Fear Street Part 2 ending explained: What was the significance of Sarah Fier's hand?

Specifically, the film takes us to 1978, and a summer camp attended by residents of both Shadyside and Sunnyvale, which quickly descends into a bloodbath after a seemingly innocent camp counsellor goes on a brutal – and wholly uncharacteristic – murder spree.

The story is told to Deena and Josh by a survivor from the rampage, and as she continues her tale we slowly learn more about the curse that's was placed on Shadyside by Sarah Fier, the witch who seems to be responsible for the town's continued misfortunes.

As the film reaches its conclusion, the events begin to make sense in conjunction with the first entry in the trilogy, and at the very end, we are given a teaser for the final instalment which takes us back even further to 1666 – the time when Sarah Fier lived.

Read on for everything you need to know about the ending of Fear Street Part 2: 1978, including how it sets up that final chapter – and be warned, there are major spoilers for the first and second Fear Street films ahead.

Fear Street Part 2 ending explained

Let's start by providing some context as to the events of the film: at the very beginning, Deena and Josh (two of the lead characters from the first instalment) seek out Constance Berman to learn more about one of the previous bloodbaths in Shadyside's history, and she duly tells them about Nightwing summer camp, where she was a camper back in 1978.

Crucially, Nightwing was built on the very same land where the mall featured in Fear Street Part 1 now stands, and that shared history goes on to have very obvious significance for the plot.

Anyway, as events shift to 1978, we meet two sisters from Shadyside– goody two shoes Cindy, and her more rebellious younger sister Ziggy, who is something of an outcast.

Things first take a weird turn at the camp when Nurse Lane, whom Ziggy has befriended (and whose daughter was one of Shadyside's many previous mass murderers), appears to have a psychotic episode and targets Cindy's boyfriend Tommy Slater – who she says "one way or another is going to die tonight".

This eventually leads to Tommy and Cindy discovering a notebook among Lane's possessions, which includes details about Sarah Fier – and how she cut off her hand as part of a deal with the devil.

Together with Cindy's former best friend Alice and her boyfriend, they learn that Sarah's curse will only be lifted if her hand can be reunited with her buried body – although it's safe to say that they are all initially rather skeptical when it comes to all this talk about witches and curses.

Nevertheless, following directions on a map that the nurse had drawn in the diary, they all head to the underground lair where Sarah's hand is supposedly kept – where they find all sorts of "witchy s**t" as Alice puts it.

Most crucially of all they find etched onto the walls the names of all of Shadyside's previous killers, but with one surprising addition: Tommy Slater.

Not long later, Tommy enters a sort of crazed state and brutally murders Alice's boyfriend, with Cindy and Alice forced to hide from him to save their own lives.

They manage to avoid him, but Tommy escapes and begins his spree, killing several campers while at the same time Cindy and Alice are able to locate Sarah Fier's hand using the diary and escape the lair with some inadvertent help from Ziggy.

With the hand in tow, and the location of her buried body known to them, Cindy, Alice and Ziggy believe they finally have all the tools to lift the curse and save Shadyside for good – but before they can do so, Alice is killed and Cindy and Ziggy find the reanimated corpses of the previous Shadyside killers chasing them.

Cindy and Ziggy both seem to be killed – but Ziggy is successfully resuscitated. We then cut back to the 1994 timeline with Constance informing Deena and Josh that she is Ziggy – and that no one believed her about the curse, not even Nick Goode, whom she had been beginning a relationship with during the camp and who grew up to be the Sherrif of Shadyside.

After hearing the story, Deena refuses to accept Constance's belief that the curse can never be stopped – informing her that they have found Sarah Fier's body, and if they relocate the hand they can finally reunite them.

• For the latest news and expert tips on getting the best deals this year, take a look at our Black Friday 2021 and Cyber Monday 2021

Deena does exactly that, digging up the hand at the same location that it had been buried back in 1978 – which is now on the grounds of Shadyside Mall, of course – and taking it to Sarah Fier's grave.

When she reunites the body and the hand, however, not everything goes quite as expected: a weird series of hallucinatory images begins and Deena appears to wake up in 1666, answering to the name of Sarah Fier – perfectly setting up events for the final instalment.

Fear Street Part 2: 1978 is on Netflix from Friday 9th July, followed by part 3 on the 16th. Visit our guides to the best series on Netflix and the best movies on Netflix.Check out our Movies and Fantasy pages for more, or our full TV Guide.