Shutter Island explained: What happened to Teddy?
Note: The following article contains discussion of themes including suicide.
Shutter Island spoilers follow.
Originally released in 2010, Martin Scorsese’s psychological thriller Shutter Island featured a shock ending and an ambiguous final scene that has spawned endless theories and debates about what it all means.
Based on Dennis Lehane's best-selling novel of the same name – which has a more clear-cut ending for those who need a definitive answer – the movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as Teddy and Chuck, a pair of US Marshals investigating the disappearance of a patient from the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island in Boston harbour.
It soon becomes clear there is much more to the investigation than first appears, and at the time DiCaprio admitted (via The Guardian) that the twists in the movie made it difficult to talk about.
“It’s a very difficult narrative to talk about in detail because we want the audience to have that virgin experience,” he explained.
“This is the most challenging [film] to date for me. Physically – yes, but emotionally more so. It was the nature of the material. It was obviously a complex jigsaw puzzle and it was surprising for both of us at times, and it really shocked us,” he said of his and Scorsese’s experience on set.
So what exactly happens in Shutter Island, and what does the ending mean?
Read on for a breakdown of the head-scratching thriller. There are major spoilers ahead, of course.
Shutter Island ending explained: What really happened?
At the start of the movie, set in 1954, US Marshal Edward ‘Teddy’ Daniels (DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) travel by boat to the remote Ashecliffe Hospital to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, who was being held there after drowning her three children.
As their investigation begins, Teddy notices that the lead psychiatrist, Dr John Cawley (Ben Kingsley), is being less than co-operative, and he is told that Rachel’s doctor Lester Sheehan left the island to go on vacation straight after she went missing. Their only clue is a note found in her room that says: “The law of 4 – who is 67?”
Teddy, who is increasingly uncomfortable surrounded by the water around the island, begins to experience migraines and visions that flash back to his past – his experience at the liberation of Dachau in World War II, and memories of his wife Dolores Chanal, who died in a fire set by arsonist Andrew Laeddis.
Teddy admits to Chuck that he took the case because he believes Laeddis is on the island, and he thinks Rachel is hiding there, too.
The Marshals aren’t allowed in some areas of the hospital – including the lighthouse and Ward C – but when Teddy hears Rachel has returned, he breaks into Ward C and finds a patient named George Noyce who tells him patients are being lobotomised in the lighthouse, and also that everyone on the island is lying to Teddy as part of an elaborate plot.
Next, Teddy interviews Rachel Solando, and then goes with Chuck across the rocks towards the lighthouse. Believing he has seen Chuck fall, Teddy heads towards him and instead discovers a cave with a woman inside who claims to be the real Rachel. She says that she was committed to the hospital to stop her from going to the authorities after she discovered the doctors were experimenting with psychotropic medicines to induce mind control.
Teddy goes back to the hospital looking for Chuck, but Dr Cawley tells him that Chuck does not exist and Teddy came to the island alone. Increasingly paranoid, Teddy sets fire to Cawley’s car as a diversion and dashes to the lighthouse to find out what is really going on, convinced that Chuck is being held there.
Shutter Island ending explained: The final twist
When Teddy arrives at the lighthouse, he finds Dr Cawley waiting for him. The doctor explains that Teddy’s headaches and visions are a result of him withdrawing from the anti-psychotic medication that he has been on for two years.
He then reveals that Teddy’s real name is Andrew Laeddis (Teddy’s full name being an anagram of Andrew’s). Andrew was imprisoned on the island after he murdered his wife Dolores (her name is an anagram of Rachel Solando), who drowned their three children while suffering from manic depression.
Cawley goes on to explain that Andrew’s traumatic experience at Dachau led to him becoming a heavy drinker who did not support his mentally ill wife (Michelle Williams) after she burned down their apartment. Instead he moved the family to the lake house where she tragically killed their children.
Andrew then created the persona of Teddy out of guilt for not helping his wife, and Cawley designed a role-play around it an in attempt to get Andrew to accept reality.
