Tim Sutton’s The Last Son is a thrilling action tale of the Wild Wild West set in the 1900s. It spotlights a father who becomes the devil for his kin. An ex-army man, Isaac LeMay, brings doom upon his children to save his own life from a Cheyenne Curse. As the hunt begins, LeMay starts killing his seeds until only the last son remains. Will LeMay kill him too, or is there another end waiting for him? Let’s find out.
Plot Summary
An opening prologue establishes that Isaac LeMay (Sam Worthington) roamed the Great Plains in the western territories and bore children with whores. LeMay used to clear Cheyenne for the army and committed unspeakable crimes against the tribes. A Cheyenne chief, White Thunder, cursed LeMay for his sins, saying that his own seed would kill him. Haunted by the prophecy, LeMay hunted down his children and killed them one by one before they killed him.
As The Last Son begins, LeMay arrives at a saloon called Two-One to kill his son, Lionel, whom he bore with a whore, Anna (Heather Graham), who worked there. LeMay stabs the 20-year old Lionel in the woods and then visits Anna, inquiring about Lionel’s twin brother. Anna tells the devil that there is no twin and that he may be misinformed. In his rage, LeMay cuts off Anna’s fingers and leaves.
Later, he visits another woman, Claire, who used to work as a whore but now lives a peaceful life in the woods. Claire lives with her husband and daughter, Megan (Emily Marie Palmer). LeMay finds Megan harmless and thus leaves her alone. However, LeMay kills Anna’s husband before leaving.
Soon, the story brings in LeMay and Anna’s son, Cal Talisker (Machine Gun Kelly), who was born along with his twin brother Lionel in 1858. But Anna didn’t want to raise Cal in a brothel, so she left him at the Virginia City home for boys. When Cal grew up, he joined the army and trained as a Gatling gun loader. However, he was soon discharged. Haunted by his past and neglected by his parents, Cal became an outlaw and started robbing banks and killing law enforcers.
The story prepares the ground for a final faceoff between Cal and LeMay.
‘The Last Son’ Ending, Explained
When LeMay killed Lionel, Anna begged Cal to leave for Brooks, Canada, and save his life. But Cal was as stubborn as his father, and instead of going north, he killed more army men to arrange ammunition to kill LeMay.
But it wasn’t just Cal who was looking for LeMay. Some law enforcers arrived in Virginia City and informed Solomon that LeMay killed six young men last year. They wanted Solomon’s help to arrest LeMay and put him behind bars. LeMay’s daughter, Megan, arrived too, to take revenge on LeMay for killing her adoptive father.
Finally, Solomon captured LeMay and tried to convince him that the Cheyenne Curse was a myth and that he was on a futile hunt, killing his own blood. But LeMay was a man in ruins. He was doomed yet arrogant.
LeMay wasn’t a man one could reason with.
Solomon brought LeMay to the sheriff’s office in Virginia City. At the exact moment, Cal arrived in the city with a small army he had raised to secure an escape for himself and Anna. But before they could leave, Solomon pointed a gun at Cal inside the brothel. Cal tricked Solomon and killed him. In between their gunfights, LeMay tricked the police officers and escaped.
Cal’s men informed him about the devil’s presence in the vicinity, and in the final showdown, they finally faced each other. Though Cal took a shot at his father, it was LeMay who killed his last son, Cal. In the end, Megan caught LeMay off guard and shot him.
Hence, Cheyenne’s prophecy did come true, but it wasn’t LeMay’s son who killed him. It was his daughter Megan, whom he perceived to be harmless. The closing voice established that as soon as Megan shot her father, she left the city. She didn’t wait to verify that he was dead or not. He could be alive. But if he survived Megan’s shot, then the whole prophecy was a myth, to begin with.
Megan moved on and eventually settled into a peaceful life in Carson City, Nevada. She married and bore three children, two older daughters and a son, who came last. As a result, even though LeMay attempted to end his bloodline, the last son survived.
The Last Son is a 2021 Western thriller film directed by Tim Sutton.
