Protein Movie Ending Explained And Full Story: Is Sion Dead Or Alive?

Before I knew anything about it, Tony Burke’s Protein struck me as a film that might explore the gymbro psyche in men the way The Substance dissected female body culture. But this Welsh gang thriller takes a different turn, staying true to its title while refusing to spell out its meaning. What follows is a grim yet odd human story of survival, trauma, and the masculine need for control, set against a backdrop of working-class grit and desperation. Burke uses the language of crime cinema to explore something far more fragile: a town overrun by junkies and criminals and the devastation it wreaks on ordinary people and their children. My only gripe is that the serial killer-cannibal, Sion, is not getting much screentime. Sure, that gives the other characters space to grow and wrap up their arcs nicely, but it also takes the film a bit too far from its main idea.

Spoilers Ahead

What happens in the film?

Sion, a former army man, hitchhikes his way from London to South Wales, and he barely has any money or a roof over his head. He is suffering from extreme PTSD from his time of serving, as he got bullied by his sergeant and the members of his platoon for being a skinny dude. It’s evident that either a bomb or mine decimated the vehicle he and his platoon were travelling in, and Sion is the only one to survive, and he waited for quite some time with his dead friends before he was saved. Sion finds a deserted shop, which is pretty filthy, and the only thing that works is a large chest freezer just lying there in the ruins. It’s not great, but definitely better than sleeping outside. He signs up at the local gym, run by a nice, humble woman named Katrina, who lets him join even though he’s short of the money. Five local small-time goons also work at this gym, and it’s an interesting little squad. Dwayne is the big guy who leads them; there’s Nik, who’s buff and scary; Big Tim and Gary are the other two who can be classified as passable bouncers; and then there’s Kevin, the weak link of the group. Kevin stutters and isn’t as big, but he makes it up with taking all the heat from the guys and being the punching bag of the group. All of them work in a club named Sin City run by the local big shot businessman, Joe Llewelyn. Joe is infamous for dealing drugs in his nightclub, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it since he owns half the town. 

Why does Sion kill Dwayne? 

Joe buys cocaine from an Albanian gang called the Black Starz, and Dwayne gives Joe a look, which rubs him the wrong way. Now Dwayne and his mates are the bouncers of the club, so Joe shows him his place right in front of the people, at the entrance of the club. Dwayne decides that the Albanians rip off people like Joe by charging too much, and he buys cocaine from another gang to make some quick money. Dwayne sends Kevin to receive the drugs, which come in a jar, as protein powder. With the drugs secured, the near future looked bright for these rebels. Meanwhile, Katrina offers Sion a cleaning job at the gym, and she is kind of into him, so she treats him like a friend. When Dwayne makes some derogatory comments about Katrina, she stands up for herself and humiliates him in front of his mates. Dwayne comes back and smashes her against the wall to make her apologize to him. Sion sees it all, and while he doesn’t do something immediately, he does knock on Dwayne’s door late at night. Sion bangs his head with a hammer and puts him in the bathtub to cut out the meaty parts carefully and pack them in garbage bags. He takes one of his hands as a souvenir and burns the rest of his body out in the woods. Sion gets to his hideout, stocks up on all the freshly carved meat thanks to the freezer, and eats some of it raw like a hungry raccoon. 

How does Dwayne’s murder start a chain reaction between the gangs? 

Detective Stanton and Detective Patch are assigned to solve Dwayne’s murder, and these two professionals are polar opposites. Stanton is an old-school copper who cares about nobody’s feelings or any rulebooks, as he asks Katrina who she’s sleeping with under the excuse of investigation, and Patch rightly terms his detective work “basic.” Patch has flown from London to chase this murderer since it matches the pattern of a similar killer she was hunting in London. Patch is  a better  detective, who refuses to be crass for the sake of investigation. She understands the criminal psyche and hates the way Stanton works. The suspect list is short, and Stanton thinks Joe is behind it, since the CCTV outside his club captured him arguing with Dwayne. Joe is pretty nonchalant and couldn’t care less. Meanwhile, Kevin is in shambles because of how Dwayne was murdered and the fact that he has the jar of cocaine in his house, where he lives with his sick mother, who yells at him offscreen throughout the film. When the cops interrogate him, he tells them that Dwayne thought that the Albanians charged too much for drugs. Dwayne’s mates, now led by Nik, think that the Albanians murdered Dwayne for trying to do business on their turf, and he hires a deranged hitman to kill Alexis, one of the more respected members of Black Starz. The hitman shoots Alexis and uses a chainsaw to chop him up real nice, similar to Dwayne’s body. The Albanians have no idea about the existence of Nik, Kevin, and the others, and they start killing their rival gang and ripping their hearts out. 

