Obsession is one of those movies you finish and then just sit there for a minute. My husband and I watched it at home, and the last 20 minutes had us both staring at the screen. It’s disturbing, but it’s so good, and the ending is the part I kept thinking about. Here’s how it all plays out, what I think it means, and the very different ending director Curry Barker originally shot.
⚠️ Spoilers below. This post gives away the full ending. If you haven’t watched yet, start with my spoiler-free Obsession review.
A quick recap of the setup
Bear (Michael Johnston) works at a small music store owned by Carter (Andy Richter), alongside his friends Nikki (Inde Navarrette), Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless). He’s been in love with Nikki for ages. When that goes nowhere, he buys a One Wish Willow, a cheap novelty toy that promises to grant one wish when you snap it. He breaks it and wishes that Nikki would love him more than anyone.
The wish works instantly. Nikki moves in with Bear, they start dating, and for a little while it almost looks like a rom-com. But the wish didn’t make Nikki fall in love the way people normally do. It took away her choice, and her love keeps escalating until it’s completely out of control.
When the love starts to curdle
One of the creepiest scenes in the whole movie, for me, is when Nikki watches Bear while he’s asleep. She’s just staring at him, and you can see her slowly unravel because she feels he doesn’t love her back as much as she loves him. It’s quiet, there’s no big scare, and it’s somehow scarier than the gore that comes later.
From there it gets darker fast. Nikki locks Bear in, does things to herself and to him that are hard to watch, and in one of the most upsetting turns, the death of Bear’s cat becomes part of her twisted devotion. The thing that makes it all so disturbing is that the real Nikki is still in there. In her lucid moments, she begs Bear to kill her and end it, and he refuses. Honestly, I was surprised he never did it, given everything that happens next.
The murder in the car
The scene that shocked me most is the one with Sarah. She comes to talk to Bear late at night while he’s sitting in his car, and it’s clear she has feelings for him. Nikki sees that as a threat, and what she does to Sarah is genuinely brutal. It’s the moment the movie stops being a dark love story with creepy moments and becomes full horror. Navarrette is so good here that it’s almost unbearable.
The billion-dollar wish
This is my favorite twist in the movie, because it’s darkly funny right up until it isn’t. Bear realizes the wish can’t be undone the normal way. He tries to buy up the remaining One Wish Willows, but he can’t break one himself. So he begs Ian, who’s never made a wish, to use one. Ian, being Ian, wishes for a billion dollars, and money starts raining down from the ceiling.
It’s absurd, and it’s also the moment Bear and the audience get final proof that the wishes are real. It also means there’s no clean way out. Whatever is controlling Nikki isn’t a curse you can talk your way out of, and Ian’s wish doesn’t fix anything. It just makes the mess bigger.
The final scene
The ending is where everything collides. Nikki kills Ian, then turns on Bear with a gun. Bear locks himself in the bathroom and swallows the rest of his pills. He tries to throw them back up, but before he can, Nikki breaks the last One Wish Willow. Under the pull of her wish, Bear kisses her, and then he dies of the overdose in her arms.
Nikki turns the gun on herself, but she doesn’t pull the trigger, because Bear’s death breaks the wish’s hold on her. She comes back to herself completely, as the normal Nikki, and finds herself sitting in the middle of the carnage she caused but never chose. The movie ends on her wailing in horror.
What the ending means
The way I read it, the ending is about who actually made the wish. Bear wanted to be loved without having to earn it, so he took away Nikki’s ability to choose. Everything that follows comes from that one selfish decision, and in the end, he’s the one who pays for it. Once he’s gone, the wish has nothing left to hold onto, and Nikki is finally free.
I’m honestly happy Nikki came back. In a way, it felt like justice: the person who made the wish faced the consequences, and the person who never had a say got herself back. That said, she still caused way too much damage, even if it wasn’t really her doing it, and the movie doesn’t pretend that she can just walk away from that. Her waking up in the middle of everything she did might be the cruelest part of the whole film.
It’s also why the title works so well. Obsession isn’t just about Nikki’s love for Bear. It’s about Bear’s obsession with being loved by her, which is what started it all.
The ending we almost got
Here’s a fun bit of trivia I learned after watching. Barker originally shot a Romeo and Juliet-style ending where Nikki dies too. He later went with the version where she survives for the theatrical release. I think he made the right call. If both of them died, it would have felt like a tragedy about two doomed lovers. With Nikki surviving, it’s clearly a story about one person taking away another person’s choice, and the person who suffered most living with the aftermath.
Where the idea comes from
The wish-gone-wrong idea goes back more than a century. The classic version is “The Monkey’s Paw,” a 1902 short story by W. W. Jacobs, where a family gets three wishes from a cursed paw and every wish comes true in the most horrible way possible. The lesson is the same one Obsession lands on: getting exactly what you asked for can be the worst thing that happens to you.
Barker has said his version was partly inspired by a 1991 Simpsons Halloween episode that riffs on the monkey’s paw. What he changed is the target of the wish. Instead of money or a lost loved one, Bear wishes to control another person’s feelings, which turns a familiar fable into something much more uncomfortable and much more modern.
The One Wish Willow, in real life
Part of why the One Wish Willow feels so believable is that Focus Features leaned into it as if it were a real product. The studio released an in-world One Wish Willow commercial, which has passed 4.4 million views on YouTube, and real One Wish Willow merchandise sold out within hours, twice. Barker even voices the toy’s customer service representative in the film. It’s a clever bit of marketing, and it also makes the toy’s cheerful branding feel even creepier once you know what it does.
Will there be a sequel?
Not exactly, but the One Wish Willow isn’t done yet. Barker’s next film, a horror comedy tentatively called Anything But Ghosts, stars him and Cooper Tomlinson as two fake ghost hunters, and he’s hinted that the wish-granting willow magic from Obsession will show up again. It’s targeted for May 2027, so if you’re as obsessed with this movie as everyone else seems to be, that’s the next one to watch for.
Where to watch it again
If you want to rewatch the ending (brave of you), Obsession is streaming on Peacock in the US right now, and it moves to Netflix in the US on November 17, 2026. According to What’s on Netflix, it’ll stay on Netflix for about ten months before heading back to Peacock. It’s also been available to buy or rent digitally since June 30 and on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K since July 14. In Korea, it opened in theaters on September 2 under the title 옵세션, rated 청소년관람불가. A second watch is honestly worth it, because once you know where it’s going, a lot of the small early moments between Bear and Nikki hit very differently.
What I’d change
My only real complaints are the same ones I mentioned in my review. The first part, before Bear makes the wish, is slow, and the idea of a wish coming true in the worst way isn’t new. Barker himself has said a Simpsons monkey’s paw episode inspired it. But the ending is what makes the film memorable, and it’s strong enough to make up for the slow start.
If you’ve watched it, I’m curious which ending you’d have picked. For me, Nikki surviving is the one that stuck, because it leaves you thinking about her long after the credits roll.