'Heretic' Ending Explained & Film Summary: What Does The Butterfly Symbolize?

Heretic is a new psychological horror film starring the charismatic Hugh Grant in a starkly different role than we are used to seeing him in, although he successfully pulls off the task. The film follows two young women working as missionaries of the Mormon Church, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes, getting into a terribly unfortunate situation when they go to preach at the house of an eerie man named Mr. Reed. Overall, Heretic makes for quite an entertaining watch, trying to question matters of faith, religion, and the powers of spirituality.

Spoiler Alert

What is the film about?

Heretic begins with two young women, Paxton and Barnes, sitting on a park bench and preparing to speak about the need for baptism and for joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as they both happen to be Mormon missionaries. Despite their highly religious nature, the two women have a conversation about something mostly considered unholy, as they discuss the size of male contraceptives and adult entertainment films. But the discussion is not farcical or satirical, though, and Sister Paxton actually talks about how she found resounding faith in God and in the Mormon Church while accidentally having watched an adult video. Sometime later, the two of them set about their actual mission, which is to try and get more people interested in their faith and for them to become members of the Mormon Church.

This is clearly not an easy task, as most people ignore the missionaries on the streets, while some rude teenagers even play a nasty prank on Sister Paxton. As dark clouds start to gather over the afternoon sky, Paxton and Barnes hurriedly go through their list of people to visit, all of whom had shown prior interest in the Mormon religion, and decide to visit one such candidate for the Church, a certain Mr. Reed. They reach the house and ring the doorbell, to be answered by a cheerful man who immediately shows a keen interest in getting to know more about the Mormon Church. Reed gladly invites Paxton and Barnes into his house and assures them that his wife will be joining them soon, as it is a requirement for other women to be present in the same room when Mormon women co-exist with stranger men. The two missionaries take a seat in the spacious but dimly lit living room, while Reed goes to check on his wife in the kitchen.

The host announces that his wife is busy baking a blueberry pie, and her shy nature is still keeping her away from the women, although she will be joining soon. An intense discussion on religion and the Mormon faith in particular soon begins among the three characters, with it becoming evident that Reed has actually read quite a lot about the religion. It all begins rather well, as they talk about how religion is seemingly losing importance and focus in this modern day and age. But the conversation gradually turns a bit strange, with Reed beginning to question the rules and the reformations in the Mormon religion. There is a certain sense of indirect hostility in the manner in which he questions Paxton and Barnes, making them feel slightly uncomfortable. Finally, when Sister Barnes suddenly realizes that the smell of the supposed blueberry pie was coming from a candle, and it is actually quite dubious as to whether Reed’s wife is in the house, she and Sister Paxton decide to leave, not yet knowing that it would be an almost impossible task.

How do Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes get trapped in the house?

Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes are initially very eager to continue the conversation with Mr. Reed, as they take him to be genuinely interested in their religion, but they are clearly spooked when the oddities in his house spring up. The lights keep switching off by themselves, and then when they try to leave the house through the front door, they realize that the door is actually locked by a timer. With every passing minute, Reed seems to be more suspicious, and it looks increasingly improbable that there is actually anyone else in the house. Fearing that they are flouting the Mormon rules by being with a male stranger in the house without the presence of another woman, the missionaries make their first attempt to escape, only to realize that they might be in even bigger trouble. With the front door not budging even a bit, and the storm outside leading to the mobile network being completely down, Paxton and Barnes have no option but to follow Reed into the house.

This is when they reach the study, through narrow dark passages that are lined with creepy statues, and are informed about the true nature of their enforced captivity, although Reed lies that the women are always allowed to leave. His claim is simple—that the missionaries have to play a game devised by him, based upon testing their faith and belief in God, in order to safely leave the house. Reed gradually reveals his almost toxic interest in religion, which apparently made him try all the religions in the world to find which would be best suited for him. After explaining the repetitive nature of the various religions in the world, focusing on how many principles, ideals, characters, and stories in every religion seem to be copies of one another, he gives the women a choice to make. At the end of the study are two doors, both leading to dark flights of stairs, and Reed tells Paxton and Barnes that they have to choose between the two, and only one would take them out of the house.

The catch in this entire situation is that one door represents belief, and the other represents disbelief, with the two words scribbled on the respective doors. Barnes essentially wants the women to pick whether they are still faithful towards their religion or whether the growing disbelief now makes them think of distancing themselves from religion. This dilemma also neatly brings out the differences between the two women themselves, as the more meek and timid Sister Paxton feels that they should think about the situation from Reed’s perspective. Therefore, Paxton feels that they should choose the door labeled as disbelief, since Reed’s purpose in this whole exercise seems to have been to move the missionaries away from their faith. But Sister Barnes, who is more determined and strong-willed between the two, states that they must still choose the ‘belief’ door, for nothing can shake their faith. 

However, when the women ultimately choose to stick with their faith and reach the dark and damp basement of the house, they realize that both the doors would have led to the same place. Things become even more haunting in the basement; a woman draped in veils enters the room, with Reed announcing that this woman, whom he calls the Prophet, will be very crucial to his plan. The evil man wants to prove that the prophet will be revived by his faith in some undisclosed religion and goes on to kill her with poisoned food. This clearly proves to the protagonists that they have really been trapped by a dangerous murderer, but they are then also shocked by the Prophet waking up, supposedly from death, and even telling them something obscure about the afterlife. 

What is the real intention of Mr. Reed?

