The Banshees Of Inisherin Ending Explained

Any filmmaker who chooses to create something new is undoubtedly thinking about the legacy they will leave behind. Even films that may not seem to have huge ambitions want to make some kind of positive mark on their audience. This is even truer for films focused on characters who themselves are thinking of the legacy they’ll leave in their fictional lives. 

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Enter “The Banshees of Inisherin.” A period piece, this pitch-black comedy-drama set in Ireland in the mid-1920s we initially reviewed at Fantastic Fest 2022 has a distinctive legacy of its own, while also telling a story about how personal legacies can spin wildly out of control. The tragicomedy is a proud member of the Nominated Only club, getting eight Oscar nominations and winning none. Yet the fact that “The Banshees of Inisherin” walked away with no golden statuettes almost burnished its aura as a tough-as-nails, surprisingly deep film with historical resonance more than if it had won big. On its surface, “The Banshees of Inisherin” may seem like a fairly simple story of how two once-very-close friends become the fiercest of enemies in the small, eponymous island village, one rampant with harbingers of doom. But this extremely intelligent film is vastly more complex than you might realize, leading up to its tense and ambiguous ending.

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Writer/director Martin McDonagh builds carefully to the grim conclusion, in which Pádraic (Colin Farrell) burns down the house of his ex-best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and, despite choosing to wrest Colm from the blaze, suggests that their infighting can only end with one or both of them dead. But the closing moments are left deliberately vague and open-ended, as much a commentary on real-life history as on a friendship rent asunder.

At its heart, the premise of “The Banshees of Inisherin” is simple enough: as the Irish Civil War winds down in 1923, Colm, a fiddler living in Inisherin, decides he no longer wants to spend time with his lifelong best friend Pádraic, who is as confused as he is wounded by this decision. But the confusion is what gives the film its ambiguity; there’s no slight Pádraic committed before the events of the film that would explain why Colm is cutting ties with him, aside from thinking Pádraic is boring. The more Pádraic pushes for an explanation of what’s really going on, Colm says he’ll cut off one of his own fingers (on his fiddling hand, no less) each time the other man tries to have a conversation with him. As simple and violent as this ultimatum is, Pádraic tests it a few times (intentionally or otherwise), eventually roping in his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) and a local boy named Dominic (Barry Keoghan), whose police-officer father Peadar (Gary Lydon) frequently abuses him, a fact the townspeople are all too aware of and one that begins to ramp up the tension between our two leads.

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When Dominic’s father mocks Pádraic in the town square, Pádraic returns the favor with a snide comment about the abuse of his son. At first, Colm isn’t entirely standing by his own words (and threats of self-harm). It’s he who brings Pádraic home after his tense confrontation with Dominic’s father, though the two men don’t speak to each other. Pádraic, upon returning to the pub that night and seeing Colm drinking with Dominic’s father, drunkenly accuses the latter man of molesting Dominic and excoriates Colm for his new choice of drinking buddy. Yet instead of self-mutilation, Colm only dryly notes that this is the most interesting Pádraic’s been in years. It’s only when, the next morning, a sobered-up Pádraic (who has no recollection of the previous night’s events) tries to patch things up with Colm that the fiddler makes good on his promise, chopping off one of the fingers on his fiddling hand, which he throws at Pádraic’s door as a sign of how serious he was.

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Soon after Pádraic’s chattering leads to Colm cutting off his finger, the elderly Mrs. McCormick predicts death to come to the island. Her comment ends up being less about the men at the top of this interpersonal war and more about those caught in the middle. The sympathetically awkward Dominic, for one, sees the fractious edginess between Pádraic and Colm and clearly wants them to come to a détente. Yet when Dominic learns Pádraic has lied to a fellow fiddler friend of Colm’s — to keep this new person away from his old friend — Dominic rejects Pádraic for being unexpectedly cruel and nasty. And Dominic is soon rejected, though much more politely, in turn by Pádraic’s sister Siobhan, for whom he has romantic feelings.

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Though the inciting incident of “The Banshees of Inisherin” is Colm threatening to cut off his own fingers, it’s Pádraic who makes things worse for everyone. Aside from alienating both Dominic and Siobhan, he pushes Colm to the brink when he drunkenly brags about his devious behavior. His timing couldn’t be worse: Colm has finished his latest song (which shares the title of the film) and seems open to becoming friends once again. But when he learns of Pádraic’s lie about his fellow fiddler, Colm responds more viciously than before, cutting off the rest of the fingers on his fiddling hand. If that wasn’t bad enough, Pádraic’s seemingly only friend in the world, the donkey Jenny, chokes to death after eating one of those fingers outside of Pádraic’s house. Adding insult to injury, the intelligent Siobhan is so exhausted by the vicious feud that she moves to the mainland.

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When Jenny dies and Siobhan leaves, the war at the heart of “The Banshees of Inisherin” reaches a climactic and ambiguous boiling point. Pádraic tells Colm he’s going to set the fiddler’s house on fire the next afternoon, giving him ample warning to leave. Colm ignores that warning, choosing to sit inside the house while Pádraic makes good on his fiery promise. Pádraic does relent before all is said and done, at least in that he seemingly doesn’t want the fiddler to burn to the ground as well, joined by Colm’s dog in rescuing the man. 

