Cuckoo ending explained: What was Konig’s plan?

1 What are the cuckoos? 2 Konig’s plan explained 3 What happens at the end? A lot happens at the end of Cuckoo, leaving you with some big questions about what happened, who died, and what the character’s motivations were. Similar to last month’s Longlegs , the new movie Cuckoo shrouds a lot of its plot in mystery to emphasize the horror. By the time the credits roll, you may have some big questions regarding each character’s fate.

To recap the movie up to the third act, Gretchen ( Euphoria cast member, Hunter Schafer) is a teenage girl who has moved to the Bavarian Alps with her father, step-mother, and her mute step-sister, Alma. While there, she takes a job at the front desk of a local hotel run by the secretive Herr Konig ( Abigail ‘s Dan Stevens). Throughout the first two acts of the movie, Gretchen is attacked several times by a mysterious hooded woman and comes to suspect Konig knows more than he’s letting on.

Spoiler warning ahead for the ending of Cuckoo. What are the cuckoos? The titular cuckoos are a semi-human species native to the area who can’t speak but instead emit a high-pitched shriek that disorients those who hear it. They survive by reproducing with a human host.

Much like how cuckoo birds reproduce in the real world (a process known as brood parasitism), the cuckoos implant their eggs into a host by hypnotizing them with their shrieks. While paralyzed, the victim experiences a series of time loops to allow the cuckoo to begin mating with them.