Mr. Reed is unmistakably the central character in Heretic, around whom the entire plot is structured. After claiming to be harmless and non-violent throughout the day, he does end up slitting Sister Barnes’ throat and leaving her to die in the basement. Sister Paxton has to try and escape the house all by herself from here on, and she ultimately challenges Reed’s puzzle and his wayward thoughts on religion and faith. For a long time throughout the film, it seems like Reed is interested in proving that the older pagan religions and spiritual practices are more significant and worthy than the comparatively recent creations. He suggests that the religions followed in ancient Egypt or ancient India are older, and therefore more true to their purpose, than the likes of Judaism or Christianity. Although his supposed tirade against the conventional religions in the West begins with questions posed against the Mormons, this is mostly because the missionaries follow this faith. Both Reed and Heretic make it obvious pretty soon that the discussions are posed against religion in general.

Eventually, Reed questions matters like more personal faith and belief in humanity as well, forcing Sister Paxton to the very depths of her faith and also those of the house. But Paxton’s strong will in the face of adversity helps her solve the puzzle, as she figures out the real plan of Mr. Reed, who firmly believes that religion is actually all about control. He even says as  much in the end, as it is revealed that he had devised this dangerous plan only to exert control over the young women, to not just make them lose faith in their own religion, but to also force them into submitting to his ideas. The incident with the Prophet, which was meant to prove the great powers of his own religion, was not actually a miracle but just a hogwash, for Reed had actually made a different woman take the position of the original Prophet, who had really died from the poison. Paxton is told to prove these tall claims of hers, which she does by finding an underground chamber, inside which the dead body of the original Prophet had been dumped.

But the extent of Mr. Reed’s cruel intentions did not just end here, though, as Paxton finds a cold storage room full of cages, inside each of which a woman has been kept hostage. Based on the pieces of information provided all over Heretic, it is easy to guess that these women were all missionaries who had come to preach their respective religion to Reed, most probably because he had asked for it. He then used the trick with the Prophet to question the faiths of these women and turn them submissive to his faith and also his captivity, and the man continued to collect religious women in his basement. The first Prophet was probably his real wife, whom he’d killed with the poison to get hold of the next woman required for his show. The point of the seemingly miraculous trick was to essentially deceive followers into believing whatever he claimed, which he feels is the base practice of any religion in the world.

However, it is quite easy to see that Reed’s claim of questioning conventional religion, faith, and philosophy in this manner is all just a ruse to hide his real self. Mr. Reed is actually just an abhorrent misogynist who wants to hunt and hurt women at all costs. It is hard to imagine that no male missionary had ever come to his house to preach religion, and in fact, when the Elder of the local Mormon Church comes to the place in search of Paxton and Barnes, he ensures that he leaves at the earliest. Any other psychopathic serial killer might have also made the Elder his victim, but Reed only harms women, and he is a very clear-headed and manipulative murderer who gets one of his enslaved women to remove Paxton and Barnes’ bicycles from his yard to avoid any suspicion. The fact that he questions the reformed beliefs about polygamy in the Mormon religion and literally keeps multiple women chained inside cages in his basement also points to the possibility that he sexually assaults his victims as well.

Do Sister Paxton’s prayers ultimately save her?

In Heretic’s ending, a major confrontation takes place between Sister Paxton and Mr. Reed, when she is caught by the man even after she stabs him and tries to escape. Reed is about to kill Paxton, and mercilessly tells her that no prayers will be able to save her, since the powers of her religion are too feeble in front of his demonic (literally too, as he seems to have worshipped the Devil as well) ways. But Paxton still prays, claiming that the faith that humans keep in each other and in God is not born out of a need for results but simply to help calm our troubled minds. It is at this very time that Sister Barnes suddenly wakes up, as if miraculously brought back from the dead, and uses a stick with nails hammered into it to bash Reed’s brains out, killing him in the process. Barnes then once again falls dead, having ensured that Paxton actually survives.

There is no proper explanation presented regarding this strange occurrence, and Heretic leaves it open to interpretation. The first theory is that Paxton’s genuine prayers and her dedication to her religion revive Barnes for a few seconds, which saves her life. But this theory obviously involves buying into the supernatural powers of religion, which would be a bit of a stretch from a rational perspective. The logical possibility, in that case, is that Barnes had lost consciousness after her throat had been slit, but had not completely died from the injury. The very little life that she had left in her coincidentally woke her up at this very moment to help her fellow missionary out of trouble. However, this possibility can also be a bit unconvincing, considering that Sister Barnes’ throat had been slit. Ultimately, viewers are left to decide what actually happened, with the only obvious thing regarding the situation being the survival of Paxton.

What does the butterfly in the last scene of the film signify?

In Heretic’s ending, Sister Paxton is able to escape the house by finding out about a secret route from the wooden model of the house that Mr. Reed had built in his study. She staggers out into the snowy morning and walks towards the main road when a butterfly briefly sits on her hand. The film ensures that viewers do not miss this scene, pointing out that it is highly significant, and it ties back to an earlier claim that Paxton had made. Towards the beginning of the film, she had expressed that, according to her, the afterlife was when she would be turned into a butterfly, and she would then fly to and sit on the hands of her loved ones to let her presence be felt. 

As Paxton looks down at the butterfly on her hand and smiles, it seems like she believes the insect to be Sister Barnes in her afterlife, reaching out to remind Paxton that she will always be there with her. It might also be that a butterfly simply sits on the woman’s hand and coincidentally reminds her of the friend and colleague who had just saved her life, and ultimately it signifies that Paxton will always remember Barnes no matter what. But the butterfly also seems to magically vanish in the next frame, which makes it very likely that Paxton was imagining the insect while thinking of Sister Barnes in her afterlife, since this was the very way she had imagined the afterlife to be. Lastly, Reed and Barnes had also spoken about the effects of near-death experiences, and as Paxton had recently had one such experience, the butterfly can also be thought of as her own self from a different reality, in which she had died and was actually in the afterlife. Just like the matter with Barnes’ revival, Heretic keeps this matter ambiguous too, leaving it upon the viewers to decide what they make of it. 

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