The surreal ending of Mulholland Drive explained

Be sure to check out our Definitive Explanation of Mulholland Drive, which explains the entire movie and answers all your questions.

Two miniature elderly people, madly cackling, crawl from under the door. They then grow to normal size and start chasing Diane through her apartment. Screaming, running, completely helpless, Diane frantically escapes to her room, puts a gun right up to her head, and pulls the trigger. 

Smoke pours in from her windows and fills the room as her limp body lies on the bed. Out of that cloudiness comes a dirty homeless man, a garbage fire burning behind him as he stares frighteningly into the camera. 

Then an orchestra fades in and swells as a close-up of Betty and Rita overwhelms the screen. These two women, each lit by a faint white glow, laugh and smile. Behind those two women, Los Angeles looms—perhaps divinely, perhaps menacingly—with unwavering power.

The music disappears, and now there is nothing but a lone microphone resting in a theater that’s draped with red at every turn. A woman with wild blue hair and big gold earrings sits in the balcony, looking down upon the empty stage.

“Silencio,” she whispers as black consumes the screen.

The ending of Mulholland Drive is cryptic, experimental, bizarre, and—fittingly—very, very Lynchian. David Lynch has become known for his ambiguous, enigmatic scripts. As his stories unravel, they don’t necessarily open up. If anything, the more and more information you receive, the more and more confused you may become about the logic of the film.

Then again, that’s only if you’re watching a David Lynch movie like you’d watch any other movie. If you’re looking for the pieces to come together, for the plot to reveal itself, for all of the narrative threads to coalesce and form a recognizable story…then a movie like Mulholland Drive might be frustrating. Before the credits roll, there’s no conclusive dialogue that explains everything you’ve just watched. Instead, you’re left with a collage of ideas and images that seemingly don’t fit together.

That’s what’s funny about Mulholland Drive, though. When you concentrate on the thematic core of the film and read about David Lynch’s style of storytelling, I don’t think the movie is confusing at all. Once you step back and simplify the entire experience—which we can do by looking back at past David Lynch interviews and understanding his storytelling process—not only does the overall plot seem obvious, but all of the confusing little puzzle pieces (including those seemingly mismatched details of the final scene) start to feel like normal extensions of a discernible story. Once we understand Lynch and the commentary he intended to make about the “Hollywood Dream,” then everything will start to make more sense.

But in order to get on that level, we first need to step into the mind of David Lynch.

David Lynch’s style of storytelling

There’s a great interview that Chris Rodley—who edited the definitive David Lynch book, Lynch on Lynch—performed with the legendary surrealist filmmaker back when Mulholland Drive hit theaters. Throughout the conversation, you can sense Rodley trying to think about the movie reasonably and ask questions that make Mulholland Drive seem less intimidating.

“The movie is full of obvious clues,” Rodley says to Lynch, “but there are many other things that are important visual and audio indicators that are not obvious. So at times it does seem as if you’re delighting in teasing or mystifying the viewer.”

Man. I wish I could have seen David Lynch’s face in that moment.

“No,” Lynch responds (I like to imagine him gasping and looking appalled as his eyes widen). “You never do that to an audience. An idea comes, and you make it the way the idea says it wants to be, and you just stay true to that. Clues are beautiful because I believe we’re all detectives. We mull things over, and we figure things out. We’re always working this way. People’s minds hold things and form conclusions with indications. It’s like music. Music starts, a theme comes in, it goes away, and when it comes back, it’s so much greater because of what’s gone before.”

That, to me, is the perfect explanation of how to watch Mulholland Drive. Instead of trying to piece the movie together as the story moves along—which is how we’ve come to understand the storytelling logic of most movies—it’s better to simply give ourselves over to the experience and (as confusing as it may seem) let it unfold without disruption. 

As Lynch himself indicates during the interview with Rodley, he’s not even sure where the story is going while he’s writing it.

