The ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood stands as one of the most talked-about conclusions in Quentin Tarantino’s filmography, transforming a leisurely-paced hangout film into a shocking, cathartic burst of violence that rewrites one of the darkest chapters in American cultural history. Released in 2019, Tarantino’s ninth film serves as both a love letter to late 1960s Los Angeles and a meditation on the end of Hollywood’s golden age, with the Manson Family murders looming ominously in the background throughout its runtime. Understanding the ending requires grappling with themes of friendship, the power of cinema, and Tarantino’s audacious decision to imagine a world where Sharon Tate survived that fateful August night in 1969. The film follows fading television star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double and best friend Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) as they navigate an industry that seems to be leaving them behind.
Their story runs parallel to that of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), the real-life actress and wife of director Roman Polanski, who happens to be Rick’s next-door neighbor on Cielo Drive. For viewers unfamiliar with the historical events, the tension building throughout the film might seem puzzling, but for those who know the tragic fate that befell Tate and her friends on August 8, 1969, every scene carries an unbearable weight of dramatic irony. By the time the credits roll, audiences are left processing a finale that functions simultaneously as wish fulfillment, genre subversion, and thematic statement. The ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood explained in full requires examining Tarantino’s intentions, the historical context, and the careful narrative construction that makes the climax both surprising and inevitable. This analysis will break down every element of the film’s conclusion, from the fate of the Manson Family members to the symbolic significance of Rick Dalton finally entering the Polanski-Tate home.
Table of Contents
- What Actually Happens in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Ending?
- The Historical Significance of Sharon Tate Surviving in Tarantino’s Film
- Why Quentin Tarantino Chose to Rewrite the Manson Family Murders
- Cliff Booth’s Fight Scene and Its Meaning in the Film’s Climax
- The Flamethrower Scene and Rick Dalton’s Character Arc
- The Symbolic Gate Opening and What It Means for Hollywood’s Lost Era
- How to Prepare
- How to Apply This
- Expert Tips
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Actually Happens in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Ending?
The climactic sequence of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood diverges dramatically from historical events in a move that shocked first-time viewers and delighted Tarantino fans familiar with his revisionist approach to history. On the night of August 8, 1969, three members of the Manson Family””Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel (renamed Tex, Sadie, and Katie in the film)””drive to Cielo Drive with the intention of committing murder. In real history, they invaded the Tate-Polanski home and killed five people, including the pregnant Sharon Tate, in crimes that would come to symbolize the death of 1960s idealism. In Tarantino’s alternate version, fate intervenes in the form of a drunken, frustrated Rick Dalton. As the three killers sit in their car outside the houses, debating their plan, Rick storms outside to demand they leave his neighborhood. His aggressive confrontation causes the group to reconsider their target.
Recognizing Rick from television””specifically his roles where he killed people””they develop a twisted logic: the real culprits for American violence are the actors who glorified it, so they should kill him instead. This decision redirects them away from the Tate home and toward Rick’s residence. What follows is an explosive, brutal fight sequence in which Cliff Booth, high on an acid-dipped cigarette, and his pit bull Brandy systematically destroy the would-be killers. Cliff’s combat skills, hinted at throughout the film through references to his mysterious past, prove devastatingly effective against the young, unprepared Manson followers. The violence is graphic and drawn-out, with Cliff using a dog food can to bash in Tex’s face while Brandy mauls the women. The sequence ends with Rick, having heard the commotion from his pool, grabbing a flamethrower””a prop from one of his old films””and incinerating a wounded Susan Atkins who had stumbled into his backyard.
The Historical Significance of Sharon Tate Surviving in Tarantino’s Film
The survival of Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood carries enormous emotional and thematic weight, representing Tarantino’s most audacious act of revisionist filmmaking. In reality, Tate’s murder while eight and a half months pregnant became one of the most horrifying crimes in American history, effectively ending the optimism of the 1960s counterculture movement. The Manson murders created a cultural rupture, transforming Los Angeles from a place of dreams into a symbol of American darkness. By allowing Tate to live, Tarantino offers audiences a fantasy of redemption that the real world never provided. Throughout the film, Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate is presented as an almost angelic figure””kind, beautiful, full of life and potential. The extended sequence where she watches herself in “The Wrecking Crew” at a movie theater, delighting in audience reactions to her performance, humanizes her in a way that contrasts sharply with how she’s often been remembered: primarily as a victim.
