The Menu Ending Explained-Purgatory, Tantalus, And What Happened To Tyler And Margo

Absurdist humor has taken over my life lately. I watched the sublimely nutty White Noise last week and gave Mark Mylod’s The Menu a rewatch with an eye toward greater messages about how we treat ourselves and others matters. What we believe about ourselves and our purpose in the world matters too. Although the blackest of comedies, The Menu shows perhaps better than any other movie that there will always be the halves and the have-nots, and staying true to ourselves is essential.

An amuse-bouche is intended to be eaten in one bite. It is one perfect layered bite that encapsulates every taste profile and mouthfeel in one tiny bite. Unlike The Menu, which is best appreciated over days and even weeks, it should be a pop in the mouth that excites the diner for the meal to come.

The Menu plays out over a multicourse dinner at an exclusive restaurant strictly run by Chef Slowik and his staff with military precision. Each dish is more decadent and more bizarre than the next. Nicholas Hoult’s Tyler and Anna Taylor-Joy’s Margot join a handful of wealthy guests, including a trio of finance bros, a numb older couple, an aging movie star and his assistant, and an obnoxious food critic and her magazine executive friend. They are a nasty bunch who live in a bubble of ultra-elite privilege and presumed superiority. The only thing more unpleasant than the guests is Chef Slowik, who is so cold and exacting with his cooking that there is no joy. Not for the guests or his staff, who live and work under ruthless circumstances.

Our entry into this world is Margot, who listens as Tyler prattles on incessantly like some Reddit fanboy with enough terminology to fake his way to the head of the line but none of the actual talent or knowledge to pull anything off. He is a sad little boy, anxious for approval. It’s obvious these two aren’t close, and as we find out later, she is an escort hired when Tyler’s girlfriend broke up with him recently. Margot is uncomfortable from the beginning, and Chef Slowik is intrigued by the unexpected addition to the carefully planned meal. She is the first to notice something is very wrong on this island and with this meal.

As each course comes out and Chef Slowik raises the temperature on the guests, they begin to realize how much danger they are in. But, unfortunately, their hubris and entitlement prevent them from seeing before it is too late. The film ends with only one survivor and a restaurant consumed by molten chocolate and marshmallows as guests and staff slowly melt into each other. Here’s what happened to Tyler, Margot, the importance of Mr. Liebrandt, Tantalus, and what it all meant in The Menu.

The ending of The Menu explained

Throughout the evening, guests had secrets revealed and insecurities exploited. The finance guys are gaming the system to steal money. The movie star is cheating on his wife; his assistant has been stealing from him for years. The older couple is in a loveless marriage, and Margot has history with Richard Leibrandt. He hired her to pretend to be his daughter and agree with every word he said while he masturbated next to her. There is subtext there that plays out later that Judith Light’s Anna may have been aware of child abuse and looked the other way. We know they are estranged from their daughter, or she may be dead. Considering how skewering Slowik is with his mother at the meal, it is clear he blames those who are complacent as much as the perpetrators.

Slowik knows everything about his guests(except Margot) and uses his information to craft an intricate night of revenge and self-sabotage. He blames them as much as himself for making him the miserable person he is today. Slowik has climbed the ladder of success until he stands at the pinnacle of success, but he hates it. He has priced himself out of most of the world’s income brackets and formulates intellectual dishes that are interesting and beautiful but heartless.

His poor staff, who revere him like a cult leader, follow his every command and endure any barbarity to learn from him. Unconsciously the thing he hates the most. He is numb and complacent. He is complicit in the machine of capitalism and a self-proclaimed success set on his course by a critic who distills each bite into ridiculous metaphors and elements. All while surrounded by those so lucky, they forget how fortunate they are.

Margot eats very little throughout the meal and refuses to indulge Slowik’s whims. She is neither a pretender nor a sycophant, and Slowik knows it. She is offered a choice as the meal progresses, and people begin losing their limbs and lives. Margot can become one of the staff or remain one of the diners, but she will die either way. She initially chooses to side with the staff because she is a service worker herself, but in the final moments, she makes a bold choice and turns the tables on Chef Slowik.

Chef Slowik is disgusted by his patrons who take his food for granted, but really he is disgusted with himself. He has sold out, and he knows it. Slowik encourages his sous chef Jeremy to kill himself, tortures his mother, cuts the ring finger off an elderly gentleman, and drowns his angel investor when he really wants to castigate himself. Finally, he admits he is a monster but thinks he was created by his diners, who demanded more and more from him.

When Margot, whose real name is Erin tells him she is starving for a cheeseburger before dessert, he is reminded of why he cooks. At first, he makes the burger to prove he can make the best one, but as he prepares it, he remembers why he started cooking. The rare picture of him smiling in his house inspired Margot to ask for a cheeseburger. It was a point in his life when he was happy, before fame, money, and awards. He didn’t abuse, exploit, or belittle anyone and could just fill bellies and souls. Those who have ever had a truly great burger know they have the power to do both.

