Culinary thriller The Menu has proved a huge hit with Disney Plus subscribers since it was added to the streamer last week – less than two months after it opened in UK cinemas.
The film is a vicious satire of the food world, following a particularly unusual meal that is served up by the eccentric celebrity chef Julian Slowik (memorably played by Ralph Fiennes) at his exclusive island restaurant.
Among the guests to experience the feast are Margot and Tyler (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) two young diners who at first glance appear to be a couple, only for it to gradually be revealed that things aren’t quite what they seem.
With every lavish course that arrives at their table, more twists and turns emerge – eventually leading to a sensational conclusion that will forever change the way you think about one American snack food.
If you’ve watched the film and are still grappling with those closing moments and the overarching meaning of the film, read on to have The Menu ending explained. But be warned: there are spoilers from here on out.
The Menu ending explained
Before we explain those dramatic final moments, it’s best we begin with a brief recap of the events that led up to that point.
The film starts with Margot and Tyler – along with their fellow diners, including a washed-up movie star, a snobbish food critic, and an unbearable group of tech bros – travelling by boat to Chef Slowik’s island.
Upon their arrival, we are almost immediately treated to the first twist. It turns out that Margot had not been on the guestlist, and was in fact a last-minute replacement for Tyler’s previous date, meaning the pair actually hardly know each other at all. What’s more, while Tyler is a committed foodie who worships at the altar of Slowik, Margot is wary about the pretension of his culinary creations from the get-go.
Throughout the meal, the guests are served a series of bizarre concoctions such as a breadless bread course, each accompanied by a rather unsettling monologue from the chef, and we’re also slowly exposed to various secrets about the diners, including details about affairs and money laundering.
Things really take a turn for the worst at the start of the fourth course, when a sous chef shoots himself dead in full view of the guests, and this kicks off a series of increasingly depraved shenanigans, with Slowik revealing that everyone present will be dead by the end of the night: he had hand-picked each of the diners himself as they had each played a role in him losing his passion for his craft and had exploited his work.
The one exception, of course, is Margot, whose presence had been a surprise to him. In one scene, Slowik corners her in the bathroom and she reveals that she is actually a sex worker named Erin who had been hired by Tyler as his companion for the evening. Slowik and Margot appear to see eye to eye on some matters, but he assures her that no one can be spared and that she too will die – although he gives her the choice whether to die as a staff member or a diner.
Things continue to go downhill for the rest of the guests – one attempts to escape but ends up with his finger chopped off, the restaurant’s chief investor is drowned, and the surviving male guests are given a chance to escape only for each of them to be easily caught and brought back to the restaurant.
At this point we learn another truth about Tyler: he had known everyone present would die at the dinner, and yet had invited Margot anyway. After revealing this, Slowik humiliates him by forcing him to cook and savagely criticising the results, before he orders Tyler to hang himself – which he duly does.
Slowik then asks Margot to retrieve a barrel needed for the dessert course, but when she does so she sneaks into his house where – after fighting and killing the Maître d’, Elsa – she calls the coastguard and discovers that Slowik had previously worked as a fast food chef.
After Margot returns to the restaurant with the barrel, a coastguard officer shows up, but any hope evaporates when it turns out that he too is in on Slowik’s plan. Margot appears to become desperate and starts to viciously mock the food they have been served, complaining that she is still hungry.
This prompts Slowik to ask her what she would like to eat instead, and when she requests a cheeseburger and fries he serves it up for her – even allowing her to leave when she asks for the food to go. She exits the restaurant and takes the coastguard boat, tucking into the delicious cheeseburger as she does so.
From the safety of the boat, she watches the dessert course – which turns out to be a particularly deadly take on s’mores that sees the guests covered in marshmallows and chocolate and set ablaze, with the resulting fire killing everyone remaining in the restaurant.
Why was Margot allowed to leave in The Menu?
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The question on some viewers’ minds might well be why Slowik suddenly allowed Margot to escape – and the answer is actually relatively straightforward.
Margot’s genius move was to ask for a cheeseburger after discovering the chef’s origins in the fast food world. Serving this dish up for her allowed Slowik to remember the simpler pleasures that had seen him pursue a career in the industry in the first place – a far cry from the pretentious creations he has been making recently which have led to him feeling increasingly disillusioned.
This nostalgia made him feel a fondness for Margot, and he clearly didn’t want to lump her in with the pretentious foodies he was happy to murder – instead allowing her to leave unscathed.
In a recent interview with Den of Geek, director Mark Mylod – also known for his work on Succession – spoke further about how Margot was able to get Slowik to change his mind.
“Ralph’s character and Anya’s character are about connection,” he explained. “Ultimately, she has manipulated him. He also realised that she’s manipulating him but he allows her to win. All the unspoken business is in the final discourse between them and the burger. It’s a mutual understanding… and he allows her to go ‘checkmate’.”
Taylor-Joy also touched on the relationship between Margot and Slowik during an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com ahead of the film’s theatrical release in November.
“What I loved about playing this dynamic is that it’s not as simple as a physical attraction or whatever. It’s just two people that recognise something in each other and recognise that they’re potentially the only ones in there that are being truthful in some way,” she said.
“And the disillusionment of doing something that you loved, and then being worn down by the customer, I think is the thing that really kind of unites the two of them.”
What the film essentially boils down to, then, is that Margot is the only guest who is able to see past the pretension to something a little more meaningful – and this is why she is spared.
The Menu is now streaming on Disney Plus. Sign up to Disney Plus for £7.99 a month or £79.90 for a year.
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