“Sometimes an idea presents itself to you and you’re just as surprised as anyone else,” Lynch says to Rodley. “I remember when I was writing Mulholland Drive, the character of the cowboy just came walking in one night. I just started talking about this cowboy. That’s what happens—something starts occurring, but it wasn’t there a moment ago.”

Rodley, who knows that the cowboy character confuses most people watching the movie, offers a reasonable retort: “Do you then get anxious about how this idea is going to fit in with everything else?” 

“No, because you’re just in that world yourself,” Lynch explains. “You’re just going. There is no movie yet. Until the process completes itself, you’re just going to carry on. Somewhere along the way, when it looks like it’s taking some sort of shape, the rest of the ideas all gather around to see if they can fit into that shape. Maybe you’ll find out that that thing isn’t going to work, so you save it in a box for later. You’ve got to be the audience for most of this trip. You can’t second-guess them. If you did, you’d be removing yourself from yourself. Then you’d be out there in really dangerous territory, trying to build something for some abstract group that’s always changing. I think you’d fail. You’ve got to do it from the inside first and hope for the best.”

I don’t know about you, but for me this simplifies everything. The cowboy character in Mulholland Drive is only confusing if we remove him from the film and try to assign a specific meaning to his presence. But really, in Lynch’s mind, the cowboy is just passing by as Lynch works through a central idea that’s driving the entire film.

Luckily, Lynch hints at the core message of Mulholland Drive in that interview with Rodley. And that thematic foundation will reveal quite a bit about the film’s storytelling logic.

What Mulholland Drive is about

During the interview, Rodley asks Lynch about Diane’s character journey. At the end of the movie, Diane is a tired actress getting burned by Hollywood. But for most of the film, that same character is also a girl named Betty who just arrived in Hollywood and is ready to take the movie world by storm. 

What does that all mean? Rodley wonders. What is Lynch trying to say with this dual storyline?

Before we go down the rabbit hole of who is who and what is what, let’s allow Lynch, once again, simplify everything for us.

In response to Rodley’s questions about Diane/Betty:

“There are jokes about how in L.A. everyone is writing a script and everyone has got a résumé and a photo. So there’s a yearning to get the chance to express yourself—a sort of creativity in the air. Everyone is willing to go for broke and take a chance. It’s a modern town in that way. It’s like you want to go to Las Vegas and turn that one dollar into a million dollars. Sunset Boulevard says so much about that Hollywood Dream thing to me.”

The Hollywood Dream. That’s a key bit of insight that—when I read it—broke Mulholland Drive wide open.

If you haven’t seen Sunset Boulevard, then I suggest you do it immediately, as it’s essentially a much more straightforward version of Mulholland Drive. But to quickly break it down: the film follows a washed-up actress named Norma Desmond who refuses to accept that her career has ended. Throughout the film, we see her living an illusion, believing that she’s still as relevant and revered as she was during her glory days. But as reality sets in, we witness Norma unwind mentally—and, in turn, take out anyone who stands in the way of her delusion. The movie ends with her shooting a man dead in her mansion’s backyard pool.

Film writer Richard Corliss described Sunset Boulevard as “the definitive Hollywood horror movie.” And that sentiment is shared by many others in the film world. But I also don’t think Lynch owns an overtly negative view of Hollywood. In fact, during that interview with Rodley, he describes his relationship with L.A. as, from the get-go, “an immediate full-tilt love affair.”

But there is also one important thing to know about Lynch: he absolutely despises control. 

You can see Lynch exploring the idea of people being controlled in his films. But even in his personal life, Lynch has described himself as apolitical and believes in “next to zero government.” He then later stated he was a Democrat—but that he also didn’t like Democrats “because I’m a smoker, and I think a lot of the Democrats have come up with these rules for non-smoking.”

Basically: please stop telling David Lynch (and the rest of the world) what to do. OK?

