How Does It’s What’s Inside End? Explaining the Twisted Thriller’s Final Reveal

Warning: It’s What’s Inside spoilers ahead!

Netflix’s It’s What’s Inside is Freaky Friday on steroids.

Written and directed by Greg Jardin, the film follows eight college friends — Shelby (Brittany O’Grady); Cyrus (James Morosini); Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood); Maya (Nina Bloomgarden); Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey); Brooke (Reina Hardesty); Reuben (Devon Terrell); and Forbes (David W. Thompson) — who reunite for a pre-wedding party.

Everyone expects it to be a chill evening filled with drinking, some recreational drug use and maybe a game or two. Forbes, who shows up late, has other ideas when he arrives with a mysterious suitcase. Inside is a machine that allows people to swap bodies.

Things go awry when two players die, and the cops are called — all while everyone is inhabiting a body other than their own.

Madison Davenport, who plays Forbes’ sister Beatrice, told PEOPLE that acting in a body-switch thriller had its difficulties but that the writing helped the cast along. “They did a really [good] job in the script,” she said. “They put parentheses, so it would be like ‘Forbes (Cyrus),’ so you were kind of like, oh, I understand what’s going on.”

Here’s everything to know about the unexpected twist at the end of It’s What’s Inside and who ends up in whose bodies.

How does It’s What’s Inside end? 

During round two of switching bodies, the unexpected happens: Reuben, who is inside Dennis’ body, and Brooke, who is inside Maya’s body, are having sex when they fall off a balcony and are impaled on a piece of artwork shaped like a uterus.

The friends begin panicking and Cyrus demands to return to his own body. But with two people dead, Dennis and Maya are faced with inhabiting bodies that aren’t their own forever. Forbes, who is inside Reuben’s body, doesn’t want to involve the police out of fear that they’ll confiscate his precious machine.

An angry Dennis, who is inside Cyrus’ body, calls 911 and admits to killing Dennis and Maya. Meanwhile, Shelby, who is inside Nikki’s body, learns that her longtime boyfriend Cyrus has always been in love with Nikki and refuses to swap bodies.

Nikki, who is inside Brooke’s body, becomes livid — desperate to return to her life as a social media influencer. Forbes then tries to escape with the machine and Nikki knocks him out with a metal pole. Incapacitated, Shelby is the only other person capable of using the machine and she hatches a plan to stay in Nikki’s body and put Cyrus in Reuben’s body so that he doesn’t take the fall when the police arrive.

Nikki hatches a different plan with Dennis to incapacitate Shelby and force Forbes to wire everyone back into their own bodies minus a few odd swaps to accommodate Dennis and Maya. As the police are entering the house, Forbes does just that — but the wiring isn’t exactly correct.

The next day, Beatrice, Forbes’ sister shows up. She’s angry and hellbent on getting the machine from her brother. That’s when the audience learns that Forbes is actually in Beatrice’s body and Beatrice has been impersonating her brother the entire time.

The real Forbes then explains to Dennis, who is in Forbes’ body, that Beatrice was determined to get revenge on the group of friends after an incident back in college. When Beatrice was 14, she hooked up with Dennis, who then denied it and called her crazy. She had an “episode” and was sent to a mental health hospital.

The final minutes of It’s What’s Inside reveal that Beatrice was able to carry out her pre-meditated plan: first wire Dennis’ trust fund to an off-shore account and then inhabit Nikki’s body — stealing the life of someone she was jealous of.

Who ends up in whose bodies at the end of It’s What’s Inside? 

The final body swapping is orchestrated by Beatrice, who everyone believes is Forbes the whole movie. When she wires the machine, Dennis is put in Forbes’ body, Nikki is put in Reuben’s body, Maya is put in Brooke’s body and Beatrice inhabits Nikki’s body.

Meanwhile, Shelby goes back to being Shelby and Cyrus goes back to being Cyrus. Cyrus ultimately finds himself in jail for the deaths of Dennis and Maya, and Forbes is stuck in Beatrice’s body after she takes off with the machine.

As for Reuben and Brooke, their spirits are dead.

What has the It’s What’s Inside cast said about playing multiple characters? 

Prior to filming It’s What’s Inside, the cast grappled with a confusing script and how they’d each play several different characters.

“I don’t think a lot of actors had faith that this was going to be something that could be successfully communicated and that’s the brilliance of Greg [Jardin],” O’Grady said while speaking to journalist Kyle Meredith in October 2024.

“I think the biggest challenge was just the collaborative effort. If you have a bunch of egomaniac actors who were super precious about the characters they created it could have gone wrong. We all trusted each other to hold our creations close. It was a very fun challenge and so rewarding,” she added.

During a September 2024 Lincoln Center panel, Leatherwood and Morosini elaborated on the ensemble’s process of embodying more than one character.

“We had a week together. We all got to rehearse and perform certain scenes and that really made a world of a difference,” Leatherwood said. “We would watch each other perform certain parts and film it and watch it back and look at people’s mannerisms and do what we could to capture the energy of each other. That was the main goal — to not fall into doing an impression of each other but more so capturing the essence of who each character was.”

Morosini added: “When you’re playing a character, you have to fight for them. You have to really engage your compassion and you’re doing that for all these different characters and considering all these different perspectives. You learn a lot through that process.”

Will there be an It’s What’s Inside sequel?

While there are no talks of a sequel (for now), Debnam-Carey, who plays Nikki, told Today that she’d “100% come back” for round two.

“There are some really fun sequels that could be springboarded from that point. We’re all excited — this should have a sequel,” she said. “Nikki’s clambering to get back into her own body. There’s a lot of opportunity there.”

Davenport echoed this sentiment and told PEOPLE, “I think Beatrice isn’t done switching bodies. She said it. I mean, Forbes said it by being like, ‘Once you start, you’re not going to want to stop,’ and I don’t think she is.”