Ethan Hawke, after years of restrained public comment, has finally shared his thinking on First Reformed’s mind-bending conclusion.
During Vanity Fair’s recent video series chronicling his career, Hawke described the ending as a purposeful conundrum, created to embody what the film states outright: real wisdom means holding two opposites at once.
In this final moment, viewers watch Reverend Ernst Toller teeter between surrender and transcendence, possibly dying, possibly reborn, locked in an embrace with Mary as reality blurs. Hawke asserts that the power of this scene comes from its resistance to reduction: if it were pinned down, much of its resonance would vanish.
Paul Schrader, whose prior work includes screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, wanted the last scene to act as a kind of spiritual “bell”; its true meaning isn’t in the ring, but in the reverberation it leaves long after leaving the theater.
Schrader himself confirmed in several interviews that he crafted the conclusion for openness so that questions, not answers, drive the audience to reflect on Toller’s fate and the film’s moral weight.
The kiss between Toller and Mary in the final seconds has inspired endless discussions among fans and scholars: is it the reality of redemption or an imagined vision at death’s edge?
Hawke’s interpretation, rooted in Schrader’s own words, frames this ambiguity as an intentional gift rather than a narrative shortcoming, allowing each viewer’s emotional truth to find space within the story.
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Hope, Despair, and the Roots of Ambiguity: How Audiences Read Toller’s Fate
The conversation about First Reformed’s ending transcends simple plot mechanics. On Reddit’s r/TrueFilm and across major review sites, interpretations are deeply divided.
Some viewers, taking a literal stance, believe Mary’s arrival genuinely interrupts Toller’s suicide, offering a final argument for hope in the face of his personal and planetary despair. Others see the scene as the ultimate vision, a dying reverie born of longing, where grace reaches Toller only in his final moments.
Paul Schrader told Vulture and A24’s official podcast that the ending balances on the knife-edge between miracle and hallucination, and that neither reading is wrong.
As he notes, details like the room’s lighting and sudden silence may hint at otherworldly intervention or signal an ecstatic, impossible connection between two souls on the brink.
The ambiguity, for both Schrader and Hawke, reflects the film’s deeper purpose: to get audiences wrestling with faith, guilt, ecological dread, and the search for meaning issues that lack tidy, cinematic closure.
Hawke sums up the experience as one where the true ending unfolds inside each viewer, shaped by their own wrestling with hope, purpose, and despair.
Ripples in Cinema: Why First Reformed’s Ending Still Matters
Seven years after its premiere, First Reformed stands as a testament to the enduring value of ambiguous endings in film. Its abrupt yet charged conclusion set off a new wave of critical discussion about what movies can ask of audiences, trusting them to find meaning in uncertainty rather than in concrete answers.
Streaming-era viewers, used to tidy explanations or franchise tie-ins, often debate the cinematic merits of such open-endedness. Yet, as awards coverage and think pieces from Slate, ScreenRant, and others note, Schrader’s film is cited as a turning point for American drama, one that empowers the audience’s subjective truth.
For Ethan Hawke, this remains the role of a lifetime, defined as much by what he doesn’t say as what he does. The discourse around First Reformed’s conclusion continues to thrive because neither Schrader nor Hawke will resolve its uncertainty.
Instead, they reinforce cinema’s power to leave stories open, trusting that meaning reverberates best where answers are held lightly and possibility lingers.
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