Immaculate ending explained: What happens to Sister Cecilia?

The film comes from the minds of Michael Mohan and Andrew Lobel, and stars Sydney Sweeney in the main role as Sister Cecilia, a young nun who, shortly after arriving at a convent in Italy, miraculously falls pregnant.

While initially the baby is heralded as the second coming of Christ, it soon becomes apparent that not all is as it seems.

The film marks a new genre for Sweeney, best known for her roles in acclaimed high school drama Euphoria and the recently released romcom Anyone But You, and with Immaculate having gone down pretty well with critics and fans alike, it could mark a new era for the 26-year-old, with clear potential as a brand new final girl.

But how does it all wrap up for Sister Cecilia in the end? Read on for everything you need to know, but be warned for there are major spoilers ahead.

Immaculate ending explained: What happens to Sister Cecilia?

On discovering the news of her 'immaculate' conception, Sister Cecilia is, understandably, more than concerned, spending the remainder of her pregnancy in both confusion and contempt towards Father Tedeschi and the rest of the nuns in the convent.

After secretly witnessing her friend Sister Gwen's (Benedetta Porcaroli) tongue being cut out for speaking badly against the convent, Cecilia hatches an escape plan. Using the corpse of a chicken for blood, Cecilia fakes a miscarriage in a desperate attempt to be taken to a hospital.

Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte), at first, is mortified – picking up Cecilia and rushing her into the back of his car, desperate to save the child. However, when he receives a phone call from the particularly oddly behaved Mother Superior (we won’t mention that scene with the blood), who exposes that Cecilia’s miscarriage is a ruse, he turns the car straight back around.

It is soon revealed that Cecilia’s baby isn’t so immaculate after all. While, yes, the child was conceived without Cecilia breaking her vows, Father Tedeschi explains that he genetically engineered a piece of Jesus’s DNA found on the crucifix to create a baby that was put into Cecilia.

He leads Cecilia into his lab – filled with test tubes and DIY embryos – and explains that, while the process has been tried multiple times before with other unsuspecting nuns over the course of the last 20 years, Cecilia’s pregnancy was the first time the experiment had been successful.

Understandably, Cecilia is horrified. So horrified, in fact, that she attempts another escape. While being given an examination by Doctor Gallo and Mother Superior (Dora Romano), Gallo briefly leaves the room, and Cecilia takes this as her chance to bludgeon the Mother Superior to death with a cross.

Cecilia stands up and runs out of the room, but as she does so, her water breaks. "God dammit," she mutters angrily, before choking a second nun to death with some rosary beads.

Soon, Cecilia finds herself back in Father Tedeschi’s lab. Grabbing a canister of conveniently placed lighter fluid, Cecilia traps Tedeschi inside and sets fire to his barbaric creations. But it’s not over that easily, for Father Tedeschi soon grabs a fire extinguisher and puts out the flames, forcing Cecilia to escape into the catacombs.

A brief chase ensues, during which Cecilia discovers the now-lifeless body of Sister Gwen, until Tedeschi catches up with Cecilia. Seriously burned from the flames, Tedeschi incapacitates Cecilia and begins to give her a C-section, desperate to meet his apparent ‘saviour’, but Cecilia quickly stabs him through the neck with the crucifixion nail, killing him instantly.

What does Cecilia give birth to?

Crawling out into the daylight, Cecilia’s body finally gives in to her trauma. With a long, agonising, hysterical scream of anguish, arguably one of the most bizarrely brilliant film scenes of the year so far, Cecilia gives birth to her unsought child – biting through the umbilical cord herself.

We never actually see the baby – if, indeed, it even is a baby. Instead, all we hear is its horrifying, animalistic breathing as it writhes on the ground below its mother.

But Cecilia isn’t done yet, because just as easily as she brought life into the world, she can take it away. Struggling, she limps over to a large rock, picks it up, and walks back to the baby. Finally, she raises the rock above her head and brings it down on her child with a deep thud, before the screen cuts to black.

Talking to EW, Sweeney said that neither she nor director Mohan will ever reveal what the baby was. "We have ideas in our head, but we're never going to discuss it," she teased.

"We shot it multiple ways. What you see is actually the first take that we shot, and then we did two more that covered our bases in case we wanted to show different angles, but our instinct was always to never show it, and so we went with our first take."

Immaculate is now showing in UK cinemas.

Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.