When you look back at the themes of Lynch’s films, you can sense that energy coming through. In his first feature, Eraserhead, Henry’s world is completely upended when he finds out he’s going to have a baby. The terrifying prospect of fatherhood is symbolized through this disgusting alien-looking thing.

In Eraserhead, it isn’t necessarily “fatherhood” that’s controlling Henry—it’s what is expected from him as a father in American society. Once this monstrous baby comes into his life, Henry isn’t allowed to live his life like he normally did and must now fit the mold of the typical American father figure. The prospect of subscribing to that persona launches his life into a full-blown sci-fi horror extravaganza.

Early in his career, Lynch continued to play with that idea. In Blue Velvet, Jeffrey can live the “American Dream” by getting with Sandy. She really likes him and is clearly ready to be his wife and have his children and own a mid-sized home with a white picket fence in a nice neighborhood. But living that life means subscribing to a model that’s been outlined by society. Clearly, Jeffrey’s initial reaction is to reject that control and explore the dark underbelly of American culture he had no idea about. He decides to start a romance with Dorothy, who herself is controlled by Frank in this other dark faction of society that lives by its own set of rules. As Jeffrey jostles between those two environments, we’re witnessing somebody who’s unable to envision his own destiny and form his own identity. And because Jeffrey is unable to work past that control, his life falls apart.

You can then see how that energy would translate to his scripts for Mulholland Drive and his final feature film, Inland Empire. I mean, think about that. Lynch writes and directs nearly a dozen movies that have nothing to do with Hollywood. Then, he suddenly has these two projects that rip into Hollywood—and then he never makes a movie again. That’s kind of incredible, right? And revealing of what Lynch thought about the Hollywood system he had become part of.

It’s not like Lynch never had problems in Hollywood. Very early in his career, Lynch declined when he was offered to direct Return of the Jedi. That’s a freaking Star Wars movie. But the prospect of being part of such studio film—where you have dozens of producers and studio heads to report to and adhere to—must have terrified him.

And when Lynch directed Dune, it was reportedly a contentious experience. He worked on the initial scripts for six moths with Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore, and eventually split with them over creative differences. And Lynch’s intended original cut of the film has never been seen. After several other versions that were filmed and edited by outside parties were broadcasted to the public, Lynch disavowed the project and used the name “Alan Smithee” in the credits. To this day, he refuses to talk about Dune in interviews.

When you hear Lynch talk about movies, you can tell that he doesn’t hate Hollywood—he just hates the people that have come to control Hollywood, the people who have constructed a system of rules that everybody must obey, the people that have limited an artist’s control.

But Lynch truly does believe in the promise of Hollywood, and believes an artist can exist outside the rules and regulations that have been set up. On the very first morning that Lynch woke up in Hollywood, he claims to have never seen the light so bright. “A feeling comes with this light—a feeling of creative freedom.” That freedom is everything to Lynch—a filmmaker who has, from the very beginning, defied the conventions of Hollywood storytelling. Instead of settling into the system and playing by the rules, he’s made his movies more and more surreal as his career has progressed.

I think that’s why Lynch loves Hollywood. He has always been able to realize his vision because he has never compromised—he has never given into that control. Unlike the characters of his movies, he has never subscribed to anyone else’s idea of a great life or a fulfilling career. And he has certainly never believed the lies that are constantly sold to the young, dewy-eyed wannabe actors and filmmakers who think they’ll be the next Brad Pitt or Steven Spielberg.

And that’s what Mulholland Drive is about: the Hollywood Dream. People want to go to Hollywood and be successful—which is exactly what David Lynch did. It’s what many of the successful people in Hollywood did. Many successful artists were able to stand their ground and never yielded their creative freedom.

But many many many other people—in fact, my guess is that most people—don’t do that. They get into the system because they have a dream, then let the system do whatever it wants because they think that will make the dream a reality. But really, when you do that—when you had over your ideals and decide to become part of someone else’s system—that dream can turn into a nightmare. Which is exactly what happens to Diane in Mulholland Drive.

