‘The Invisible Man’ Ending Explained
The Invisible Man reinvented the disappearing act for 2020. H.G. Wells wrote the novel The Invisible Man in 1897 and the first movie adaptation was 1933. Writer/director Leigh Whannell took the premise of an invisible killer and crafted a brand new story. In Whannell’s version, optics scientist Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) invents an invisibility suit which he uses to terrorize his ex-girlfriend Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss).
The Invisible Man scared audiences in its opening weekend but left some with questions. Whannell answered those questions in a Q&A after a screening of the film. This story contains major ending spoilers for The Invisible Man so do not read this until after you have seen the movie, if you still have questions.
Which one was ‘The Invisible Man’?
A surprising twist of The Invisible Man comes late in the film. Once the invisibility suit is glitching, Cecilia chases the invisible man to her house where he’s threatened Sydney (Storm Reid). Cecilia finally kills him, takes off the suit and reveals… Adrian’s brother Tom (Michael Dorman).
Some audiences asked if Adrian was ever the invisible man or if it was Tom the whole time. Whannell confirmed Tom was only the decoy in that one scene.
“No, it was Adrian the whole time except for that one time that he needed him to go and do that,” Whannell said. “The rest of the time it was Adrian.”
Is ‘The Invisible Woman’ next?
Cecilia finally gets rid of Adrian by stealing one of his invisibility suits and staging his suicide. The Invisible Man also leaves Cecilia in possession of the suit, leading some to suspect The Invisible Woman is coming soon. Don’t get ahead of Whannell there.
“I’m far too superstitious to think about sequels before a film comes out. It’s weird because I’ve been involved in a lot of films that have had many sequels. But when I wrote the first Saw film I was really hoping we would get a straight to video film. That was our big goal. I just don’t want to jinx it. There’s too much voodoo involved. Any thought of a sequel I would have I’d push it aside. A sequel is basically a champagne problem. And it’s created by the success of the movie. I guess we’ll see if people like the movie then somebody will call me, ‘Have you thought about where you want to take the character?’”
Leigh Whannell, The Invisible Man Q&A, 2/24/2020
The Invisible Man’s friends will get their own movies though
While Whannell had no plans for more Invisible Man just yet, Universal is exploring their catalog of monsters. Their plans for a Dark Universe anchored by The Mummy didn’t pan out, but the monsters will be back. This time, though, they aren’t trying to pre-connect a shared universe.
“No one’s consulted me,” Whannell said. “I don’t know what they’re doing. This was always treated as a standalone film. I was always waiting for someone to call me and be like, ‘You need to have a cameo from Dr. Jekyll that’s going to pay off in Jekyll’s Return.’ They really treated it as a standalone film and so did I, so I really don’t know.”
Other filmmakers may get the same chance Whannell got with The Invisible Man.
“From what I hear, they’re going out to different filmmakers and letting them make their own version of things,” Whannell said. “If I was in charge of it all, I guess I would try to take everything back to its roots, make it scary again. If you’re taking something like Dracula, I would try to shake off all the proverbial cobwebs and make a really modern version of it.”
