‘Thanksgiving’ Ending Explained: Who Is the ‘Thanksgiving’ Killer?

The 2023 horror movie Thanksgiving is now streaming on Netflix. It may not be the holiday season or the spooky movie season right now, but it’s never the wrong time to watch a slasher.

Directed by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel), with a screenplay by Jeff Rendell, Thanksgiving is a campy slasher flick that brings blood and guts to one of America’s most gluttonous holidays. The film was generally well-liked by critics—the movie currently has an 84 percent rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes—and was a box office success, taking home $46 million at the worldwide box office. That’s pretty good, considering the production budget was an estimated $15 million.

Those who didn’t see the movie in theaters are now watching the movie on Netflix. It’s only been a few days since the streamer added the film to its library, but Thanksgiving has already shot to the top of Netflix’s Top 10 trending movie titles list. But just because you watched it on Netflix doesn’t mean you were paying attention.

If you got lost while watching the 2023 Thanksgiving movie, don’t worry, because Decider is here to help. Read on for a breakdown of the Thanksgiving horror movie plot summary and ending explained, including who the killer in Thanksgiving is. Warning for spoilers ahead, obviously.

Thanksgiving movie plot summary:

The Thanksgiving movie opens, appropriately, on Thanksgiving Day, in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Local sheriff Eric Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) brings a pie to his buddy Mitch (Ty Victor Olsson). The sheriff is mighty friendly with Mitch’s wife Amanda (Gina Gershon). Unfortunately, their dinner is interrupted when Mitch is called to go into work at his job at the RightMart. Mitch’s boss has decided that Black Friday starts on Thanksgiving.

Then, tragedy strikes. In a frantic attempt to get a deal on waffle irons, a riot breaks out. People are killed in a frantic stampede. (It echoes the infamous real-life Black Friday stampede in 2008, when a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death.) The dead include Mitch’s wife, who was simply bringing her husband some Thanksgiving leftovers. Our final girl is Jessica Wright (played by Nell Verlaque), who is reluctantly at the store with her boyfriend Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks) on the day of the stampede, because their friends wanted to pick up a new phone. Jessica’s not just at the store, either—she and her friends get early access through the employee entrance, because Jessica’s father, Thomas (Rick Hoffman) owns the store.

There are a lot of people to potentially blame for the stampede. There’s Thomas, the store owner, who opted to open the store on Thanksgiving Day for bigger profits. There’s Thomas’s new wife, Kathleen (Karen Cliche), who was the one who convinced Thomas to do that. There’s the rowdy New Englanders at the front of the crowd, who push down the barrier and storm the door. There’s Jessica’s friend Evan (Tomaso Sanelli), who films everything on his phone for a few moments of internet fame. And then there is Jessica herself, who riled up the crowd further by letting her friends in early, flaunting their early access to the deals.

One year later, RightMart is preparing for another Thanksgiving Day Black Friday sale, despite protests led by Mitch, the employee whose wife died. Jessica and her friends are tagged in a cryptic social media post of a Thanksgiving dinner table, posted by an anonymous user. Huh. Probably nothing to worry about! Jessica is surprised to see her ex-boyfriend, Bobby, is back in town. He moved away after he broke his arm in the riot, and was no longer able to play ball. These days Jessica is now dating a guy named Ryan (Milo Manheim), who lusted after Jessica when she and Bobby were together.

Then, one of the rioters—a woman named Lizzie (Amanda Barker)—is brutally murdered by a cloaked figure in a pilgrim hat and a mask of John Carver, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony of America. Sheriff Eric and his team quickly conclude that the killer is targeting people who were at last year’s riot. The Carver killer murders the security guard who ran, and two more rioters, each in a fun, Thanksgiving-themed way. The killer has whimsy!

Could the killer be Mitch, the grieving husband? Or is it one of Jessica’s two lovers, both of whom keep conveniently showing up at the scene of the crime? Or is it the grown man selling drugs and alcohol to kids? Or is it the little nerdy kid who does the jocks’ homework for them?

Time is running out. Two of Jessica’s friends are abducted, and though she manages to escape, it’s clear the killer wants her. Sheriff Eric suggests using Jessica and her family as bait at the Thanksgiving parade to lure the killer. This plan backfires: Jessica and her family are kidnapped at the parade and brought to the killer’s lair. The killer cooks Jessica’s mother like a Thanksgiving turkey and murders her friend Evan while streaming live on his phone.

Jessica manages to escape. The killer chases her through the woods, but she gets away, with a a twisted ankle. She limps to the warehouse, where she finds Sheriff Eric passed out, unconscious. She takes his gun and enters the warehouse… and finds her ex-boyfriend Bobby taking off the killer’s mask.

Who is the killer in the Thanksgiving movie on Netflix?

Spoiler alert: The Thanksgiving killer is not Bobby, but Sheriff Eric! Jessica realizes that Eric is the killer at the police department, when she spots dirt and bramble from the forest on the sheriff’s shoe. Apparently, this means he is the one who chased her through the forest, not Bobby. (OK, sure.) When the sheriff realizes that Jessica knows, he explains how he did it. Eric drugged Bobby, put him in the killer’s mask, and planned to shoot him. But Bobby fought back, and hit the sheriff with a tire iron.

Why did he do it? If you recall the very first scene of the movie, you may remember that sparks were flying between the sheriff and Mitch’s wife. As it turns out, they were having an affair, and Mitch’s wife was pregnant with Eric’s child. Messy! The Black Friday stampede cost the sheriff his chance at a family, and now he’s getting his revenge.

Thanksgiving movie ending explained:

While the Sheriff is doing his villain monologue explaining how he pulled off his evil plan, Jessica is secretly broadcasting his confession via live stream, using her dead friend’s phone from the evidence locker. Got him!

Eric attacks, but Jessica is saved by Bobby. The two of them escape through the warehouse in Bobby’s uncle’s tow truck while Patrick Dempsey screams about how there will be no leftovers this year. Eric stops their truck by attaching the tow cable to the wall… but then Jessica shoots the inflatable turkey from the parade, causing a gas explosion. The warehouse goes up in flames, and Jessica and Bobby escape.

In the aftermath, police assure Jessica that no one could have survived the blast, and that Eric is definitely dead. But we’ve all seen enough horror movies to know that no body means there’s room for a sequel! That fact of life—plus one suspicious lingering shot of a masked firefighter carrying an axe similar to the one used by Eric—leads us to believe that the sheriff is not actually dead. Jessica must be thinking the same thing, because in the finale shot of the movie, she has a nightmare about Eric coming back to kill her.

Thanksgiving end credits scene explained:

At the very end of the Thanksgiving movie credits, there is a bonus scene featuring character actor Rick Hoffman. He says goodbye to his daughter, tells her he loves her, and then the camera keeps rolling. Hoffman eventually looks around at the crew, and then directly at the camera, flipping the lens his middle finger. Only then does director Eli Roth finally yell “Cut.”

This is just a fun little outtake, not meant to imply anything about a Thanksgiving movie sequel. Roth and Hoffman are clearly pals, having also worked together on the Hostel horror movie series. It’s just the cast and crew having fun on set! Don’t read too much into it.