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At roughly the same time, Mrs. McCormick, who portended death to come to Inisherin, proves herself to be right when she shows Peadar the floating corpse of his son Dominic in a nearby lake. Is Dominic dead at his own hand? Did Peadar’s abuse get to be too much for his son, coupled with the rejection he received from Siobhan? Or did Peadar himself perform this act, and the old woman is simply showing him, so he understands his vicious act won’t go unnoticed? It’s a mystery with no right answer, at least as detailed here, much as the same as the final moments themselves. 

After the house burns down and both men have survived, Pádraic brings Colm’s dog back to him. Colm believes their civil war is now over, arguably with good reason. He’s only got one hand with fingers and no house, and Pádraic’s lost a sister and his donkey. But Pádraic says the war would have only ended if Colm had refused to leave his house and died inside. Colm, in his own way, tries to reason with Pádraic by pointing out that the larger Irish Civil War, which has been alluded to but is depicted offscreen, is also concluding. Pádraic sees it differently, responding that “Some things, there’s no moving on from,” suggesting that such intractability is a good thing. As the elderly woman watches them from a nearby bluff as they stare out at the water, the film concludes, leaving us all in the lurch.

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“The Banshees of Inisherin” does not end, as has sometimes been the case with McDonagh’s works, with just about everyone dying. Colm and Pádraic are alive, if not well, as the credits roll. But it is clear that this battle among old friends cannot actually end unless they’re both six feet underground. As can sometimes be the case with these types of wars, the source of the fighting becomes less important than the collateral damage collected along the way. (The balance between the tragic and the comic is very careful, even in this last scene, thanks in no small part to the film’s editor, Mikkel E.G. Nielsen, whom we interviewed in 2023.) The two key deaths in the film, of Jenny and Dominic, are all the more shocking because they’re a pair of innocent bystanders. Even if Colm’s initial claim that Pádraic just isn’t that interesting is true, the result isn’t worth any of the heartbreak. That is undoubtedly the point of this ambiguous ending; both men are still alive, but at what cost?

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To really understand the potential meaning of the film’s ending, you have to look to the Irish Civil War itself. Although the island of Inisherin is fictional, the off-screen war very much was not. Fought between the Provisional Government of Ireland and the Anti-Treaty IRA, this war only lasted about a year and was waged over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In essence, the treaty was intended to establish an Irish Free State within the United Kingdom, separate of the control or oversight of Great Britain, but the treaty was only barely approved within Ireland, and the two sides then fought this battle. The pro-treaty side won the day, but in doing so, it only served to split Ireland further and cause bloodshed across generations. While “The Banshees of Inisherin” isn’t remotely as violent as the history taking place off-camera was, McDonagh seems more than willing to draw a connection between the dispute among old friends and this larger battle. We don’t see the conclusion of the fight between Colm and Pádraic, but we almost don’t need to. Someone else will fall, but more than likely, it will be another innocent bystander as opposed to the two men themselves.

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Of course, the very nature of an ambiguous ending is that it can be read in multiple ways. Yes, it’s true that the end of “The Banshees of Inisherin” seems to suggest that there’s no easy way out for Colm or Pádraic, even if that’s because they choose not to lay down their arms. But when Farrell and Gleeson spoke to the Los Angeles Times in the 2022 awards season, they noted that they had debated the true meaning behind the spare dialogue in the final scene. The fact that Pádraic had not only removed Colm from the burning house and had returned his dog to him the day after could be positive signs for the future. As it turns out, it was the man who beat out Farrell in the Best Actor category at the Oscars, Brendan Fraser of “The Whale,” who set the debate off. “He actually surprised me. He’s the first person that thought there were reparations at the end and that things were going to be okay,” Farrell said.

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Gleeson, in the same profile, notes, “I think it reveals your nature, whether you feel hope. Or, at least want it to be there.” Indeed, there can be a glass half-full or half-empty reading to the finale. With both men having hit some form of rock bottom, any sense of grace they give themselves or to each other can be seen as positive. McDonagh has not been shy in his films or plays in killing off a wide swath of characters, so the fact that the deaths here hit hard and in unexpected ways, is telling. Gleeson also commented on how the actor playing Peadar reacts to his dead son’s body. “He’s human. And that’s Martin … showing that even the most vile, repulsive person has a degree of humanity.”

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One reason Colm has given for wanting to spend less time with Pádraic is to focus on his music in the hopes that he’ll leave behind a legacy to the generations to come. Whether that would ever have been true is something he’ll never know with a fingerless fiddling hand. But, as Farrell and Gleeson commented in the Los Angeles Times article, they do end up accidentally guaranteeing a legacy of some kind. “What will be remembered in two…hundred years is [Colm] chopping off his fingers and [Pádraic], who used to be his best friend burning his house down,” Farrell said. “Their legacy is complete! It’s just not what they thought.” 

The legacy these two men leave behind isn’t fully clear either, but it’s mildly encouraging that the people involved in the making of the film can see a way forward for them instead of just more heartbreak and bloodshed.