‘Talk to Me’ Ending Explained: What Happens to Mia?

Evil spirits know just what buttons to push in order to break you.

Editor's Note: The below contains full spoilers for Talk to Me.After making a ton of buzz in film festivals, Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou's Talk to Me is finally available in theaters. That means everyone can witness the fantastic practical effects, sharp editing, brilliant performances, and thrilling script that makes Talk to Me one of the year's best horror movies. The movie also deserves praise for balancing the information it gives the audience with what it prefers to keep a secret, using the ambiguity of the spirit world to keep people on their toes throughout the entire runtime. However, that creative choice can also make some aspects of Talk to Me confusing. So, before you go asking an angry ghost your questions, we’ve decided to break down Talk to Me’s ending and explain everything we know for sure about the movie’s engaging mythology.

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The story of Talk to Me revolves around a ceramic hand that allows people to see lost souls. No one knows where the hand originated, but there are some curious theories. According to the stories shared by the teenagers playing with the cursed object, the hand belonged to a human, either a medium or a Satanist. After being severed from its owner’s body, the hand was embalmed and covered in ceramic to be preserved. While there’s no telling how much of this story is true, the rules governing the hand’s power are somewhat more precise. To use the hand, first, people need to light a candle; that opens the door between the realms of the living and the dead, guiding spirits toward the hand. After that, a person must grab the object and repeat the words “Talk to me.” This allows that person to see the ghost that has answered the call of the candle. After that, whoever is holding the hand can give away control of their body by telling the spirit, “I let you in.”

To expel the spirit, the candle must be put out, closing the door that wandering souls use. Furthermore, if a human body acts as a host for a ghost for more than 90 seconds, the visiting spirits might decide they want to stay, with gruesome consequences for everyone involved. Finally, as the story tells, if someone dies while a spirit inhabits their body, their soul is lost forever in limbo, forced to join the masses of lost spirits that roam in the dark.

While the 90-second rule keeps most people safe from the awful consequences of playing with spirits, some people seem more susceptible to becoming victims. After playing with the hand for the first time, Talk to Me protagonist Mia (Sophie Wilde) starts to hear the sounds of scratches on wood, echoing the trauma of her mother’s (Alexandria Steffensen) passing. Mia’s mother took a bunch of sleeping pills one night and died alone, unable to scream for help while clawing at the wooden door of her bedroom. Mia has always wondered if her mother committed suicide. So, since Mia remained holding the hand for more than 90 seconds, an evil spirit gets attached to her even after someone blows the candle out. The supernatural phenomena around Mia become more frequent after she allows Riley (Joe Bird) to use the hand. The spirit Riley incarnates seems to be that of Mia’s mother, who has seemingly come back from the beyond to tell her daughter she loves her and misses her. Eager to speak with her mother, Mia forces Riley to stay connected to the hand longer than he should. As a result, the spirit inside the boy forces him to bash his head against the table and pop his own eye out. Riley’s friends stop him from killing himself.

At first, we are not sure that Mia is still possessed. Still, there’s plenty of evidence in Talk to Me that it was never her mother that she spoke to and that she is being tricked by an evil spirit all along. For starters, the first ghost Mia allows inside her body says they covet Riley, which means they are willing to manipulate Mia to get what they want. Secondly, Mia’s visions start before Riley touches the hand for the first time. Then, there’s the fact the spirit pretending to be Mia’s mother says she never wanted to take her own life, while Mia’s father, Max (Marcus Johnson), still keeps his wife’s suicide note. Finally, in the first scene of Talk to Me, the previous owner of the hand, Duckett (Sunny Johnson), says he’s been talking to his father. Duckett's supposed father convinces the young man to stab his brother Cole (Ari McCarthy), who the spirit claims will commit evil acts if he stays alive. It seems pretty clear that the evil spirits' modus operandi is to explore their host's traumas and weaknesses, convincing them to kill other people and then commit suicide. That way, the souls lost in the beyond can keep increasing their ranks. We don’t know if they do this out of spite for being trapped in an awful place, but Talk to Me underlines how not every lost soul is kind.

While there is a chance that Mia’s mom visited her daughter briefly when Riley used the hand, the most likely case is that it's a spirit messing with Mia’s head the whole time. The entity explores Mia’s abandonment issues to convince her that the only way to free Riley is to kill him, which eventually leads Mia to push the boy into a wheelchair to the highway. Riley’s sister and Mia's best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), arrives just in time to save him, but it’s too late for Mia, who throws herself in front of a speeding vehicle.

While Talk to Me doesn’t directly explain how Riley recovers from his severe case of possession, the rules of the hand might help explain it. Riley became possessed after Mia forced him to keep connected to what she believed was her mother's spirit. As soon as the boy starts to bash his head, everyone is too desperate to blow out the candle. That means the door remained open for Riley, who suffers for days until Mia has the idea of redoing the ritual in his hospital bed and blowing the candle out this time. There’s a chance Riley got freed from the spirits when the door was closed for good. However, the boy might just have rejected the invader. Cole revealed to Mia that the living body naturally expels dead spirits if given enough time. That doesn’t seem to work for special people like Mia and Duckett, but it might have been the case with Riley. Whatever the true reason, Riley does get back to normal.

After Mia dies, she starts to wander the highway until she is teleported to the hospital. There, she witnesses Riley and her father healing from their wounds. Mia no longer has a reflection in the mirror, and no one can hear or see her. One by one, the lights around Mia fade, leaving her alone in the dark. Suddenly, we hear the sound of a match being ignited, and a fiery glow draws Mia’s attention. The light guides her to a hand hanging in the void. Mia grabs the hand, only to be transported to a seance where a group uses the porcelain artifact to talk to spirits. Mia has become a lost spirit, condemned to a life of darkness. As such, she’s now attracted by the candlelight and eager to occupy the body of a living, even for a moment. That’s a tragic ending for Mia. Still, it’s reassuring for horror fans to know the hand is still out there, waiting for Talk to Me sequels.

Talk to Me is currently summoning spirits in theaters.

Marco Vito Oddo is a writer, journalist, and amateur game designer. Passionate about superhero comic books, horror films, and indie games, he works as a Senior Writer and Film Critic for Collider.