Wilderness (2020) Ending Explained – Final Scene & Meaning

Liv finally reaches the moment she has been planning for months. After a heated argument with Will, she finds a stranger in a red coat standing on the edge of a cliff. In a blind surge of rage, she shoves the figure over the ledge, convinced she has killed her husband. At dawn she discovers the body is not Will’s but Cara’s—her rival‑lover has survived the fall only to die later, leaving Liv with the gruesome reality that her act of revenge has not gone as imagined.

The tragedy deepens when the police begin to untangle the weekend’s murders. Detectives focus on Garth, Cara’s controlling boyfriend, but lack proof. When Garth confronts Liv, suspecting she knows who really killed Cara, a violent struggle erupts; Liv ends up killing Garth in what is ruled self‑defence, though the case remains under a cloud of suspicion.

Liv’s final gambit is to hand the authorities the hidden video of Will’s affair with Cara. The footage leads to Will’s arrest, his red jacket linking him to the cliff scene, and a long prison sentence. In the closing moments, Liv tells a fellow hiker that Cara’s fall was not her fault, and she lets a small, defiant smile cross her face—no longer the obedient “good girl” mask, but a woman who has seized control of her own story, even as she quietly prepares for the child she is now carrying.