Tarantino gives Tate agency and joy, letting audiences see what was lost when her life was cut short. Her survival in the film’s alternate timeline feels less like a plot twist and more like an act of cinematic resurrection. The final moments of the film reinforce this theme powerfully. After the violence has concluded and the police and ambulances have arrived, Sharon Tate’s voice comes through the intercom at Rick’s gate. She invites him up to the house to have a drink and decompress from his traumatic evening. As the gates open and Rick walks up toward the Polanski-Tate home””a place the real Rick Dalton, had he existed, would never have entered because of what happened there””the film suggests a new future unwritten. The overhead shot of Rick approaching is accompanied by music that swells with hope rather than tragedy, and the title card reading “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” appears, confirming this as a fairy tale ending.
Why Quentin Tarantino Chose to Rewrite the Manson Family Murders
Tarantino’s decision to alter history in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood connects directly to themes he has explored before, particularly in Inglourious Basterds, where he allowed a group of Jewish soldiers to machine-gun Adolf Hitler in a burning movie theater. For Tarantino, cinema has the power to right historical wrongs, at least within the confines of a darkened theater. This approach represents more than simple wish fulfillment; it argues for film as a space where collective trauma can be processed and, perhaps, symbolically healed. The director has spoken extensively about his personal connection to 1969 Los Angeles. Tarantino was six years old when the Tate-LaBianca murders occurred, and he has described how the crimes haunted his childhood and shaped his understanding of Hollywood history.
The Manson Family murders marked the end of an era””the death of the hippie dream, the souring of the counterculture, the moment when the decade’s optimism curdled into paranoia. By stopping the murders from happening, Tarantino essentially asks: what if that moment of cultural rupture never occurred? What if Hollywood’s golden age had been allowed one more beautiful sunset? The film also functions as a meditation on violence itself, and specifically on movie violence. The Manson followers explicitly cite Rick’s television work as justification for targeting him, suggesting that screen violence creates real-world violence. Yet the film ultimately rejects this thesis in spectacular fashion. It is precisely Rick and Cliff’s capacity for violence””skills learned and practiced through decades of making Westerns and war films””that saves Sharon Tate and her friends. Tarantino seems to argue that violent entertainment can serve a protective, even righteous function, and that the real monsters are not the actors who play killers but the deluded young people who believed Charles Manson’s apocalyptic fantasies.
Cliff Booth’s Fight Scene and Its Meaning in the Film’s Climax
The extended fight sequence featuring Cliff Booth represents the culmination of character development threaded throughout the entire film. From his first appearance, Cliff is established as dangerous. References to him possibly killing his wife, his confrontation with Bruce Lee on a film set, and his unflinching response when threatened at Spahn Ranch all suggest a man with a violent past and the skills to back it up. The finale pays off these setups with interest, revealing Cliff as perhaps the most dangerous man in Los Angeles despite his laid-back demeanor. The decision to have Cliff high on LSD during the fight adds layers of dark comedy and surreal energy to the violence. His delayed reactions and bemused expressions as he processes the home invasion create a dreamlike quality that matches the film’s title and fairy tale aspirations.
Yet his combat effectiveness remains undiminished””if anything, the acid seems to remove whatever inhibitions might have tempered his response. Cliff fights with brutal efficiency, using his environment (a telephone, a dog food can, walls and corners) as weapons while his dog Brandy responds to trained commands to attack. The inclusion of Brandy as a central figure in the climactic violence serves multiple purposes. On a practical level, it allows the film to dispatch multiple attackers quickly. Thematically, it reinforces the bond between Cliff and his dog””they work together as a team, just as Cliff and Rick have worked together for years. There’s also an element of poetic justice in having a trained animal help defeat the Manson followers, who lived on a ranch surrounded by animals and claimed to embrace natural living. The domesticated violence of Cliff and Brandy proves more than a match for the feral violence of the Family.
