The Long Walk Ending Explained: The Brutal Twist Stephen King Never Wrote

Stephen King adaptations are basically their own genre at this point, and they just keep coming. The latest is The Long Walk, which quietly rolled into UK cinemas earlier this month and has been getting some of the best reviews for a King movie in years. It is based on a 1979 story he wrote as Richard Bachman, and it puts Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson front and center, with Mark Hamill in the mix too. The setup is simple and brutal: walk or die. If you saw it and you want the ending untangled, you are in the right place. Fair warning: massive spoilers ahead.

The premise (and why it hits hard)

Hoffman and Jonsson play Ray and Pete, teens drafted into a state-run endurance contest in a dystopian America. The rules are ugly: keep walking or you get shot by the military escort. Only one kid makes it out. So yes, it is a parade of devastating exits and ugly choices, all aimed at a final stretch that is designed to rattle you.

The ending, step by step

Five days and more than 300 miles in, the field has been whittled down to two: Ray and Pete. Along the way they have already watched friends go down, including Hank Olson (Ben Wang) and Art Baker (Tut Nyuot), both executed after they could not push on.

The last leg takes them into a town packed with onlookers waiting to see who wins. Pete, barely holding it together, finally sits. That is basically surrender. Instead of letting him die, Ray hauls him back up and pushes him forward. Pete stumbles ahead, finds his legs again, then looks back and realizes Ray has stopped. The Major steps in and executes Ray, declares Pete the winner, and the crowd gets its victor.

As winner, Pete gets a wish. He asks a soldier for a gun, which is exactly what Ray had said he would ask for if he ever won. Pete takes the gun, says "This is for Ray Garraty," and shoots the Major dead. The crowd shuts up. Pete keeps walking down an empty road.

"I can't see it. You can."

That line from Ray to Pete right before he is shot is the key to why he sacrifices himself. Earlier, Pete had told Ray to pick love over revenge, and Ray knew Pete could still see a future he himself could not. So Ray lets him win. Pete, in turn, uses that win to carry out the revenge Ray had set aside: the Major killed Ray's father years earlier. Pete does what Ray could not bring himself to do, as a way of paying that love back. The movie cuts before we see the fallout, which is a neat, nerve-jangling choice. If Pete can still find a silver lining after that, he is going to need it.

Book vs. movie: what changed

This adaptation does not stick the landing the way the book does — on purpose. There are tweaks throughout (the walkers traverse a more desolate landscape instead of the book’s woods, and the field is cut from 100 walkers to 50), but the big differences are at the end:

• In the novel, Ray actually wins. Pete sits and is executed earlier, and he is not in the final two.
• Stebbins reveals the Major is his father in both versions, but in the book Stebbins collapses, handing Ray the win.
• Book Ray does not take revenge. He keeps walking into the distance, the Major untouched, his own fate deliberately unclear.

Why the filmmakers flipped it

Screenwriter JT Mollner has said the goal was to change things without ticking off King’s "constant readers" (yes, he used the inside-baseball term) and to give book fans something they would not see coming. He loves the book’s austere, hopeless, ambiguous finish — the story is not about twists there — but the movie leans into a different emotional angle. His logic: let the ending literalize love versus vengeance, and show how, in a few minutes, different people can be driven to the best and worst versions of themselves. It is a bold swing, and whether you love it probably depends on how protective you are of that bleak book ending.

Bottom line

The Long Walk is one of the stronger King adaptations in a while, with a finale that lands as both a gut punch and a conversation starter. It is now playing in UK cinemas.