Insidious: The Red Door ending spoilers: Is the connection to The Further truly severed?

Insidious: The Red Door is the latest movie in the long-running Insidious franchise that started with the first movie releasing in 2011. The fifth film in the franchise also marks the directorial debut of star Patrick Wilson, who also returns to reprise his role as Josh Lambert. Several other key members of the Insidious cast return as well, including Rose Byrne and Ty Simpkins, as Wilson’s on-screen wife and son, respectively.

The fifth (and supposedly final, at least for now) movie in the Insidious film series is a direct sequel to Insidious 2 and primarily focuses on Dalton Lambert (Simpkins) as he starts his first year at college. Unfortunately for Dalton, it doesn’t take long for the demons from his childhood to begin haunting him again.

Spoilers ahead for Insidious: The Red Door

Given the film’s commercial success (making more than $188 million at the worldwide box office and the highest-grossing of the franchise), it’s a given that the movie is going to be a hit on Netflix now that it’s streaming.

Some fans might be curious to learn how the film ends, or to at least get more of an explanation on how the movie wraps up its climax. Here’s what you need to know about how Insidious: The Red Door ends.

The meaning of the red door

Toward the beginning of Insidious: The Red Door, Dalton attends an art class where he goes into a trance-like state and paints an ominous red door. That red door is basically an opening into the realm known as The Further, which we’ve seen in most of the other Insidious movies. The Further is where all the franchise’s paranormal activity originates from and the Lambert family men have the ability to astral project themselves into that realm.

In the first movie, a young Dalton was thought to have fallen into a coma, but really he entered The Further and got trapped there. His dad, Josh Lambert, ended up having to go into The Further himself to retrieve his son, despite repressing his memories of how to do it based on a horrific experience he himself had as a kid.

While in The Further, Josh gets possessed and that’s part of why the older Dalton is struggling to remember what happened to him as a kid. He and Josh both had their memories repressed so they wouldn’t remember the horror of a possessed-Josh trying to kill his family.

Drawing the red door starts to bring everything back and Dalton begins learning how to astral project. He travels into The Further, often with the assistance of his new roommate/friend Chris Wilson, trying to unravel the mystery of his memories and why he’s been seeing strange entities and ghosts at his college.

But then Dalton gets trapped in The Further again, specifically in the lair of the Lipstick-Face Demon. Josh must return to his ex-wife, Renai, who helps him understand what happened over a decade ago so he can again go back into the astral plane and save his son, who has become possessed by the demon.

Ultimately, Josh is able to save Dalton and they escape from The Further. Once out, Dalton paints over the red door, hopefully closing off that realm for good. He even makes a new painting, symbolizing the repaired relationship between him and his dad that shows Josh carrying his younger self out of The Further.

As far as Insidious movies go, this one has a pretty happy ending.

What does Insidious: The Red Door’s post-credits scene mean?

Well, almost.

Once the door is painted black and supposedly sealed off, a very short stinger after the credits shows the light above flickering and turning back on, seemingly signifying that the connection to The Further has not been completely severed after all.