Netflix’s Horse Girl Ending Explained

Netflix’s new film Horse Girl features an ambitious plot and a complicated ending – here’s what happens in the finale. Following a debut at the Sundance Film Festival, the streaming giant has now released its brand new Alison Brie-led property. The GLOW star plays the lead role in Horse Girl, but she also co-wrote the screenplay with director Jeff Baena. And despite what seems to be a simple set up for a socially awkward woman breaking out of her shell, Horse Girl becomes something very different.

Early on in the film, it becomes clear that there is something slightly off about Sarah, but the movie gets its title based on her obsession with her old horse Willow. She’s also caught staring at a wall in the middle of the night and gets random nosebleeds as well. Despite her quirks, Sarah is still a sweet girl who visits an old friend who has health problems following a horsing accident, and she’s also on the verge of having a brand new boyfriend. But, she suddenly begins having trouble sleeping and has strange experiences where she is trapped in an all-white location with a man and woman she doesn’t know. Understandably, this leads her to question what is happening to her.

This sends Sarah down some shocking roads, such as taking her boyfriend to the grave of her mother to dig out the body or having an episode that ends with her at work naked. After moments like these, getting strange bruises on her body, and hearing the future through the phone, Sarah is admitted to a mental institution. What happens from this point on is where Horse Girl‘s plot can get a bit confusing, but here’s what happens.

What Happens In Horse Girl’s Ending

As Horse Girl approaches its end, viewers have heard many different possible explanations for what is happening to Sarah. Is she crazy, slipping into parallel dimensions, or a clone of her grandma sent to Earth by aliens? Sarah is the only one to believe the latter examples, and the mental institution is where she has one final trip to the all-white location she’s seen many times before. But when she wakes up, Sarah is back in the mental institution and in her roommate’s bed, who happens to be the girl she has seen in her visions. The roommate claims to have gone to sleep in 1995 and woken up in the present day, which Sarah believes to be true and further confirmation of what she’s experienced.

Sarah then meets with her social worker Ethan again who is ready to release her after she spent 72 hours in the facility. But, Sarah says that she’s only been there for one night and recounts the conversation they had the day before when he said they met a week ago. However, Ethan has no recollection of this encounter. This makes sense to Sarah because she believes that everything is a loop and has to happen. She no longer thinks that she is a clone of her grandmother, but rather is her grandma. This implies that she is caught in a time loop because of the aliens abducting her and putting her back in the wrong spot with time travel.

Now freed from the mental institution, Sarah goes home and makes herself look exactly like her grandmother did in the one photo she has of her. Sarah then takes Willow from her stall and leads the horse into the woods to be free. On their way to the forest, Sarah and Willow walk past Great Lengths and Horse Girl once again shows Joan (Molly Shannon) seeing the end of a horse walk past her shop, which happened for the first time early on in the film. Once Sarah and Willow get to the woods, Sarah lays down on the ground and closes her eyes. Lights from the sky shine down on her and she immediately opens her eyes as she is lifted into the sky, presumably to be reunited with the aliens once again and go on another journey.

Horse Girl’s Time Loop/Travel Explained

Sometimes when the aliens abduct Sarah, they put her back at the wrong time, which causes Sarah to travel through time and set up a time loop. Whether this is on purpose or an accident is not known, and it is up to her and the audience to pick up the clues of when she has gone back in time and when the abductions have simply made her confused about how she got from one place to another. The time loop that Horse Girl has isn’t a traditional loop though. It is instead a continual chain of events that starts when Sarah first experiences the aliens up until they take her away at the end. This loop would appear to continue past Horse Girl‘s ending if Sarah is her own grandmother.

When Does Sarah Travel Through Time?

Despite many examples of Sarah losing time, Horse Girl saves the actual time travel for the end. When she is in the mental institution and has her wildest abduction yet, Sarah returns to the world several days earlier than she should’ve, roughly around when the movie begins. As detailed before, this brings Sarah to mention the conversation she and Ethan had before that he does not recall because it hasn’t happened yet for him. This instead explains why he says he was Sarah’s social worker last week earlier in the film. Sarah being returned to a time earlier than when she left is then further confirmed by her and Willow walking past Great Lengths and Joan seeing the horse walk past just like the film’s opening. Of course, there is also the implication that Sarah is about to travel through time again as the film ends.

Did Horse Girl Take Place In Sarah’s Head?

One aspect of Netflix’s Horse Girl that can make deciphering what took place a bit more difficult though is the unreliable narrator aspect of Sarah. This will inevitably lead to questions about whether or not the events on screen – and the film as a whole – actually happened. There are moments in Horse Girl that are in Sarah’s imagination or part of the abduction experiences, such as the finale’s sex scene that begins with her ex-boyfriend and finishes with him becoming the star of her favorite show Purgatory. She also remembers conversations, sees things, and hears things that no one else does. Sarah even mentions that her mom used to say she had an overactive imagination, but that doesn’t mean all of Horse Girl is fake.

The film carefully toes the line between making audiences question what is happening and allowing them to trust Sarah. But, if there was any doubt that the events of Horse Girl did take place in the real world, the biggest indicator of this appears to once again be tied to Joan. Her seeing Willow walk past her store not only helps clear up the film’s use of time travel but confirms that the climax of the film – and Sarah’s overall arc – did in someway happen.

Is Sarah Her Own Grandmother?

One of the trickiest mysteries that Netflix’s Horse Girl raises is Sarah’s connection to her grandmother, who is named Helen. Sarah looks identical to her grandma and even is in possession of the exact dress that she wears in the one photo that Sarah has of her. As the film progresses, Sarah begins to find even more similarities with Helen based on what she is now experiencing. Helen was said to be crazy, hear voices no one else could, and thought she was from the future. Sarah says that her grandma even went to a mental institution during her life but was kicked out when it was suddenly closed down. According to Sarah, Helen died on the streets homeless. Sarah originally believes that this could make her the clone of her grandma (as an extension of the alien’s unknown plans), but by the end of the film she has deduced that she is her grandma.

So, how does this work? Horse Girl shows part of Sarah’s childhood and she knows about her grandma’s past, so Sarah being her own grandmother only works because of time travel. Since Horse Girl appears to show Sarah’s first experience with the aliens after her birthday celebration, everything that happened to Sarah before then did happen. But, when Sarah is taken for the final time in the film, she looks exactly like the photo of her grandma. This was a conscious choice by Sarah and the indication is that the aliens will next put her in the past. In that case, it would be during this time in her life that Sarah would have a child that would turn out to be her mother. It’s possible that she even could’ve met her younger self then.

About The Author

Cooper Hood
(5626 Articles Published)

Cooper Hood is a news and feature writer for Screen Rant. He joined Screen Rant in late 2016 following a year-long stint with MCU Exchange, which came after first developing an MCU blog of his own. He graduated college in 2016 with a Bachelor’s degree in Media & Public Communication, with a minor in Media Production. Cooper’s love for movies began by watching Toy Story and Lion King on repeat as a child, but it wasn’t until The Avengers that he took an invested interest in movies and the filmmaking process, leading him to discover the world of film journalism. Every year Cooper looks forward to seeing the latest blockbusters from the likes of Marvel, DC, and Star Wars, but also loves the rush to catch up on Oscar films near the end of the year. When he isn’t writing about or watching new releases, Cooper is a fantasy football obsessive and looking to expand his Blu-Ray collection – because physical media is still king! Follow Cooper on Twitter @MovieCooper.

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