Like, the idea of going to Vegas to turn a dollar into a million isn’t inherently bad. But it’s not good when someone keeps spending and spending and spending money because they can’t face reality and think their bad luck will balance out to good luck at some point. That same gambler’s fallacy happens in Hollywood. People get delusional. They think the dream will save them—so they stop trying to save themselves.

With that core premise in mind, let’s get into what is actually going on in Mulholland Drive.

The storytelling logic of Mulholland Drive

I think the biggest clue we get from David Lynch about the plot of Mulholland Drive is when he mentions Sunset Boulevard.

Just before the credits roll, she slowly wanders towards the camera with a manic gaze. The image of her blurs as she says, “All right, Mr. DeMille. I’m ready for my close-up.” But she is not the star of a film. The police and reporters all around her aren’t there to watch her act, but there because she has killed a man in a fit of rage. About to be arrested, Norma’s life is essentially over. Instead of accepting reality, she retreats into her most grand delusion yet: that she’s still a thriving actress, beloved by Hollywood.

You should think of the entirety of Mulholland Drive as that final scene in Sunset Boulevard. Diane, played by Naomi Watts, is the main character of the movie. But for the first two hours of the film, Naomi Watts plays the character of Betty. Betty is a character that Diane made up in the final moments of her life. The first two hours of the film are merely a story that was much more appealing to Diane, who had been defeated by Hollywood and all of its promises.

As I stated from the very beginning: the broader plot of Mulholland Drive isn’t very difficult to figure out. The movie makes it pretty clear that Diane isn’t actually Betty, that Camilla isn’t actually Rita. But what’s not entirely clear is why Diane tells the story she tells, and what all of the characters that populate her story represent.

All we have to do to understand, however, is think back to an earlier quote from David Lynch:

“You’re just going,” he says about the process of writing a movie. “There is no movie yet. Until the process completes itself, you’re just going to carry on. Somewhere along the way, when it looks like it’s taking some sort of shape, the rest of the ideas all gather around to see if they can fit into that shape. Maybe you’ll find out that that thing isn’t going to work, so you save it in a box for later.”

And then Lynch says my favorite part—the sentence that’s most revealing of the storytelling logic of Mulholland Drive: “You’ve got to be the audience for most of this trip.”

That’s how I make sense of the movie, and what I believe gives Mulholland Drive its true power. Just like David Lynch, Diane is telling a story. And she too has a central goal with her tale: to live in a world where Hollywood recognizes her talent, where she and Camilla are together, where true art prevails. That’s the story she’s always been told and has always believed in—so why not make it come true?

But that narrative didn’t come true for her. And because she has defined her existence by someone else’s set of rules, she is unable to live a fulfilling life or have an empowering career. The further and further she moves away from that Hollywood dream, the more and more her mind unravels and the more and more convoluted her made-up story becomes.

When writing Mulholland Drive, David Lynch saw the cowboy character in a flash. In that moment—for the story he was writing about the dangerous appeal of the Hollywood Dream—he didn’t have a need for that character. But later in the writing process, that character suddenly had a place and a purpose. That character helped Lynch solidify his point about the people in Hollywood who try to control you (the cowboy tells Adam, the director, that Adam has no say in which actress will star in his film) and helped move the film’s story along.

But when it comes to Diane, you can think of the cowboy character (and every other character, for that matter) as a distraction—or, rather, as a disruption. These characters are nothing more than thoughts passing by; as meaningless fixtures that are part of this fictional world where her career has a promising future.

And that’s what I find so fascinating about the storytelling logic of Mulholland Drive: as the movie seemingly becomes more and more confusing, there’s actually less and less to make sense of. In the last thirty minutes of the movie, we see all of the characters that are part of Diane’s fabricated tale. We see the cowboy pass by. We see the man from the diner. We see the dream version of Camilla. We see Coco. They are all simply people in Diane’s world that become part of a giant lie that she’s still latching onto.

