Maze Runner: The Death Cure brings the YA dystopian film series based on James Dashner’s novels to an end, but not in the most clear and resolute way. Even though the Maze Runner 3 ending explained much, it also left behind several questions. The Death Cure is the third and (most likely) final installment in 20th Century Fox’s sci-fi movie franchise. It follows The Maze Runner, which premiered in 2014 amid the popularity of fellow YA dystopian trilogy-based series The Hunger Games and Divergent, and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials in 2015.
The third movie in the series, based on the Dashner’s The Death Cure, was originally intended to debut in 2017, but The Death Cure was delayed after star Dylan O’Brien was injured on set in early 2016. Maze Runner: The Death Cure builds on story threads established in both The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials, but also introduces new key concepts that become integral to the concluding chapter. Here’s everything audiences might’ve missed in the Maze Runner: The Death Cure ending.
How The Death Cure Wraps Up Maze Runner Character Arcs
The Maze Runner 3 ending explained and wrapped up the storylines of the franchise’s main characters. Thomas (O’Brien) and Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) attempt to rescue their friend Minho (Ki Hong Lee) from the clutches of WCKD, where he’s being experimented on along with other teenaged Immunes – those who are immune to the Flare virus that turns humans into zombie-like Cranks. Minho is only WCKD’s prisoner because Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) betrayed Thomas and their friends by telling WCKD’s leader Ava Page (Patricia Clarkson) and head of security Janson (Aidan Gillen) about their location after they had escaped.
As a result, Thomas, Newt, Frypan (Dexter Darden), Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito), and Brenda (Rosa Salazar) leave Vince (Barry Pepper) and the rest of the resistance group the Right Arm in order to infiltrate the last standing city and save Minho. The Right Arm saved a number of Immunes and planned to find a safe haven away from the reach of the Flare and WCKD. Although Thomas and his friends – who meet up with former Glader Gally (Will Poulter) on the outskirts of the city – are successful in rescuing Minho from WCKD, they’re unable to get the cure to save Newt, who isn’t immune like his friends thought.
When Teresa convinces Thomas he may be the only answer to producing a viable cure, he goes back. But thanks to an uprising led by Lawrence (Walton Goggins) and a hostile takeover of WCKD led by Janson, Thomas barely makes it out of the city alive and flees with his remaining friends to the safe haven Vince has found where those immune from the Flare will attempt to rebuild society.
What Happened to The Cure At The End?
The Maze Runner 3 ending explained crucial mysterious elements from the previous films, while the concepts of the Flare and the cure weren’t truly introduced until the end of The Maze Runner. Since Thomas and the rest of the Gladers were put into the Maze after having their memories wiped, they didn’t discover the purpose for the Maze until after they had escaped. At the end of the first movie, Ava Paige appears on a video screen and explains to the Gladers that Earth was devastated by a solar flare, and then humankind’s already dwindling numbers were ravaged by the Flare virus.
The Gladers are told they’re part of an experiment looking for a cure. In a later scene, Paige reveals to fellow WCKD scientists that the first phase of their experiment was a success, as the teens move into phase 2. At the start of The Scorch Trials, Thomas and his friends are housed at a facility with survivors of other Maze experiments, but they soon learn it’s actually run by WCKD, which they believed they had escaped. When Thomas learns this, he and his friends escape and search out the Right Arm.
Along the way, they meet Brenda and Jorge, and eventually meet up with the group. Brenda is infected with the Flare virus, but one of the members of the Right Arm, a former WCKD scientist, uses an enzyme cure that fully heals Brenda. The scientist reveals to Thomas that the cure can only be harvested from an Immune’s body, not manufactured. The scientist disagreed with Paige about how to harvest the cure and reveals that’s why she left WCKD. She’s later killed when WCKD attacks the Right Arm.
When The Death Cure begins, Teresa struggled to discover a viable cure. Despite harvesting blood and enzymes from Immunes, she and Paige are only able to develop a “cure” that slows down the Flare virus. However, after Teresa sees a healed Brenda, she has suspicions Thomas might be the solution to developing an actual viable cure. She tests his blood and proves her hypothesis, then convinces him to return in order to help her create the cure. Amid the uprising, Janson – now infected – takes the opportunity of Thomas being defenseless to force him and Teresa to create the cure. Instead, Thomas and Teresa fight back, then Teresa helps Thomas flee with the Right Arm, sacrificing herself in the process. At the end of the film, it’s revealed Thomas did escape with a vial of the cure.
