Shutter Island: Your Questions About the Ending, Answered

The 2010 Martin Scorsese film, Shutter Island, was a smashing success, amassing nearly $300 million at the box office. Inspired by the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name, many moviegoers were captivated by the tense pacing, award-winning performances, and unexpected twist ending. But— what exactly happens at the end, and what does it mean for Leonardo DiCaprio’s character? What realization does Teddy Daniels aka Andrew Laeddis arrive at? Keep reading for a comprehensive analysis of this jaw-dropping psychological thriller. Warning: major spoilers ahead.

What is the twist at the end of Shutter Island?

After Dr. Cawley reveals the truth to Andrew, Andrew later appears to slip back into Teddy in an exchange with Dr. Sheehan. However, his question as to whether it would be worse to "live as a monster" or "die as a good man" hints that Andrew only pretended to regress, choosing a lobotomy to escape his pain and trauma.

Section 1 of 9:

What happens at the end of Shutter Island?

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Dr. Cawley reveals the entire ruse, and that Teddy is Andrew Laeddis. After Teddy finally makes his way into the lighthouse, he finds Dr. Cawley waiting for him. Dr. Cawley reveals that the past few days have been part of an elaborate and experimental ruse, orchestrated by him in an effort to get Teddy to accept the truth: Teddy is Andrew Laeddis. The plot twist is that Andrew is a patient at the facility who created Teddy as a persona used to escape the shame and trauma of killing his wife after she murdered their 3 kids.^{[1]
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- Chuck walks in, revealing himself to be Dr. Sheehan, Andrew’s primary psychiatrist for the past 2 years.
- Although dubious at first, Andrew has flashbacks to the day he found his children deceased and murdered his wife and ultimately accepts what Dr. Cawley says to be true.
- Andrew is forced to voice his understanding of the situation out loud in front of the other doctor and the warden, who were ready to lobotomize him if this experimental treatment didn’t help merge his identities and rid him of his violent streak.
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Andrew appears to regress mentally and walks away with the hospital staff. After some time has passed, we see Andrew smoking on some steps. When Dr. Sheehan joins him, Andrew says to him, “We gotta get off this rock, Chuck. Whatever’s happening here isn’t good.” Dr. Sheehan takes this exchange to mean that Andrew has regressed back into his Teddy persona, and shakes his head while making eye contact with Dr. Cawley across the lawn, signaling to him that their treatment had failed.^{[2]
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- However, a moment after, Andrew turns to Dr. Sheehan and says, “This place makes me wonder which would be worse: to live as a monster or to die as a good man?”
  - Many view this as a symbolic line, implying that the treatment had worked but that Andrew had chosen a lobotomy over remembering his past.
- We see hospital staff begin walking toward Andrew, with one nurse concealing a large needle, presumably for surgical purposes.
- Andrew stands up and willingly goes with the hospital staff, leaving viewers to assume that he proceeded to be lobotomized.

Section 2 of 9:

Interpretation of Shutter Island Ending

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Andrew pretends to regress to avoid the pain of remembering what he had done. After Andrew calls Dr. Sheehan “Chuck,” Sheehan takes this to mean that the experiment failed, and that the Teddy persona has taken over again. However, Andrew’s final question about whether it's worse to live as a monster or die as a good man to Sheehan suggests the opposite to be true.
- The most popular interpretation of the final scene is that the experiment had indeed worked and “cured” Andrew.
- However, once he remembered all the traumatic events of his past, mainly finding that his wife had murdered his 3 children and killing her himself, he decided that it was better to forget.
  - Metaphorically, Andrew might have chosen to “die as a good man” by agreeing to a lobotomy instead of living “as a monster” with the guilt and pain of his memories.
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Andrew truly regresses into his fragmented Teddy identity. During the plot twist reveal scene in the lighthouse, Dr. Cawley tells Andrew that this is the second time they’ve attempted this treatment and that it worked once before, but that he ultimately slipped back into the Teddy delusion. While the alternate explanation is a fan favorite, it’s still totally possible that Andrew did regress into his Teddy persona.^{[3]
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- He could have had no idea that he was about to be lobotomized and was just trying to appear cooperative with the hospital staff.
- Author Dennis Lehane agrees with this interpretation of the film, stating, “I would say that line, which comes across as a question—[Andrew] asks it sort of rhetorically. Personally, I think he has a momentary flash. To me, that’s all it is. It’s just one moment of sanity mixed in the midst of all the other delusions.”