David Lynch brought the cowboy back when it made sense to use him, when it moved the story along, when the cowboy helped Lynch solidify his point. But Diane uses the cowboy character to further deceive herself. As her tale becomes more populated with random characters and her storytelling becomes more erratic, what we’re really witnessing is a woman increasingly losing grasp of her story. Slowly but surely, reality is settling in. The Hollywood Dream is revealing itself to be a lie. And, eventually, that lie is going to wear off. And, just like Norma Desmond, Diane will have to reckon with what actually happened to her career, to her life.

And because she’s unable to cope with that, she takes her own life.

That’s why David Lynch becomes more and more playful with the shot selection as the movie progresses. For most of Diane’s story, the camera hovers in a normal manner and simply tracks the story. But as Diane’s tale becomes more and more convoluted and as reality settles in, we see some noticeable differences in Lynch’s style. 

Images start to blur and shift out of focus as Diane’s dream world becomes less ideal and more frightening: 

The street lights that illuminate the cityscape start to glow with this fantastical and otherworldly mystique: 

Black constantly overtakes the screen and jarringly transitions us between scenes:

Throughout the film, Lynch is conscious that Diane’s story will eventually collapse on itself and reality will settle in. And when that happens, it won’t be pretty.

Now with all of that in mind, let’s look at some of the key images in those final moments of the film and try to make sense of them.

Understanding the ending of Mulholland Drive

The elderly couple

Two miniature elderly people, madly cackling, crawl from under the door. They then grow to normal size and start chasing Diane through her apartment. Screaming, running, completely helpless, Diane frantically runs to her room, puts a gun right up to her head, and pulls the trigger. 

If you’ll remember, when Betty first arrives in Hollywood in Diane’s story, she exits the airport and hugs an elderly woman.

“Thank you Irene,” says Betty. “I was so excited and nervous. It was sure great to have you to talk to.”

“Remember,” responds Irene, “I’ll be watching for you on the big screen!”

The energy of this scene is the complete opposite of where the movie eventually goes. When we realize Diane made the entire movie up in her head, the energy is dark and unforgiving. But in this moment with Irene, Betty is ambitious and gung-ho about making it as an actress in Hollywood. The music is soft and light and promises a bright future. Thus, Irene and her husband become associated with the potential of the Hollywood Dream.

But that potential was never realized for Betty. The Hollywood system, instead, chewed her up and spat her out. Irene and her husband call back to this moment of innocence and hope. They were going to root for Betty. But “Betty” is not only a failure—she just committed murder. And the renewed presence of that innocence, in the face of Diane’s own monstrousness, is terrifying. It’s like her past naïveté is coming back to haunt her.

In this moment, we witness someone who has finally lost touch with reality. The lie that Diane continued to buy into, the story that she continued to tell herself does not mesh with the truth. And, as a result, it has brought about this living, breathing terror that is chasing her through the apartment. And all she has left to defend herself (from herself) is a gun.

Side note: Strangely enough, this is pretty similar to what happens at the end of Birdman. Chris did a great job of exploring that movie’s themes, which are pretty similar to Mulholland Drive.

The homeless man

Smoke pours in from her windows and fills the room as her limp body lies on the bed. Out of that cloudiness comes a dirty homeless man, a garbage fire burning behind him as he stares frighteningly into the camera. 

Perhaps the most memorable scene of the film is the one where that creepy homeless monster pops out from behind the dumpster. It’s a truly horrid moment that causes the diner character to pass out.

In that scene, the diner character forces himself to check for the homeless man because he saw the homeless man in a dream and wants to be sure he isn’t there. It’s a stray detail that seemingly has no consequences on the rest of the plot, as the diner character then exits the film and never reappears in Diane’s story.

But then the homeless character comes back two more times. The second time is during those final moments of the movie. But the first time is after Diane hires the hitman to assassinate Camilla. After Diane gives the hitman the money for the job, he hands her a blue key. And when she asks what the blue key is for, the hitman laughs and doesn’t answer her.

