The Dead Don’t Die Ending, Explained: Do Cliff and Ronnie Die?

Jim Jarmusch’s 2019 horror-comedy, ‘The Dead Don’t Die,’ follows the story of the residents of Centerville, who try to survive as the zombie apocalypse rears its head. It happens out of the blue one day when the phones and clocks stop working, and the days get longer as the undead rise from their graves and take over the really nice town of Centerville. Chief Cliff Robertson and Officer Ronnie Peterson are the first ones to notice the signs, and Ronnie declares that it is a zombie apocalypse. As the news of the zombie infestation spreads, the residents try to survive in their own ways, but it does not end well for everyone. SPOILERS AHEAD.

What Happens to Zelda? Is She an Alien?

There are many weird things in ‘The Dead Don’t Die,’ but Tilda Swinton’s character, Zelda Winston, is the weirdest one. Since her introduction in the film, she makes it clear that she is not like other people in the town. Anyone who talks about it mentions that there is something off about her. Then we see her with a katana, which she is incredibly good with. Shortly before the events of the film, she bought the funeral home, and there, we see her putting make-up on the dead bodies. She is also entirely unperturbed by the sudden emergence of the undead and is more amused than scared by them. She cuts through them with an efficiency that scares but also interests people. She even walks weirdly, like a robot rather than a human.

All of this makes it clear that there is something going on with her, and it becomes even more pronounced when she stays back at the police station and opens the computer, which is not supposed to be working, with just a flick of her hand. She passes her hand over the machine, and it starts to work. She feeds something to the machine and then leaves the police station for the cemetery. When she drives, she is amused by the car, and she drives carefully so as not to hit the zombies, unlike Cliff, who runs them over and then ends up with a broken-down car outside the cemetery. Even then, she is more fascinated by the zombies rather than scared. All of this weirdness is explained when it turns out that she is an alien. It is then revealed that when she used the computer back at the police station, it was to send a message to her people, asking them to come pick her up.

It seems that Zelda may have been sent to Earth to study it and humans. This is why she asked the questions that made people think that there was something different about her, though they could never put their finger on it. When the zombie apocalypse starts, Zelda realizes that the human race will not stay around for longer, which brings her project to an end. So, she decides to send a message home, telling them exactly what has happened and revealing that she is ready to come home. She calls them at the cemetery, and once there, she even drops her katana, even though she is completely surrounded by zombies. She is not scared because she knows help is coming, and the zombies cannot do anything to her anyway. When the UFO arrives, she is beamed up and leaves just as mysteriously as she came to Centerville.

How Did Ronnie Know He and Cliff Were Going to Die?

One of the things that makes ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ more interesting is how the movie breaks the fourth wall repeatedly. Right at the beginning, when we see Cliff and Ronnie drive around in the car, the song with the same title as the movie is played. When Cliff asks why the song sounds familiar, Ronnie says it’s because it’s the theme song. Then there are all the times Ronnie says that things are not going to end well. Ronnie is so self-aware that when Mindy asks him to tell her everything will be alright, he says it’s not his line to say. Seconds later, Cliff says those lines to Mindy, showing that Ronnie knew that those lines belonged to Cliff and not him. There are several other instances where other characters also break the fourth wall, all of which goes to say that they are kind of self-aware of their roles in the movie.

So, in the end, when Cliff asks how Ronnie knew it was all going to end badly, Ronnie says that it’s because he read the entire script, as opposed to others, including Cliff, who were only given their part of the script. This is when Bill Murray, too, breaks the fourth wall and talks about knowing the director, Jim Jarmusch, whom he has known for so long and who still didn’t give him the entire script. The fourth wall also adds another layer to Zelda’s arc. When she flies away in the UFO, Ronnie reveals that this was not in the script that he was given. This means that even he didn’t receive the whole script; perhaps Tilda Swinton did. This makes her the most self-aware character in the entire film, which explains why she acts so weirdly. Moreover, this also shows that she knew she’d have an escape in the end, which is why she wasn’t as concerned by the zombie outbreak as the others.

