeline, and she is still watching Mina because she has figured out how to perfectly pass for a man. No matter what or what the little red-headed girl actually is, the end of The Watchers Clearly leave the door open for the story to continue.