Good Boy’s ending was about Indy deciding whether he wanted to follow his owner, Todd, into the afterlife, or stay back in the mortal realm. Todd was suffering from some kind of a terminal disease and nearly bled to death in his own apartment. Thankfully, Todd’s sister, Vera, arrived just in time, took him to the hospital, and helped him get the treatment he needed. It seemed like Todd’s health had improved. Hence, he decided to move to the cabin in the woods that his grandfather had passed on to him, refurbish it, and spend the rest of his life with Indy over there, away from hospitals and civilization. But, since the first time that Todd got sick, Indy had a feeling that there was something supernatural going on. And when they arrived at Todd’s grandpa’s place, Indy’s apprehensions that they were being followed by a malevolent entity increased tenfold. Due to his lifelong relationship with Todd, Indy vowed to defend him from this dark shadow, or die trying. Well, did Indy succeed, or did he fail? Was there anything supernatural going on? Or was Todd’s sickness the result of a generational curse? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Did the Dog Die?
Yes, Indy survived Good Boy, but Bandit didn’t. Bandit was Todd’s grandfather’s dog, and appeared before Indy in the form of an apparition. He essentially gave Indy a rundown of everything that had happened with Todd’s grandfather, thereby giving Indy an idea of what was about to go down with Todd. There was nothing that Indy could do with that information; he could only mentally prepare himself for the choice. What was this choice? If seen through a very literal perspective, Todd died on his bed, and then the black shadow following him dragged Todd’s soul to the basement and then into the afterlife. At that point, Indy could either go with him into the abyss, or stay behind. As indicated by the corpse of the dog, with a red bandana on his collar, Bandit seemingly decided to go along with his human. However, Indy listened to his human’s final order and stayed in the mortal realm. Eventually, Indy was discovered by Vera, and although he wanted to wait for a while in the basement, in the hopes that maybe Todd’s soul would go back into his body, he chose to go away with Vera. Does that make Indy a bad boy? Absolutely not! How can you call a dog who stood by his human throughout such a harrowing ordeal a “bad boy”? And there are several ways to look at Indy’s decision. If Indy died along with Todd, their shared memories would die too. By living and remembering Todd, he would live on through Indy. Also, as mentioned before, Indy staying in the mortal realm was his way of honoring Todd’s last sane thought. Maybe Todd’s grandfather wasn’t in the mental state to tell Bandit to “stay” as well. Hence, he ended up getting dragged into the nether realm with his human. If Todd’s grandfather was thinking rationally, maybe he would have told Bandit to hang back as well. Who knows? Maybe he did, and the tragedy of that subplot is that, although Bandit stayed in the mortal realm, nobody came to check for him in the basement. I’m sorry if that sounds heartbreaking; I’m just describing what possibly happened in the movie. The bottom line is that both Indy and Bandit were good boys, and they deserve all the treats in the world.
Was Todd Just Suffering From a Genetic Disease?
Good Boy treaded the line between the supernatural and the ordinary so well that I can’t say for sure if Todd’s disease was just something that had been genetically passed down to him, or if it was something supernatural that’s been haunting his family for generations. For this section, allow me to only consider the realistic route. Todd’s grandpa clearly suffered from some kind of illness; based on the excessive bleeding, I’m going to assume it was hemophilia combined with some other genetic disease. Todd suffered from the same combo of issues and faced the same fate as his grandfather. But how does that explain Indy and Bandit’s visions? They both saw this shadow trying to get to their respective humans. They were haunted by nightmares of this shadow. Well, I will chalk that up to the horror genre’s favorite source of visions: trauma. We have seen humans hallucinate after going through traumatic episodes. This is the first time we are seeing the same through the eyes of dogs. So, yeah, maybe everything that they were seeing and sensing was a part of their trauma response. Why are Indy and Bandit’s visions so similar? Well, technically, we never saw Bandit’s visions. We saw Indy’s visions of Bandit’s visions. And even if Indy and Bandit’s visions, while seeing their respective humans deteriorate, were one and the same, that might be the case because dogs’ imaginations are pretty limited. Maybe dogs personify genetic diseases as this black goopy humanoid being that consumes their best friend. Whatever the case may be, it’s just sad to watch a movie about a terminal disease from the POV of a dog. We have become so used to seeing it through the eyes of human beings that the pain of a dog feels unbearable.
Was a Generational Curse Following Todd?
Much like everything else in this article, this is a personal theory of mine: maybe the black goopy monster is a generational curse. There’s just one line in the movie, uttered by Todd’s grandpa, that the house has been in this family’s possession for 6 generations. Since Todd’s family is White, holding onto land for 6 generations usually means there’s some sort of land-grabbing or racist violence in the bloodline’s past. If that’s the case, it is totally possible that somebody put a curse on one of Todd’s ancestors—specifically their male members, I guess—and it has been passed on for generations. Todd doesn’t have any children, which possibly means that the curse has finally come to an end with him. That’s the supernatural explanation. The relatively realistic explanation is that Richard (the hunter in the ghillie suit who sets fox traps and whatnot), is the killer. Richard’s family apparently has been Todd’s family’s neighbors for quite a while. So, what are the chances that he and his ancestors have been trying to end Todd’s family line so that they could grab that land? It’s totally possible. There was a scene where the film made it seem like the black shadow was approaching Todd and Indy, but it was actually just Richard. With that in mind, Richard’s warnings about the traps that he had set seemed like his way of ensuring that Todd knew that they were meant for animals, not him. Why do I think that Richard wasn’t after animals? Because Indy literally saw a fox running around the backyard? Either Richard wasn’t a good hunter or, at the cost of sounding repetitive, he wasn’t laying those traps for the animals but for Todd. While that’s what he did during the daytime, at night, he’d break into Todd’s house and probably poison him, thereby gradually worsening his physical health. But Todd got sick when he was in the city? Well, if Richard was that determined to get Todd’s ancestral land, do you think geography would stop him? I don’t think so.
Is There A Post-Credits Scene?
If you make it all the way to Good Boy’s ending and have the patience to sit through the credits, you’ll get to see Indy sticking his head out of the car while Vera drives him to her home. This serves as a much-needed breather for the audience, but if you think that that’s all there is to it, I am here to ruin it for you. You see, right before the footage comes to a close, you hear a familiar whistle. Now, if you want to stay happy after that relatively upbeat ending, you are free to assume that Vera just knows that that’s the whistle that Todd used to summon Indy, and hence, she began using it as well, thereby keeping Todd alive through a tradition of his. If you want to get morbid, allow me to remind you that, throughout the course of the film, the shadowy monster was trying to learn Todd’s whistle so that it could distract or trap Indy. Therefore, there’s a possibility that, when Vera opened that basement, she let out that generational curse, and now it’s following her and Indy to the city. Which means that that wasn’t Vera who was whistling; it was the shadow. And it’ll continue to torment Vera until she seeks shelter in her ancestral home and becomes physically infirm enough for it to drag her into the abyss. Does that mean Indy will have to watch another person die? If a sequel to this movie gets greenlit, I’m sure we’ll get the answer to that question. Maybe at the end of that film, Indy will choose to go into the afterlife, thereby making way for an action-horror threequel where he’ll fight the demons of the underworld and free the spirits of Todd and Vera; I’m not sure about their ancestors because if it’s a generational curse, some of them might be racist. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the ending of Good Boy. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
