Barbie ending spoilers follow.
Barbie is now available to buy or rent on digital retailers, so let's unpack that surprising ending — an ultimate expression of joy, self-realisation and empowerment, with a hilarious final line.
Also, the ending is closely linked to the real story of Ruth Handler, the creator of the original doll who becomes the unexpected Wizard of Barbieland in Greta Gerwig's bombastic movie.
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Co-written by Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach (White Noise), Barbie follows Margot Robbie's Barbie as she starts feeling uneasy about her life at forever-happy-and-perfect Barbieland, so she visits the real world alongside boyfriend Ken (a hilarious Ryan Gosling) to find what's going on with her.
Before talking about Ruth Handler's story, we need to delve into that moving ending of Margot Robbie's Barbie. Unfortunately, after that we don't get a Barbie post credit scene, but do not despair: Barbie 2 could be a reality thanks to the record-breaking box office numbers the movie has made in cinemas.
Major spoilers ahead!
Barbie ending explained: what happens to Barbie and Ken?
After returning from the real world, Ken has turned Barbieland upside down, imposing a new kind of horse-centred patriarchy and creating a collective oblivion in the Barbies' minds.
Suddenly, they don't remember they are doctors, writers, astronauts or Nobel Prize winners, since now they only live to serve the Kens' needs, which mostly include being grateful listeners as they explain the plot of The Godfather or play sad songs on the guitar.
The original Barbie comes back home with Mattel secretary Gloria (America Ferrera) and her daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) expecting to show them their feminist utopia, but instead she faces the ultimate loss of control over her life.
Desperate, Barbie enters her depressed era, unable to cope with the downfall of her pitch-perfect pink reality.
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Disappointed, Gloria and Sasha take the road to leave Barbieland and return to their equally messy reality, but at the last minute they decide to stay and fight for the Barbies' liberation.
In fact, it's Gloria's moving speech about the infuriating contradictions of being a woman in the world that lights the spark in the dolls' minds, prompting them to wake up.
One by one, the Barbies are kidnapped and subjected to the same speech, turning them into agents against the Kendom, who are oblivious about the silent revolution happening under their noses.
Once every woman is awake, they come up with the perfect plan to end the Kens: turning them against each other. Once they feel threatened by other men's power, a brutal war mixed with a classic Hollywood-flavoured musical number erupts at the beach.
Meanwhile, in Barbieland's congress, the Barbies restore the Constitution and everything goes back to normal.
However, everything has changed for the original Barbie. Her journey of self discovery during the movie has left a mark in her, making her incapable of going back to her old cheerful self. What's her purpose now?
Then, like Pinocchio, Barbie wishes to be a real woman in the real world. The one to grant her that wish is none other than Barbie creator Ruth Handler (played by Rhea Perlman), who shows up unannounced and guides her beloved creation towards her new human life.
Her first stop as a living woman? Visiting the gynaecologist, of course!
Barbie real story: who was Ruth Handler?
As we mentioned, Barbie inventor Ruth Handler is a key piece in Greta Gerwig's movie, both as the character to grant Barbie's last wish in the ending, and as an inspiration for many other aspects of the story.
The relationship between Gloria and her daughter Sasha is based on Handler and her daughter Barbara, after whom Barbie is named.
"A Barbie movie is only ever going to be a mother-daughter movie on so many levels because it was Ruth Handler and Barbara — that was the relationship," said Gerwig in an interview with Time.
Barbie is also a love letter to Handler's revolutionary legacy at Mattel.
As the 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired first scene of the movie shows, before Barbie's arrival to the stores, baby-shaped toys were all that little girls could aspire to, as they developed their future roles as mothers and wives.
Handler thought this vision of the future for women wasn't enough, and she introduced the idea of a new type of female-marketed toy shortly after she became co-owner of Mattel alongside her husband, Elliott Handler, with whom she ran the company for 30 years.
Inspired by a German doll called Bild Lilli and named after Ruth's daughter Barbara, Barbie first arrived in 1959. With its impossible beauty standards and long blonde hair, the pin-up model doll allowed girls' dreams to grow wider, although its empowering potential would arrive years later.
"Every little girl needed a doll through which to project herself into her dream of her future,'' said Ruth Handler in an interview with The New York Times in 1977.
After being heavily criticised by '70s feminists for leading to low self-esteem issues for young women, Barbie's career choices and looks started to evolve, including numerous versions of the doll as a doctor or an astronaut, as well as a wider representation in terms of race.
In her 1994 autobiography, Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story, Handler wrote (via NYT): ''My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.''
Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970 and had her left breast removed, going on to become an advocate for early detection of the disease, and even starting a company to fabricate prosthetic breasts.
Ruth Handler died on April 27, 2002, when she was 85.
For more Barbie coverage, check out:
• Barbie review
• 9 Barbie animated movies worth watching
• How long is Barbie?
• What age rating is Barbie?
• Does Barbie have a post-credit scene?
• Barbie soundtrack: how to buy
• Will there be a Barbie sequel?
• Who could be in Barbie 2?
Barbie is in cinemas and available now to buy or rent on Prime Video, Microsoft Store, Apple TV+ and other digital retailers.
..Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over eight years. Based in the UK, she is a former deputy movies editor at Digital Spy, and previously worked for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas. Mireia's work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema and GamesRadar+ in the UK. She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London. LinkedIn