The camera wanders back to the spot where we first saw the homeless man, who is holding a blue box. That same blue box is how Diane transports back to the real world from her made-up story. 

Once again, this all part of Diane’s loosening grasp on reality, as we see the dream world and the real world converging. In the dream world, the blue key brings her home. But in the real world, the blue key represents a weak moment where she sought revenge, where she killed the woman she loved. Diane is no longer someone who simply failed to realize the Hollywood Dream—she’s now a murderer who stole that dream away from someone else (pretty similar to what happens in Sunset Boulevard, right?). And the reality of that decision then leads to the entire final scene where she takes her own life.

Blue becomes symbolic for Diane’s sin and guilt, and the box is where Betty has stored Diane and reality. And as long as that box is closed, she can keep living in her delusion. But as soon as that box is opened? The delusion shatters. And Diane is forced to reckon with reality.

And this is why the homeless man comes back during those final moments of the film. As we know from the earlier diner scene, the homeless man represents nightmares. And the truth is Diane’s nightmare. She is haunted by what she’s done. Thus, the homeless man becomes this externalization of Diane’s ugliness and guilt. Which is why the homeless man’s ugly face is contrasted with the bright face of Betty and Rita in the very next shot.

The shot of Los Angeles

Then an orchestra fades in and swells as a close-up of Betty and Rita overwhelms the screen. These two women, each lit by a faint white glow, laugh and smile. Behind those two women, Los Angeles looms—perhaps divinely, perhaps menacingly—with unwavering power.

Betty and Rita laugh and smile as they stare out into Los Angeles. They have an almost childlike joy about them. They seem intrigued and completely unperturbed by the challenge of Hollywood.

This is, obviously, in contrast to everything we come to learn about Diane. While the Betty version of herself feels empowered by the cityscape, the real version of herself has been completely broken down and decimated.

Juxtaposed with the homeless man, this becomes a visualization of nightmares vs. dreams. All at once, there’s an astounding mix of optimism and catastrophe on display. The white glow of Betty and Rita gives off an angelic aura. And while that could represent the promise of Hollywood, it also seems to represent death—the death of the dream, the death of Diane.

The woman with blue hair

The music disappears, and now there is nothing but a lone microphone resting in a theater that’s draped with red at every turn. A woman with wild blue hair and big gold earrings sits in the balcony, looking down upon the empty stage.

“Silencio,” she whispers as black consumes the screen.

As we have discussed, blue has come to represent tragedy and Diane’s sin—in other words, blue has come to represent reality.

Think about the first time we visited the Silencio theater. In that scene, Betty and Rita watch as a man explains that the entire theatrical experience they are about to watch is an illusion. “There is no band,” he says. “This is all a tape recording.” Betty and Rita believe they’re hearing a clarinet, a trombone, a muted trumpet—but it’s all a lie. As beautiful as it may sound, it’s not reality.

When that woman sings Roy Orbison’s song “Crying” in spanish, Betty and Rita sob uncontrollably. But when it is revealed that she isn’t actually singing, Betty and Rita are shocked. In that moment, what we’re really seeing is Diane recognizing that this isn’t reality. As much as she’d like to believe in the beauty of this moment, it’s nothing but a dream.

That’s why, in that initial scene, Betty pulls the blue key from her purse. Sure she’s crying because the song is beautiful. But she’s also crying because of the intense guilt she feels in the real world. She knows she can no longer hide from reality.

That realization is paired with the woman with blue hair, who—much like the blue box—seems to represent the divide between reality and the dream world. She sits in her balcony box and watches over the giant lie that Diane is telling herself.

That is then, fittingly, how the movie ends: Silencio. Diane’s journey has ended. She is yet another tragedy in the sick cycle of Hollywood that David Lynch has attempted to expose through his own uncompromising art.