The Flare Virus Cure Was A MacGuffin
In the third act of The Death Cure, the actual cure becomes somewhat secondary to the other crises playing out. Lawrence’s uprising raizes the last remaining civilized city, and though WCKD attempts to evacuate in order to keep pursuing a cure, Janson killing Paige – then being killed by Cranks – seemingly leaves the organization in chaos. Plus, with Thomas unable to get the “cure” to Newt in time to save his life, Thomas doesn’t actually have much personal stake in producing the cure since everyone else he cares about is immune. Thomas offering himself up to Teresa and WCKD is a move of self-sacrifice with little hope for his own future or freedom.
By the time The Death Cure ends, it seems the majority of humanity has descended into the chaotic world seen outside the city walls throughout the entire film franchise. Meanwhile, the Right Arm, Thomas, and the remainder of his friends attempt to build a new society on an island away from the rest of the world. Presumably, they’ll let the rest of humanity die off – either through violence or by way of the Flare – and try to rebuild anew. The Maze Runner 3 ending explained little else about their fates.
Thomas still has that vial of the viable cure at the end, but it seemingly becomes moot as many of the survivors are Immunes. Further, not everyone who knows how to harvest the cure – Teresa, Paige, the defected WCKD scientist – are all dead. Between not needing the cure, and no one being capable of harvesting it, Thomas’s vial of the cure is essentially just symbolic of everything he went through in order to gain his freedom and build a better life.
How Does The Death Cure Movie’s Ending Differ From the Book?
There are two major changes director Wes Ball and screenwriter T.S. Nowlin made to the ending when adapting Maze Runner 3 from James Dashner’s The Death Cure novel: Newt’s note, and the epilogue. In the book, Newt gives a note to Thomas in hopes that he’ll read it before the former is consumed by the Flare. However, Thomas doesn’t read it until after, and it’s incredibly bleak: “Kill me. If you ever were my friend, kill me.” Essentially, Newt asked Thomas to kill him before turning into a Crank. In the movie, this instead plays out on screen as Newt struggling to maintain his humanity while begging to be ended.
Instead of a deeply unsettling message showcasing the bleakness of the world in which these characters live, Maze Runner: The Death Cure employs a classic movie trope of having the deceased character offer the lead some advice and/or hope through a letter. In the film, Newt’s note speaks of a better world built by Thomas and the remaining survivors. Newt implores Thomas that “the future’s in your hands” and tells Thomas to look after everyone left. At the end, Newt thanks Thomas for being his friend. The note offers hope for the future, and gives the final moments of The Death Cure a distinctly optimistic – if not entirely happy – conclusion.
The other major change is that Maze Runner: The Death Cure eliminated the epilogue from Dashner’s original novel. Written from the perspective of Ava Paige, the original epilogue explained that the government actually created the Flare virus as population control following the devastating solar flare. However, while the virus was designed to kill a portion of the human population and then die out, it lived on and began to ravage the remnants of humanity. WCKD (called WICKED in the novels) was tasked with finding a cure, but Paige eventually realized it wouldn’t be possible. As a result, she devised a plan of her own.
Notably, the Maze Runner 3 ending explained nothing about the virus’ origin because the epilogue was omitted. Moreover, in the Death Cure novel, it’s revealed earlier on that Jorge and Brenda – Thomas’s allies he meets in the Scorch – actually work for WCKD. The epilogue also sees Paige revealing that this was part of her plan to gather all the Immunes and transport them to a safe haven where they can survive the rest of the world collapsing and have some hope of rebuilding. This is why “WCKD is Good” (remember that from The Maze Runner?).
The Death Cure Epilogue Undermines The Franchise Narrative
This epilogue falls in line with the ending of Maze Runner: The Death Cure since it reinforces the idea that the search for a cure was abandoned in favor of the safe haven for Immunes. The epilogue also establishes this plan was in motion long before the beginning of the movie, and would have offered further credence to the idea of Thomas and his friends removing themselves from the rest of the world in order to rebuild society. However, it also overcomplicates the narrative – and, more importantly, it sets the stage for Dashner’s prequel novels, The Kill Order and The Fever Code.
These novels take place before The Maze Runner and follow the initial outbreak of the Flare virus as well as Thomas working with WCKD to build the Maze. But, it seems unlikely Fox will adapt those two prequel novels – especially since Disney acquired The Maze Runner film franchise along with the rest of 20th Century Fox. So, The Death Cure needed to tie up all the loose ends of the series, and it did so by eliminating, or simply not including, certain aspects of the mythology, like the source of the Flare virus and the secret plan WCKD had for the Immunes all along.