Section 3 of 9:

Characters and Context for Shutter Island

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Edward (Teddy) Daniels, aka Andrew Laeddis The film begins with Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels on an assignment to investigate Ashecliffe Hospital with his new partner, Chuck. Over the course of a few days, Teddy and Chuck search the island for Rachel Solando, who they're told is an escaped patient. Teddy becomes convinced that dangerous experiments are being conducted at the hospital and his search leads him to the lighthouse, where Dr. Cawley tells him that he’s actually Andrew Laeddis.^{[4]
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- Teddy/Andrew is the protagonist of the film.
- Via flashbacks, we learn that Andrew had fought in WW2 and helped liberate the concentration camps in Poland, an event which had left him with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
- He had been a marshal and married a woman named Dolores Chanal, an anagram for Rachel Solano.
  - After birthing 3 children, Dolores had expressed to Andrew that she was dealing with dark and violent thoughts, perhaps an indicator of postpartum depression.
  - Andrew neglected her and began drinking more.
- One day, Andrew arrived home to find that Dolores had drowned their 3 children in the lake, and proceeded to shoot her in his grief and anger.
  - Unable to live with what he had witnessed and done, Andrew created the persona of Teddy to help escape his pain and suffering.
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Dr. Lester Sheehan aka Chuck We meet this character first as Chuck, and later as Dr. Sheehan, Andrew’s primary psychiatrist for the previous 2 years. Sheehan agrees with Dr. Cawley’s rehabilitative approach to treatment at Ashecliffe Hospital, instead of more harmful measures like electroshock therapy and lobotomies. Sheehan pretends to be Chuck in Andrew’s delusion, hoping Andrew can work it all out to finally accept the truth about who he is and what he has done.^{[5]
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- In the final scene, Andrew refers to Sheehan as Chuck again, leading Sheehan to believe that the treatment once again failed and that Andrew has slipped back into his Teddy identity.
- Andrew’s final question to Sheehan is what makes him wonder if Andrew wasn’t just pretending to be Teddy and choosing a lobotomy over having to live with his pain and trauma.
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Dr. Cawley The main doctor at Ashecliffe Hospital, Dr. Cawley, has more patient-based, humanistic ideas about rehabilitation. Cawley and Sheehan are portrayed in opposition to the other doctors and the warden, who would prefer to lobotomize more aggressive patients like Andrew and make them more docile. Cawley orchestrates the entire charade for Andrew to discover who patient 67 is: himself.^{[6]
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- The movie chronicles the second time this roleplay experiment is carried out with Andrew, with Cawley explaining that the treatment failed the first time and that Andrew had slipped back into Teddy.
- In the final scene, it appears that Cawley has the final say in lobotomizing Andrew. Cawley says something inaudible to the warden, who gestures for the nurses to go prep Andrew for brain surgery.
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Dolores Chanal We learn about Dolores via flashbacks, depicted as a mentally disturbed 1950s housewife and mother. While married to Andrew, she confessed that she often felt like she had “an insect living inside her brain. She could feel it clicking across her skull, [...] pulling the wires just for fun.” Andrew admits to not taking her mental health issues seriously, and came home one day to find the bodies of their 3 children floating in the lake after Dolores drowned them in a psychotic episode.^{[7]
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- Andrew shoots Dolores with his work gun and later creates Teddy to bury the trauma of losing his children and wife.
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Rachel Solando An anagram of Dolores Chanal, Solando is a character constructed as part of the Teddy delusion. In the film, she’s the escaped patient who was sentenced to Ashecliffe after drowning her 3 children. Andrew hallucinates an entire night with her in which she fuels the Nazi experiment conspiracy at the center of his delusion.
- In the end, it’s revealed that Rachel was also the name of Andrew’s daughter, who drowned.

