‘Sacrifice’ Ending Explained: Who Lives & Dies in Netflix’s Apocalyptic Thriller?

Netflix’s newest cinematic addition to the streaming library is a truly wild apocalyptic tale in which members of a cult hold attendees of a billionaire’s climate change gala captive and foretell the end of the world. To save the planet’s entire population of people, three of them will have to die by being flung into an erupting volcano in Sacrifice. So who lives and dies in the pic? Warning: The following post contains spoilers for the ending of Sacrifice.

Who are the main characters in Sacrifice?

The film begins by introducing audiences to Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), a film star who is on a comeback mission after having a very publicized nervous breakdown after the death of his father. (In viral videos, we see him using a flamethrower to torch the posters for his own mythological action movie, Octavius: The Last Centurion, and shouting that it’s not real, and he’s no hero.) Mike has been away finding peace with monks, but he thinks attending this charity event will be the start of a return to grace, his career, and also his fame. He’s joined by his faithful assistant, Oliver (Sam Richardson), who is responsible for publicizing his participation in the event for PR reasons. Mike is shallow but deeply self-deprecating.

The gala is hosted by billionaire Ben Bracken (Vincent Cassel), a man who claims to have found the solution to fossil fuels. Thanks to his wife Gloria’s (Salma Hayek) love of pufferfish, he discovered a mineral on the ocean floor that can serve as a new source of energy for the entire world.

Storming in to take over the event, though, is Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy), a member of an isolated community located on a nearby Greek island and established 25 years before by a Nobel scientist studying volcanoes. She and her two siblings have formed their own group of zealots who believe that they must kill their parents and three others — the king, the pure love, and the hero — by putting them into the lava of a volcano before the next blood moon to stop a world-ending eruption. Though her mother is already dead at the start of the movie, her father, Gunnar (John Malkovich) is still alive and doesn’t believe his daughter’s prophecies.

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Who gets chosen as members of the trio?

Joan holds everyone in the gala hostage with the help of her heavily armed squad, slicing off a woman’s hand to show how serious she is. She instructs her younger sister, Louise (Jade Croot), to select the king, and she picks Ben. Joan then asks her brother, Arthur (Yung Lean), to choose his perfect love, and he picks “Daughter Nature,” a.k.a. Katie (Ambika Mod), one of the stage performers who put on a dance show before all chaos broke loose in the gala — he chooses her over “Mother Nature” (Charli XCX) after some consideration of both. Then, Joan has to select the hero.

At first, Joan doesn’t know who to choose, so she consults the volcano by placing her head on the ground and asking it for guidance. Then, she decides it should be a democratic choice and has all of the non-chosen attendees line up and clap for the person they think should be the hero. Mike, who was in the bathroom lamenting the response he got to a speech condemning the gala as just a show and not real action on climate change, walks in at just the right time to earn the most claps. At first, Mike is touched by the applause … until Ben informs him that it’s not adulation but condemnation to death.

Later, Joan reveals that the king will be thrown forcefully into the volcano, the true love will be guided with loving arms, and the hero must choose to throw himself in to fulfill the prophecy.

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How does the trio change?

Joan uses Nick to negotiate a stand-down from the police waiting outside in exchange for the release of half the hostages. She uses a smoke bomb and their release as a distraction to take Ben, Katie, and Mike another way to their boat that’s concealed with a large camouflage to avoid being spotted by a passing helicopter.

While resting at a midway island, they’re forced to take a green potion that Joan says is part of the process of discovering the truth. Arthur admits to Katie that his true love is actually Joan, and, as Katie attempts to escape, she accidentally cuts his neck, killing him. Before his death, he tells Joan that he loves her and to let Katie get away, and Louise then gives Joan the potion, which she takes, thus becoming part of the fated trio.

What does Joan’s father do?

Mike has a dream about his late father and the falseness of his life, imagining that he’s on a film set being ordered to jump into a small, prop volcano by a fictionalized version of Joan, to get to what’s real in his life. When he awakens from the dream, he’s in the house of Gunnar. Gunnar has rescued him to dispel his daughter’s prophecies and insists she’s made it all up in her head, and he doesn’t want to die. He’s also taken Joan hostage.

When Joan shows him that her father’s house is actually a stage set inside of a huge underground bunker meant to withstand a volcanic blast, he says he will jump into the volcano and demands Joan’s release. However, he has secretly made contact with Oliver and arranged for him to bring a helicopter to rescue him from the helicopter at the last minute — but getting footage of him for PR purposes all the while.

Initially, Joan’s father won’t let her escape, but they agree to a “goat run,” which puts his minions on her tail and hers on his. She instructs her soldiers to kill her father and burn his body for the sake of the prophecy. On the way out, though, Joan is shot by an arrow and is distraught that the volcano didn’t protect her from it as she expected. In her weakened state, Nick finds their boat and, instead of running, takes them both to the volcano.

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Who dies in the end (and who survives)?

Ben, who’d been hostile with Nick over his wife’s attention to the actor, ultimately attempts to befriend Nick after hearing helicopters nearby. He has rightly read through to Nick’s real intentions, but when Nick denies it, Ben tells Joan about what Nick plans to do. She insists that she wouldn’t kill her mother and father and let her brother and herself die if she didn’t truly believe in her prophecy.

Once they reach the volcano, Ben is the first up to meet his fate. He defiantly tells Nick to escape and tell Gloria that he is her pufferfish, was trying to build her a mural on the ocean floor like the fish do, and that he didn’t die crying. He’s then thrown in by Joan’s goons.

Joan is next, but she reveals that she is afraid and begs Nick to promise that he is with her. Once he does, she makes peace with it and smiles, uttering her phrase “for the fire” before plunging into the lava.

Then, when it’s Nick’s turn to decide whether he wants to jump into the lava, a pair of rescue helicopters arrive overhead to save him. However, after seeing Louise’s anguish and resolve after the death of the last member of her family, Nick cries, smiles, and then throws himself in as well.

His assistant, who was part of the hostage group released, is seated next to Katie, hand in hand, when it happens, and they watch the coverage in pure horror. With that, the death count is six people: Joan’s mother, Arthur, Gunnar, Ben, Joan, and Nick. Everyone else survives, and the volcano stops burning after his death.

Why does Nick jump into the volcano?

Though he has every intention of accepting a last-minute rescue when climbing to the volcano, something changes after he makes that promise to Joan and sees her sister’s reaction to her death. He realizes this mission is “real,” unlike everything else in his life. Upon seeing the camera on the helicopter, he realizes that, unlike his movie roles where he doesn’t actually feel the emotions he’s portraying, here, he can truly become the hero of his own story.

Sacrifice, Netflix