Favourites (2024) Ending Explained – Final Scene & Meaning

In the film’s closing act the rivalry that has defined the court finally comes to a head. After Abigail has poisoned Sarah and seized the Duchess’s offices, the queen receives a desperate letter from Sarah hoping for reconciliation. Abigail intercepts it and burns the missive, denying Anne any chance of mend‑up. When the queen’s anticipation at her desk turns to silence, she interprets the omission as proof that Sarah has turned traitor, and she banishes the once‑powerful Marlborough from the kingdom.

With Sarah gone, Abigail enjoys the trappings of favour: she becomes Keeper of the Privy Purse, arranges a lavish banquet, and basks in the queen’s attention. Yet the triumph feels hollow. During the after‑party, while the court revels, Abigail steps on one of Anne’s pet rabbits and crushes it under her heel. The animal’s sudden death jolts the ailing monarch; she forces Abigail to tend her wounded leg, then violently pulls a servant’s hair in a fit of grief and rage.

The screen then dissolves into a hallucinatory montage. The faces of Anne, Abigail, and the dead rabbit blur together, while multitudes of white rabbits begin to fill the frame, multiplying until the image is swallowed by them. This surreal sequence is meant to echo the queen’s personal tragedy—Anne lost seventeen children, many of them miscarried or stillborn, and each rabbit acts as a visual stand‑in for those lost lives. At the same time, the rabbits symbolize the way the two favorites have become trapped in the same vicious cycle of dependence and cruelty: Abigail, once a meek servant, now sits as a captive plaything of a queen who can equally crush or cherish her.

Thus the ending leaves the audience with a portrait of a court torn apart by ambition and loneliness. Abigail has won the power struggle, but she is no longer a triumphant victor; she is entwined with a monarch whose sorrow and instability have made any victory feel equally hollow. The ever‑multiplying rabbits suggest that the consequences of their scheming will continue to multiply, haunting both women long after the screen goes black.