'Midsommar' spoilers! Let's debate that insane, weirdly cathartic ending

Spoiler alert! The following contains major details about the ending of the horror film "Midsommar."

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** Seriously, if you haven't seen it yet and don't want to know, stop reading now. This is your final warning. **

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At the end of "Midsommar," a four-year relationship literally goes up in flames.

In the unsettling final moments of Ari Aster's new horror movie (in theaters now), Dani (Florence Pugh) enacts the ultimate revenge on her crummy boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), whom she catches having sex with another woman during a bizarre cult ritual. As the newly elected May Queen of the Swedish midsummer celebration they're attending, Dani gets to pick which person to offer up as a human sacrifice.

The movie cuts to Christian being sewn into a bear carcass, tied to a haystack and ceremoniously burned alive inside a temple. Heavily drugged and traumatized – by the murder-suicide of her family at the beginning of the film, and the disturbing rituals she witnessed at the festival – Dani runs the gamut of emotions as she watches the building blaze. At first she laughs, then cries, then smiles again with sadistic glee.

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After watching Dani and Christian's toxic relationship play out onscreen for nearly 2? hours, the movie becomes "a sort of perverse, wish-fulfillment fantasy," says Aster, the movie's writer/director, who was inspired to write "Midsommar" after a breakup. "The film offers catharsis at the end that hopefully people can get into, but will also have to wrestle with later."

But according to Pugh, Dani's act of seemingly callous vengeance isn't so cut and dried. In fact, the actress suggests her character is so far gone mentally by the end that she doesn't even realize she's killing Christian, which is how she chose to play the scene.

"I thought it would be so interesting to have the love of her life in the building and she's a kid looking at a firework," Pugh says. "That's how I imagined it, saying, 'This is someone that's completely gone now. She doesn't realize what's going on, and she's just really happy the fire is going up.' So when we shot it, that's what I was trying to get at.

"That's what made the ending possible (for me)," she says. "I don't think I would've supported Dani as much if she knew that he was in there. I don't think anybody is that sinister. You're not going to watch your boyfriend cheat and be like, 'Burn!' I know Christian was a bit of a (expletive), but I didn't want her to be evil at the end."

Pugh elaborates that there were things cut from the final version of the film that supported her assessment of Dani's mental state, and helped "you understand that she'd had a psychotic break," she says. While Aster confirms those scenes existed, he respectfully challenges Pugh's interpretation of the ending.

"I wouldn't agree with there ever being an iteration of the movie where she didn't know he was burning," Aster says. "But there were a lot of scenes that were cut, and probably a few that helped illustrate she was losing her grip on her sanity, which you hopefully still see."

He points to a climactic scene after Dani catches Christian cheating and she begins sobbing uncontrollably. A group of women from the cult carry her indoors and huddle around her, echoing her screams and wails.

"That's her breaking point," Aster says. "It's also her fusing with this community. She's found people who are willing to feel what she's feeling, and she's able to just purge."

For his part, Reynor enjoys the open-endedness of the final scene. Dani never verbally orders to have Christian killed, although it's heavily implied, given the irreparable damage their relationship has endured.

"She doesn't say anything in regard to who should be the effigy – it's kind of understood," Reynor says. "The nature of that leaves the question hanging over the end of the film, whether she's actually participated in this or whether she's a victim. Tonally, when you're watching it, it feels like a moment of empowerment for her: the liberation of total insanity."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Midsommar' spoilers: That bonkers final scene, explained by Ari Aster