'Suspiria' Post-Credits Scene, Explained by Director and Screenwriter

It’s not a Marvel movie, and yet, Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria has a post-credits scene. And it actually shouldn’t be surprising, given what we know about the mythology of the original movies.

Out in theaters everywhere on November 2 from Amazon Studios and director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name), Suspiria is a stunning remake of the original 1977 film by Italian legend Dario Argento. Set in Cold War-era Germany, the movie follows a young American woman, Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) as she attends an elite dance school in Berlin only to discover her teachers are probably, definitely a coven of witches.

Spoilers for Suspiria and its post-credits scene ahead.

In the climax of Suspiria, Susie reveals her true identity as Mother Suspiriorum, one of the Three Mothers worshipped by the coven. In her coming out “party” (there’s a lot of dancing, and bloodletting!) Susie/Suspiriorum kills off three who claim to be the Three Mothers as well as Helena Markos, a very old and disfigured woman covered in bulbous tumors.

After all is said and done, Susie now roams free as Mother Suspiriorum. The post-credits scene of Suspiria is a quick shot of Susie, standing out in the cold as snow falls in Berlin.

Screenwriter David Kajganich, whose other credits include the AMC horror series The Terror and A Bigger Splash (a 2015 drama also directed by Guadagnino), tells Inverse about the origins and purpose of the unexpected post-credits scene.

“We knew we would maybe want one,” says Kajganich, “depending on how the end of the film sat. That wasn’t scripted. That was shot when they were shooting the film. Luca had mentioned wanting possibly to have a post-credits just to point the gaze of our film to the future, to make room for more narrative. I quite loved it when I saw it for the first time.”

Kajganich suggests Suspiria is hinting towards more films adapting Argento’s “Three Mothers,” a fictional universe first told in a trilogy of movies consisting of the original Suspiria, Inferno (1980), and The Mother of Tears (2007).

But Guadagnino teases something even more chilling in a separate chat with Inverse.

“Madame Suspiriorum is browsing the world and foreseeing the future,” he says. “Now, she’s walking in the night and she sees something beyond the camera. Maybe she’s looking at us?”

Guadagnino took a lot of liberties with Argento’s original mythology. While Mother Suspiriorum was Helena Markos in the original, in the new movie, Helena Markos is a disfigured, incredibly old woman covered in bulbous tumors who wants to transfer herself into Susie’s body. Susie, being Mother Suspiriorum, refuses, and kills Markos along with three others claiming to be the Three Mothers in the process.

Based on that post-credits scene, we could see similar fresh adaptations of Inferno and The Mother of Tears in the near future as the team behind the new Suspiria works to build out this witchy cinematic universe. But for now, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Suspiria is now playing in NY and LA. It hits theaters across the county on Friday, November 2.