Eden

In the film’s closing moments the fragile experiment on Floreana collapses. Friedrich, once a fervent philosopher, succumbs to a bout of food poisoning after eating a rotten chicken that Dore has prepared for him. As he drifts away, he hisses a curse, convinced that she has deliberately poisoned him.

Soon after, a governor arrives, having received Friedrich’s desperate letter that blamed Heinz Wittmer for the disappearance of the self‑styled Baroness. When he questions the Wittmers, Margaret—still fiercely protective of her family—points out that Friedrich could not have mistaken spoiled meat for fresh, and that she herself had given Dore a good chicken to eat. Her testimony unsettles the governor’s assumptions, and he realizes the accusation is baseless.

With no concrete evidence against her, Dore is escorted off the island by the governor and returns to Germany, where she later dies of illness and publishes a memoir of the affair. The Wittmer family, however, endures. Heinz eventually passes away of natural causes, while Margaret remains on Floreana for decades, raising her sons and eventually operating a modest hotel. Her younger son, Rolf, goes on to found a Galápagos tour‑boat company, and the family’s legacy continues long after the film’s end. The bodies of the Baroness, her lover Phillipson, and a few others are never recovered, leaving their fates as lingering mysteries at the edge of the island’s history.

Last Updated: December 27, 2025 at 20:27