The Flamethrower Scene and Rick Dalton’s Character Arc
Rick Dalton’s use of the flamethrower to kill Susan Atkins represents the perfect synthesis of his career anxieties and his redemption as a hero. Throughout the film, Rick struggles with insecurity about his place in the industry. He worries about being a has-been, cries in his trailer after forgetting lines, and drinks too much to cope with professional disappointments. The flamethrower””a prop from his 1968 film “The 14 Fists of McCluskey”””transforms him from a man who merely plays heroes on screen into someone who performs a genuinely heroic act. The visual of Rick rising from his pool, margarita-drunk and disoriented, to find a burned and bloodied woman screaming in his backyard, is pure Tarantino. His first instinct””to grab the flamethrower he keeps in his garden shed””is absurd, practical, and perfectly in character for someone who has spent his career surrounded by movie props and weapons. When he unleashes the flames on Atkins, screaming with fear and rage, Rick transcends his television persona.
He is no longer Jake Cahill from “Bounty Law” or the villain in various Western films. He is, for this one moment, an actual defender of his community. The aftermath of the violence shows Rick changed. As he sits on his front lawn, wrapped in a towel and giving a statement to police, he exhibits none of the neurotic insecurity that characterized him earlier. When Sharon Tate’s voice comes through the intercom, inviting him up to the house, the symbolism is unmistakable. The gates of Hollywood’s inner circle, previously closed to Rick despite his physical proximity, finally open. He has earned his place not through career success but through genuine heroism. The fairy tale structure that Tarantino has employed throughout reaches its logical conclusion: the worthy hero is rewarded, and evil is vanquished.
The Symbolic Gate Opening and What It Means for Hollywood’s Lost Era
The final image before the title card””Rick Dalton walking through the gates toward Sharon Tate’s home””carries immense symbolic resonance that rewards careful analysis. Gates and thresholds appear throughout the film as markers of status and access. Earlier, Rick stands outside these same gates, drunk and defeated, looking up at the house that represents everything he wishes he could achieve. The Polanski-Tate home symbolizes New Hollywood, European sophistication, and critical acclaim””everything Rick’s career in television Westerns could never provide. By having the gates open for Rick only after the violence, Tarantino suggests that heroism, not career success, is the true measure of worth. Rick has spent the film chasing artistic validation through his work in Italian films and guest villain roles, but none of these professional achievements earn him entry into Hollywood’s elite circles.
It takes an act of genuine courage””however accidental and chaotic””to finally bridge the gap between his ambitions and his reality. The fairy tale logic is clear: prove yourself worthy, and the castle gates will open. This ending also preserves what the Manson murders historically destroyed: the sense of possibility that defined late-1960s Hollywood. In our timeline, Cielo Drive became a symbol of horror, a place synonymous with brutal death. Tarantino’s film transforms it back into what it was before August 9, 1969″”a beautiful home where talented young people gathered to dream about their futures. By allowing Sharon Tate to survive and invite Rick into that world, the film offers a vision of continuity where the old Hollywood of Rick Dalton and the new Hollywood of Roman Polanski might have coexisted and influenced each other.
How to Prepare
- **Research the Tate-LaBianca murders**: The Manson Family’s crimes on August 8-9, 1969, claimed seven lives over two nights. Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent died at Cielo Drive; Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were killed the following night. Understanding the brutality and randomness of these crimes makes Tarantino’s intervention feel more meaningful.
- **Learn about Sharon Tate’s career**: Before her death, Tate was a rising star known for films like “Valley of the Dolls” and “The Wrecking Crew.” She was married to director Roman Polanski and represented the glamour and promise of New Hollywood. The film’s respectful, loving portrayal of her gains depth when you understand what she achieved in her short life.
- **Understand 1969 Hollywood’s cultural moment**: The film is set during a transitional period when the old studio system was giving way to the director-driven New Hollywood movement. Rick Dalton represents the fading past; Roman Polanski represents the emerging future. This tension informs every scene.
- **Familiarize yourself with Charles Manson and his followers**: The Manson Family lived at Spahn Ranch, a former Western movie set, and believed in an apocalyptic race war they called “Helter Skelter.” The film’s visit to Spahn Ranch is deeply unsettling when you know what the Family would soon do.
