Ash ending explained: Who killed Brion and everyone else?

Ash, directed by Flying Lotus, is a suspenseful psychological mystery set in outer space. The movie centers around astronaut Riya (Eiza González), who awakens on a space station to discover that her entire crew has been brutally killed. She has no recollection of the events before. As she pieces together fragments of her lost memory, she begins to realize that she might not be a survivor at all.

What seems to be a slow-burning thriller turns out to be a gory and horrific struggle to survive as Riya discovers the ghastly reality. She is not merely a victim of a mysterious attacker; she is the murderer of some of her crew members.

As her memory comes back in gruesome flashes, Riya finds out that she had not acted with ill will but had been manipulated by a killer alien parasite.

It is also revealed that Brion, whom Riya thought was another survivor, was bludgeoned to death by Kevin, who was also under the parasite's influence.

Exploring Brion and the crew's fate in Ash

The vicious killings on the space station in Ash were caused by an alien parasite that had invaded the crew. This creature, indigenous to the planet the crew was exploring, had the capacity to control human hosts by lodging itself in their brains.

The crew's first encounter with the alien life form, called Ash, triggered a chain reaction of fatal incidents.

Brion (Aaron Paul), whom Riya first thought was another survivor, was not alive. The actual Brion had been murdered days before her waking.

Kevin (Beulah Koale), while infected by the parasite, had beaten Brion to death. He then died as a result of the parasite.

However, since the parasite was able to control Riya's perception, she kept seeing and engaging with a version of Brion that never existed. This illusionary Brion controlled her actions, further keeping her under the parasite's control.

The rest of the crew members also met their gruesome demise. Adhi (Iko Uwais) and Kevin were both murdered by Riya in self-defense when they attacked her under the influence of the parasite. Davis (Flying Lotus) died of a head wound when a piece of particle was expelled from the alien technology they had been investigating on the planet's surface.

Clarke (Kate Elliott), whom Riya at one time thought was the killer, survived the initial outbreak. However, she was later killed by Riya in a bout of paranoia. Assuming Clarke to be contaminated, Riya sealed her in a flooding chamber and drowned her within her spacesuit.

In the end, it was Riya who actually murdered most of her crew, but she did so under duress, manipulated by the parasite to perceive threats where none existed.

The parasite's power to distort her perception meant that she did what would result in her being the sole survivor, the ideal host to transport the organism off the planet in Ash.

What had happened to Riya and how did she kill the alien in Ash movie?

Riya's slow return to consciousness caused her to discover the extent of the parasite's control. The medical patches she had been putting on herself throughout the movie were stabilizers, repressing her memory of the truth.

When she quit using them, she recalled everything the parasite had been within her the entire time, feeding her false memories and using her as its host.

Resolved to eliminate the intruder, Riya sought the aid of the space station's medical diagnostic device, a machine programmed to scan and cure the body of anomalies.

The device, which speaks only Japanese, detected the parasite implanted in her brain and proceeded to remove it, as one would a tumor. The process was both terrifying and purging, as Riya was subjected to the agonizing extraction while regaining her autonomy at last.

However, the parasite was not so easily vanquished. When taken out of Riya's body, it instantly looked for a new host. It attached itself to the actual Brion, reanimating his corpse into a deformed, nightmarish creature.

In a last-ditch fight, Riya employed the station's portable flamethrower, a weapon she had already used to fend off her attackers, to burn the creature. As the creature burned, the parasite screamed and twisted, its body dissolving into a heap of blackened ash.

Assuming she had finally eradicated it, Riya fell to the ground, spent but seemingly triumphant.

As Riya's fight against the parasite seemed concluded, Ash left viewers with a chilling note. In a mid-credits scene, the camera paused over the orbiting space station. A weak distress signal sparked to life, suggesting that something or someone might be alive.

Did the parasite actually die, or did it discover a means of survival? Some have theorized that Riya herself could still be infected, not realizing that the parasite has quietly reattached itself to her. Others have speculated that another member of the crew, who was assumed dead, might still be carrying the organism.

The last shot of the station is a chilling reminder that, as much as Riya tried, the nightmare could still be ongoing. The parasite's ultimate intention was to leave the planet and spread its influence upon humanity. Whether it has done so is left ambiguous, leaving people with an unsettling sense of uncertainty.

Interested viewers can watch Ash in theaters and later on Amazon Prime Video.

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