So Chuck is in fact Dr Lester Sheehan playing a role – which would explain why ‘Chuck’ fumbled when he tried to remove his gun from its holster in an early scene – as were all the staff, including a nurse who pretended to be Rachel (the ‘real’ Rachel whom Teddy/Andrew finds in the cave is in fact a hallucination).
And the "law of 4" and "who is 67" that was written on a note that Teddy found? The law of 4 harks back to the anagrams of Edward Daniels and Rachel Solando (there are four scrambled names) while 67 refers to Teddy/Andrew himself, who is the 67th patient in Ward C. The cryptic note was meant to trigger Teddy to remember he was Andrew.
After these revelations, Andrew understandably faints, and when he wakes up in the hospital he tells the truth and accepts he is Andrew. However, Cawley warns Andrew that this is his last chance to embrace reality as they had tried this experiment nine months before and Andrew had regressed shortly afterwards. The alternative, if Andrew cannot accept reality, is that he will be lobotomised.
A while later, Andrew talks with Sheehan and calls him ‘Chuck’ and says they must leave the island. Sheehan looks at Cawley and shakes his head, and Andrew is taken away by orderlies to be lobotomised.
His final words to Sheehan, though, cast doubt over whether Andrew has reverted back to his Teddy persona or not.
“Which would be worse: to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?” he says to Sheehan, and when Sheehan calls him ‘Teddy’ for a final time, Andrew does not respond.
This could lead us to believe that Andrew has not regressed back to being Teddy, but has in fact pretended to do so in order to have a lobotomy, so that he doesn't have to live with the memory of what he did to his wife, or the man/monster he has become.
Of course, many people have debated whether Andrew chooses a lobotomy voluntarily or not. While both DiCaprio and Scorsese have not talked about the ending, author Dennis Lehane commented to MTV about DiCaprio’s final line and what he thinks it means, especially because it differs from his book, where it is made clear that Andrew has conclusively lapsed back into the Teddy persona.
“I would say that line, which comes across as a question, he asks it sort of rhetorically,” said Lehane. “Personally, I think he has a momentary flash. To me that’s all it is. It’s just one moment of sanity mixed in the midst of all the other delusions.”
“When he asks the question, he does it in such a way that, if he were to say it as a statement… then there’s no solution here but to stop the lobotomy. Because if he shows any sort of self-awareness, then it’s over, they wouldn’t want to lobotomise him.”
“My feeling was no, he’s not so conscious he says, ‘Oh, I’m going to decide to pretend to be Laeddis so they’ll finally give me a lobotomy.’ That would just be far more suicidal than I think this character is. I think that in one moment, for a half a second sitting there in that island he remembered who he was and then he asks that question and he quickly sort of lets it go. That was my feeling on that line.”
Some fans believe another theory – that Teddy is a real, mentally well US Marshal who really did meet Rachel in a cave, that everything she said about experiments is true, and that he is lobotomised to prevent him from telling anyone.
A second watch doesn’t discount this theory, but there are clues throughout that the first theory – that Teddy is Andrew Laeddis, and he did kill his wife – is the one that we should believe, from Teddy’s aversion to water (a reminder his wife drowned their children) to a quick glance a nurse gives to Chuck when Teddy mentions Dr Sheehan during his investigation.
There’s no definitive answer, but you could take the word of Martin Scorsese’s psychiatric advisor on the movie, Professor James Gilligan of New York University.
In an interview with The Guardian, he said that Andrew/Teddy’s last words mean: “I feel too guilty to go on living. I’m not going to actually commit suicide, but I’m going to vicariously commit suicide by handing myself over to these people who are going to lobotomise me.”
His and Dennis Lehane’s insights certainly make another viewing of Shutter Island essential – which, according to Gilligan, may have been Scorsese’s plan all along.
“Martin Scorsese said this film will make double the income because people will have to see it a second time to understand what happened the first time,” he said.
Shutter Island is on Netflix now.
We encourage anyone who identifies with the topics raised in this article to reach out. Information about how to access support is available via the NHS, and organisations who can offer help include Samaritans on 116 123 or Mind on 0300 123 3393. Readers in the US are encouraged to visit mentalhealth.gov or the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
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