The emotional aspect of protein

The killing and eating of human meat as a smoothie aside, Protein also dives deep into the characters’ psyche. Starting from Sion, who got bullied out of his mind in the army and, when he was barely alive after the blast and his squad dead, had a piece of meat from one of their bodies and never got over the addiction. It’s clear that Sion just doesn’t kill humans to not starve, as I’m sure he could hunt wild rabbits and fish, but the high he gets from eating human flesh and pumping the iron is unmatchable by anything else. His body is probably at its peak, and all the protein he’s getting from Dwayne is just the cherry on top. Katrina is a single mother who is raising her son all by herself, and when she invites Sion to dinner, she’s putting herself out and making herself vulnerable, hoping that Sion will make a move. She’s grown up in this town and is well aware of the type of men that roam the streets, and all she wants is a decent, hardworking dude who will treat her and her son right. Even though Sion doesn’t even talk much, Katrina tries her best to warm up to him, and yet Sion’s mumblings never really contribute anything to the dynamic. The other interesting dynamic lies with Nik and Big Tim—two men who are secretly lovers, and Nik promises Tim that they’ll rule the drug chain once they get rid of the Albanians. The other goon, Kevin, finds himself in the worst place possible when he goes to Gary’s house to deliver the drugs, and inside, Sion has already chopped up Gary and his jealous girlfriend into pieces. When Kevin looks through the window, he sees one of Gary’s eyeballs just lying around, and he freaks out real bad. All his life Kevin has felt that he’s inferior to others, and after doing a lot of coke, he turns into Travis Bickle with all the confidence in the world. The man can’t stand his mother’s yelling anymore and just shoots her in cold blood to silence the voices holding him back from being a “proper gangster.” Kevin’s night of courage ends pretty soon afterwards, when the cops find him roaming around with a gun and shoot him down. The cops handling the case, Patch and Stanton, bump into each other in an AA meeting, and after talking for a while, they start to understand each other more than before. Stanton lost his teenage daughter to one of Joe’s drug-fueled parties, and since then he’s been divorced, eating and gaining weight, and waiting for the day he can arrest Joe and save the kids of the town. Meanwhile, Patch is separated from her partner, and her drinking problems are much more fresh than Stanton’s, and she’s trying to deal with her breakup and the case that’s never ending. When she tries to call her ex and talk, her behavior really upsets Patch, and she thinks of buying a bottle, but Stanton notices her standing in front of the shop and offers her a ride home, making sure she doesn’t fall back into relapse. 

How does Sion survive the cartel and the cops? 

Big Tim wants to run away after Gary’s death, and Nik refuses to end what he’s started. His hitman kills three more members of the Albanian gang, and Nik kills Tim when he refuses to stay back. Kate fires Sion when he refuses to even talk to her straight-faced, implying that he isn’t interested, and she gives him some extra money just out of sheer kindness. Sion then sneaks into Nik’s house and takes the envelope of money Nik kept aside to pay the hitman. Sion makes him kneel and shoots him. The Hitman notices the gunshots from downstairs, and he follows Sion to his hideout. Sion, being an army man and a serial killer who leaves no trace behind, despite all the butchering of the victims on the spot, knows he’s being stalked. He ambushes the hitman, and after brutally beating him up, he forces the killer into the freezer and locks it with chains. Sion, very smartly, turns Dwayne’s phone on in this location, which triggers the cops, and they come down to check the place out. They find the hitman in the freezer, and this place is owned by Joe, and that’s enough for Stanton to put him behind bars for good. However, Patch stumbles upon a torn T-shirt—the very same one Sion had ripped apart right in front of her that day he’d helped her up after she tripped on her jog. So Patch low-key realizes that Sion might be the killer, but he’s already left their radar. Before leaving, Sion leaves a good amount of money for Katrina and her son, as he goes back on the road to find a new town and hunt some bad guys for lunch and protein shakes. 

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