Section 4 of 9:

What The Filmmakers Had to Say

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Filmmakers wanted to leave the ending open ended. Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, screenplay writer Laeta Kalogridis and novel author Dennis Lehane have all commented on the making of the film. In an interview, DiCaprio said, “Playing [this] character was one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had,” describing Scorsese as a “master painter choosing his colors.”^{[8]
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Research source} While Scorsese paid close attention to every detail and twist, he himself expressed a bit of remorse when tackling such a “big studio film,” explaining that he was “encouraged” by the success of The Departed.^{[9]
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- When it came to adapting Lehane’s novel into a screenplay, Kalogridis admits that she struggled with it as she wasn’t very experienced with thrillers and had to keep “track of where each moment would go,” referring to the first drafts of the script as “extensive.”^{[10]
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- Of the film’s ending, Lehane said it was “an interpretation” and that viewers should not be affected “whether they have read the book or not.”^{[11]
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  - He added that watching his source material unfold on the big screen was “so much fun” and praised Scorsese’s “unique vision.”

Section 5 of 9:

Why the Ending is Effective

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The ending reveals the ultimate plot twist. With haunting cinematography and performances to match, the final scenes in the noir-inspired film tie up all loose ends. Every red herring in the film is explained, from Teddy’s liberation of the concentration camps during WW2 to the imagined character of Rachel Solando. During the movie’s final act, every character takes off their mask and reveals the entire charade to Andrew, reinforcing themes of identity fractured by trauma, the guilt associated with memory, and the dangers of escapism.^{[12]
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- Another major current throughout the film is the human mind’s susceptibility to darkness and violence, and how it can sometimes take over in the wake of tragedy.

Section 6 of 9:

Reception of Shutter Island's Ending

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Reviews of the film’s ending were generally favorable. Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a 69% rating, while Metacritic gave it a 63% on a 100 scale. However, audiences in general rated the film slightly better, with ratings in the 80s. The ending of the film was specifically well received, with most viewers appreciating its insane plot twist, “unapologetic genre thrills,” and open ended final scene.^{[13]
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- Shutter Island ultimately made nearly $300,000,000 at the box office, becoming one of Scorsese’s highest grossing films of all time.

Section 7 of 9:

Shutter Island Film Ending vs Book Ending

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In the book, Andrew unquestionably slips back into his Teddy delusion. The film is based on the novel, Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane. Although the screenplay closely echoes the book, one major departure is the story’s ending. In the book, Andrew has very clearly regressed into the Teddy persona, leaving no doubt in the reader’s mind that the treatment failed. However, the movie took creative license when it came to Andrew’s true mindset in the final scene.^{[14]
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- The final piece of dialogue, in which Andrew asks whether it’s worse to live as a monster or to die as a good man, was added to the film to stir up doubt in viewers’ minds.
- In the book, however, Andrew refers to Sheehan as Chuck, tells him they need to figure out a way to “get off [that] rock” and implies in no way that he remembers the events of the past few days, his true identity, or his traumatic past.
- Other differences between the novel and film include the size of the island, as it is portrayed as being much smaller in the book, and the pacing, with Lehane’s narrative described more as a slow-burning mystery, gradually offering small clues that culminate in a big, explosive reveal at the end.

Section 8 of 9:

Is Shutter Island based on a true story?

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No, but the setting was inspired by a real place. Lehane shared that the island setting for the fictional Ashecliffe Hospital was inspired by Long Island in Boston Harbor. Lehane recalls visiting there when he was young during the blizzard of 1978, which likely became the “hurricane” that “traps” Teddy and Chuck on Shutter Island. Long Island had been home to several welfare institutions, shelters, and hospitals, and although there is no proof lobotomies took place there, there is evidence of similarly unethical treatments.^{[15]
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- Scorsese said he was inspired by classic film noirs like Laura (1944), Out of the Past (1947), and Crossfire (1947).^{[16]
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- Alcatraz is another notorious island prison.

Section 9 of 9:

Final Takeaways

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Shutter Island concludes on an open-ended note, allowing the viewer to decide. There are two main camps when it comes to interpreting the ending of this modern noir classic. Whether you believe that Andrew genuinely slipped back into his Teddy delusion or you have a gut feeling that Andrew was pretending to be Teddy because he preferred a lobotomy over facing his truth, the final scene throws in a smaller twist-within-a-twist. In the end, it’s totally up to the viewer.
- Does Andrew’s final hypothetical question to Sheehan simply reveal a moment of clarity in the otherwise murky waters of a madman’s mind?
  - Or does it suggest a secret awareness and a coherent choice to end the suffering of remembering once and for all?