He ultimately let Margo go with a to-go bag containing all but one bite of her dinner because he recognized she saw through his charade. She saw through the bullsh@t to the meat of who he really was and gave him one moment to reflect before he ended it all. When the gas gives out on her boat, she sits on the bow and smiles as she takes a massive bite of the burger. It’s a victory bite. She beat Slowik. It’s one of acceptance of the horror of the night and her liberation from this bonkers place.

Some think the clap heard as the island erupts into flames proves that the beef was poisoned, thus sealing her fate, but Chef Slowik is a perfectionist, and he wouldn’t kill her that way. His food was everything to him, and serving contaminated or rotten food would be impossible. Weirdly the same obsession that condemns himself, his staff, and the customers is what would prevent him from poisoning Margot. Instead, he planned for everyone to die in a s’more-infused bonfire of the vanities, and so they did.

What happened to Tyler?

Tyler believed that he was special. He idolized Chef Slowik and talked his way into the dinner by appealing to his ego. He pretended to be a fellow chef when he was just a poser with the internet and a well-stocked kitchen. When his lack of skill is revealed, Chef embarrasses him in front of everyone and whispers something into his ear just before Tyler heads off to kill himself in the other room. Although we never hear what he says to Tyler, we can assume it is condemning and humiliating. He probably says something to the effect that he isn’t worthy of the meal’s conclusion and should end his life immediately before wasting anyone else’s time.

Tyler brought Margot/Erin to the dinner without caring if she would live or die because he was a selfish sociopath who believed he owed this meal. His death was not a concern for him because he genuinely thought he would impress Chef Slowik so much that he would be spared. This is why he kept taking pictures and sucking up to the chef, even knowing how the dinner would end. It is also why he didn’t run with the other men during the sexual assault course. His inability to see he wasn’t special is his downfall.

Why did Judith Light’s Anne wave at Erin at the end of The Menu?

Anne thanked Slowik before he set fire to them and waved Erin on when she could have tried to leave because she wanted to die. They all did. They were as much a product of their circumstance as Chef Slowik. Each of them participated in their dreary lives, thinking they were content. Some believed they were happy even. The movie star and the finance bros all thought their money and power bought them happiness, but it only made them corrupt.

Only Anne seemed to understand at the end of The Menu that she deserved what she got. Maybe she knew about her husband’s indiscretions. On the other hand, there could have been child abuse in her house that she overlooked, or perhaps she just gave up and let her husband cheat on her, and her child stopped talking to her. She thought she was a lost cause and saw that Margot still had something to live for.

Purgatory and Tantalus

Chef Slowik’s previous restaurant, Tantalus, is a clue that he and everyone on the island is doomed. Tantalus was the son of Zeus and the nymph Pouto who was punished for several major slights to the gods. He stole ambrosia from the gods to give to his people in the hopes they would become immortal and give him power over the deities. His most egregious crime, however, was feeding his son Pelops to the gods to test their omniscience. None of the gods were fooled by his trick, and after his death, he was forced to stand in a pool of water with a delicious fruit tree that was always outside his reach in Tartarus. He could not eat or drink for eternity.

The story of Tantalus is one of generational privilege and curse. Just like Slowik, he was allowed at the table of the powerful, but he wasn’t one of them. His selfishness cursed his family long after his death. Betrayals, murder, and corruption-plagued them. Most of the diners at his restaurant also had generational stories to tell. The young woman with the movie star came from money which is why she had no student debt. We have no backstory on the finance guys, but they were decidedly corrupt.

Lastly, Anne and Richard Leibrandt are just like Tantalus. They were surrounded by delicious food and drink yet couldn’t appreciate it. Curiously their story may parallel Chef Slowik’s own of child abuse and maternal complicity. More curious still, Demeter, the only God to eat Pelops, was so distracted by the grief over losing her daughter she failed to see the deception. Demeter and Anne could be the same, and it may be why she elects to stay and accept her fate.

The Menu is a searing indictment of classicism, worker exploitation, the food industry generally, and success without meaning. The irony is not lost on me that the blistering indictment of foodie culture seen in The Menu is not unlike movie culture. Critics, myself included, yammer on about camera angles and color saturation as if anyone wanted to know our opinion. At the same time, movies like Best In Show, Real Genius, and Sucker Punch remain time-tested guilty pleasures. There is value in watching something made with love; not everything needs to be a heady piece of intellectual calisthenics.

Obsession and conceit spoil dishes faster than any amount of incompetence. I am reminded of an interview with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead about their newest movie, Something In The Dirt. Those guys love making movies, and their fans feel it. When we lose sight of what matters, we fail regardless of how successful we may seem. At that point, we are just consuming empty calories. As Hong Chau’s Elsa says, “You will eat more than you desire and less than you deserve.” Let them eat cake, indeed.

The Menu is streaming on HBO Max right now.