This breaking of the fourth wall is how Ronnie claims he knew, right from the beginning, that things were not going to end well for anyone. This is also why he had been so calm during the entire film when everyone else seemed to be freaking out. Sure enough, when the time comes, he and Cliff are the last ones standing. They have Mindy with them, but she loses her mind when she sees her own grandmother with the undead and decides that she has had enough of everything. While Cliff knows that their fate is sealed and they are not going to make it out alive, he decides that, at least, they should go out with a bang. They decide to fight and kill as many undead as they can, and they do, a lot of whom are the people that they know, including Mindy. In the end, the horde of zombies overpowers them, and the duo is also killed.

What Happens to Hermit Bob? Why Doesn’t He Save Cliff and Ronnie?

The second most interesting character in the film, after Zelda, is Hermit Bob. Since the beginning of the film, we see him always lurking in the woods but never coming out to participate in the world around him. Cliff reveals that he has been living that way, in the woods, out of sight and mind, for many, many years. He has denounced society and is living on his own terms, which is where another layer of the story comes into play. Through its horror-comedy lens, ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ serves as a commentary on consumerism and humans slowly turning into zombies because of these obsessions. To take this point further, the film shows the zombies going back to the things that they liked before they died. So, some are going for drugs; others are going for coffee or clothes. The last zombie Zelda kills is the fashion zombie.

Every character in the movie is living in that bubble and has something that holds them to their surroundings. Hermit Bob is not one of them. He is the only one who has always lived outside of that bubble, so when things start to go south, he is the only one who remains untouched by everything, so much so that he never comes in contact with a zombie and never even has to kill one, though he sees them attack the town and kill its residents. In the end, even as the zombies attack Cliff and Ronnie, Hermit Bob does nothing but watch and comment on how the world has gone to hell. He has a gun, but he makes no effort to pick it up, fire at the zombies, and give the last two humans a chance at survival.

His inaction seems a bit cruel, considering everything, but it is another kind of self-awareness. Previously, Cliff commented that despite living like that for so many years, Bob had never caused any trouble for anyone. This is why he finds it hard to believe when Farmer Frank blames Bob for stealing his chicken. This shows that Bob has been around for so long and has seen many things happen in Centerville, but he has not once interfered in the course of events. When he made the decision to stay away from civilization, he stuck to it, no matter the consequences. In the end, his distance from the townsfolk turns out to be the right one, and he is one of the handful to survive by the end.

What Happens to Geronimo, Stella, and Olivia?

The only people apart from Hermit Bob who survive by the end of the film are the three kids who escape from the juvenile detention center. Geronimo, Stella, and Olivia are first seen inside the place, looking at the news about polar fracking and how it has titled the earth off its axis enough to cause a drastic series of events. Like Hermit Bob, they, too, are removed from the world around them. However, instead of roaming in the world, they are forced to stay inside the building. When the news about polar fracking and the deaths in the diner comes out, the trio is unnerved, and Geronimo is the first one to point out that this is just the beginning of something that has the potential to destroy the entire human race. Because they are technically in prison for one thing or another, no one pays any heed to their words or concerns.

So, when the zombies eventually show up at the detention center, the trio is the only one that survives. Everyone else, including the security guards, falls to the zombies. It is when the entire town is destroyed that the trio finds their freedom and runs away from the place that was already suffocating them. They are ready to take their chances on the outside, and they are not scared of a little lawlessness, which they assume is set to follow. In any case, they know that the best thing they can do at the time is run, even though they know that destroying a zombie’s head is going to do the trick. In the end, we see the three of them running away to a place that they believe they can hide safely. Once they are in a safer space, they can think about fighting back, but for now, hiding is the best thing they can do, and that’s what keeps them alive.

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