- **Watch Tarantino’s previous work, especially Inglourious Basterds**: Tarantino’s 2009 film similarly rewrites history, allowing Jewish soldiers to kill Hitler in a movie theater. Understanding this precedent prepares viewers for the revisionist ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and contextualizes Tarantino’s philosophy about cinema’s relationship to history.
How to Apply This
- **Rewatch with attention to foreshadowing**: Once you know the ending, a second viewing reveals how carefully Tarantino plants seeds throughout. Cliff’s violent capabilities, the flamethrower mentioned in passing, Rick’s frustration with hippies, and Sharon’s angelic presence all build toward the climax.
- **Consider the role of memory and nostalgia**: The film recreates 1969 Los Angeles with obsessive detail, from accurate recreations of specific locations to period-appropriate advertisements and music. Ask yourself what Tarantino is saying about how we remember and mythologize the past.
- **Examine the treatment of violence**: Compare how violence is portrayed in the films-within-the-film versus the actual violence at the climax. Note how Tarantino makes the Manson followers’ violence feel genuinely threatening while Rick and Cliff’s violence feels cathartic.
- **Analyze the friendship between Rick and Cliff**: Their relationship forms the emotional core of the film. Consider how their loyalty to each other contrasts with the Manson Family’s twisted sense of community, and how their professional partnership differs from the exploitative relationships elsewhere in Hollywood.
Expert Tips
- **Pay attention to the film’s meticulous timeline**: Tarantino structures the film around specific dates in August 1969, building toward the historical murder date. This temporal precision creates mounting dread for viewers who know what’s coming and makes the divergence from history more impactful.
- **Notice how Tarantino uses long, dialogue-free sequences**: The extended scenes of driving through Los Angeles, Sharon watching herself in a theater, or Cliff feeding his dog serve to establish atmosphere and character while delaying the inevitable confrontation. This pacing makes the explosive ending more shocking by contrast.
- **Consider why Margot Robbie has relatively few lines**: Some critics questioned Tate’s limited dialogue, but Tarantino’s approach treats her as an almost mythic figure””someone we observe and admire rather than fully know. This preserves her mystery while emphasizing what was lost.
- **Recognize the film as a buddy comedy first**: Despite its dark subject matter, much of the film operates as a hangout movie about male friendship. The genuine warmth between Rick and Cliff makes audiences root for them, which pays off when they become unlikely heroes.
- **Understand the Brad Pitt character’s moral ambiguity**: Cliff may have killed his wife, as strongly implied by a flashback. Tarantino deliberately leaves this unresolved, suggesting that heroism in this world doesn’t require moral purity””just the willingness and ability to act when action is needed.
Conclusion
The ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood represents Quentin Tarantino at his most ambitious and emotional, using the tools of cinema to heal a wound in American cultural memory. By saving Sharon Tate from the fate that awaited her in our timeline, Tarantino doesn’t erase or minimize the real tragedy””he acknowledges its power by showing us a world where it didn’t have to happen. The violence that Cliff and Rick inflict on the Manson followers functions as a kind of exorcism, allowing audiences to experience catharsis for crimes that occurred decades before most viewers were born.
The film’s conclusion also celebrates the redemptive potential of friendship, craft, and loyalty. Rick and Cliff may be has-beens in an industry that no longer values their skills, but those skills””honed through years of making violent entertainment””prove to be exactly what the moment requires. In Tarantino’s vision, Hollywood’s storytellers are not the corrupting influence the Manson Family imagined but rather guardians whose familiarity with violence prepares them to confront it when it arrives. The gates of Sharon Tate’s home opening for Rick Dalton represent not just his personal redemption but the possibility of a Hollywood where innocence could be preserved, where the fairy tale didn’t have to end in bloodshed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it typically take to see results?
Results vary depending on individual circumstances, but most people begin to see meaningful progress within 4-8 weeks of consistent effort.
Is this approach suitable for beginners?
Yes, this approach works well for beginners when implemented gradually. Starting with the fundamentals leads to better long-term results.
What are the most common mistakes to avoid?
The most common mistakes include rushing the process, skipping foundational steps, and failing to track progress.
How can I measure my progress effectively?
Set specific, measurable goals at the outset and track relevant metrics regularly. Keep a journal to document your journey.
