Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) Ending Explained: Did Mike Save Abby from William?

Based on Scott Cawthon’s story of the same name, Emma Tammi’s Five Nights at Freddy’s starts off quite well, setting up the events that will unfold later in the narrative. However, the main issue with the film lies in its poorly designed-ending, which completely undermines the initial premise. While the film boasts a decent storyline compared to other below-average horror films, the closer it gets to the climax, the more disappointing it becomes for the audience. Nonetheless, it’s still a decent choice for a Halloween watch if you’re interested.

Spoilers Ahead.

Five Night at Freddy’s (2023) Plot Summary and Movie Synopsis

The film starts with a security guard of an amusement arcade running for his life as he fears something is haunting him. He struggles a lot to survive the attack, and the attacker is much more determined. After a while, we see the security guard all tied up in a chair, and a piece of machinery is about to attack his face. He tries his best to remove himself from the chair but fails to do so.

Later, we are introduced to the protagonist of the story, Mike, who has had a tough childhood. When he was young. His younger brother was taken away from the woods, where they went to picnic with their parents. A car grabs his younger brother and leaves. From that time, he is in search of the abductor, and this continuous search affects his mental well-being. He doesn’t last in any job whatsoever. He has his little sister, Abby. Mike and Abby’s aunt, Jane, are continuously trying her way to get custody of Abby while Mike is trying everything not to let that happen.

What makes Mike take the job at Freddy’s?

One day, in his job as a security guard in a shopping mall, Mike sees a boy being taken away hurriedly by an adult. Mike thinks of it as a case of kidnapping, so he rushes to the adult and then hits him badly. As it turns out, that adult is the kid’s father, and Mike loses his job. He goes to a career counselor named Steve Raglan, who is very upset with Mike’s track record. However, soon, he offers him a job at Freddy’s, where he needs to do the night shift. But, since Mike needs to take care of Abby, he can not take any night jobs. Raglan still gives him his card in case there is a change of thought.

Later, Aunt Jane arrives at Abby’s school and talks to the principal about Mike’s recent incident at the job. She suggests that Mike is not at all capable of taking care of Abby. Mike is on the verge of giving Abby up to Jane when the principal tells him that Abby has him in her every drawing. This means, to Abby, Mike’s presence is more important than anything else. In other terms, Abby doesn’t want to leave Mike and start living with aunt Jane. This inspires Mike to take up the job at Freddy’s. She asks Max, one of his neighbors, to babysit Abby at night while he is gone.

What happens to Max and her company?

Mike having a job doesn’t sit well with aunt Jane. Since Mike has no record of violence inside the house or anything bad attached to his name, she plans with Max and her brother to make things tougher for Mike. Max’s brother plans to break into Freddy’s just as soon as Mike’s shift ends. This will make him look guilty, and Jane can easily get Abby’s custody.

One day, when Mike leaves Freddy’s, Max’s brother, along with his two friends, enter the place. They start breaking everything at random, making a huge mess of it all. Suddenly, a robot toy attacks one of them. Soon, all three of them are killed by these robot toys. Max enters the arcade hoping to find her brother, but soon she is killed too. A local police officer named Venessa finds this and visits Mike whom she has met earlier.

From the beginning, Mike has seen suspicious activities take place inside Freddy’s, but what Venessa tells him doesn’t make much sense. Anyway, when Mike tells Venessa about his missing younger brother, she realizes his circumstances and doesn’t file any complaint against him to the authorities. Since Max is not picking up her phone (and Mike does not know that she is already dead), Mike decides to take Abby to Freddy’s along with him.

What happens to Abby at Freddy’s?

On her very first night, Abby makes friends with the robot toys, which makes Mike curious about their existence in the first place. Since they are robots, someone must be controlling them. Later, he learns from Venessa that in the 80s, a lot of children went missing in these areas; just as Mike’s younger brother. She believes that the ghosts of those children control the robots. They do not want to harm anyone, especially Abby.

As time progresses, Abby starts befriending the robot toys even more, and one night, when she tries to touch one of them, an electric shock goes through her body. Right after that, Venessa asks Mike not to bring Abby anywhere near Freddy’s anymore.

Mike hopes that if Venessa is correct and the robots are controlled by the ghosts of the abducted children, they must know where his brother is or who the abductor is. He tries to use Abby to get to the bottom of it. But, right after the electric shock incident, he can’t take the risk of taking Abby with him to the place again. So, he decides to find the truth on his own. He calls Aunt Jane and asks her to take care of Abby until he comes back.

Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) Movie Ending Explained:

Does Mike truly give up Abby in exchange for his Younger Brother?

Mike always has these dreams where he ends up at the exact time his brother was abducted. But since joining Freddy’s, his dream has changed its course. Up until now, he is alone in his dream, but now, he finds other children too. He uses pills and nature sounds to help him sleep so that he can go back to the exact scenario and find out who the abductor is. So, he does the same thing this time, but only this time, his dream has a different setup.

In his dreams, unlike every other time, this time, he finds himself standing in front of his family, and his family awaits him, embracing him with warmth. The other children come to him and say if he gives them Abby, they will make sure that Mike gets back his parents and younger brother. In a moment’s hesitation, Mike says yes to the proposition since he has craved his family for so long.

But soon, he realizes that this cannot be real, and his true family, Abby, is now in danger due to all the manipulation that leads him to say yes to the proposition. In the dream, he tries to stop Abby from getting into any harm, but he is repeatedly attacked by those children. In reality, a robot toy injures him badly, and somehow, he manages to escape and ends up in Venessa’s hands.

Is Mike able to save Abby from William?

The robot toys approached Mike’s home, where Abby is in her room. The toy attacks Aunt Jane (may even have killed her) and leaves for Freddy with Abby. Meanwhile, Venessa confronts Mike with the great revelation. Mike learns that her father, William Afton, is responsible for the kidnappings of all the kids, including Mike’s younger brother. She was unable to stop him back in the day, but now she decides to help Mike.

Mike goes to Freddy’s, and with the help of a Taser gun, he short-circuits all the robots. Just when he is about to leave the place unharmed with Abby comes the kidnapper himself, William Afton, Venessa’s father. And guess what? This is the same person who gave Mike the job in the first place, Mr. Steve Raglan, the career counselor. Mike fails to do anything to him but later realizes how William is able to control the ghosts of the children.

Venessa tells him earlier that inside the robots, William used to keep the bodies of the children. But on a board inside Freddy’s, there are drawings that seem like the yellow rabbit (the suit William wears) is making the other robot toys happy. In other words, William has created a hoax to the ghosts of the children that he makes them happy. This is the reason why they are following him. So, Mike asks Abby to draw a painting describing the real truth.

Abby puts a painting on the board, removing an older one. In this picture, it shows that the yellow rabbit has killed all the other robot toys. This somehow triggers the ghosts of the children, and they now remember the torture and the pain they had to go through. Perhaps William has never shown his face to the children, and this is the reason the ghosts are not aware of the yellow rabbit’s real identity. But now, since they know the culprit, William has nowhere to go. They punish him vigorously, cutting him in places inside the suit itself.

Is Venessa dead?

When Abby is about to put the picture on the board, Venessa tries to stop her father, William, from harming her. But William puts a knife inside her, leaving her severely injured. However, Mike and Abby are able to bring her into the hospital in time. As it appears, she will be fine within a week or two. There is a growing chemistry between Mike and Venessa, and Abby has eventually found the person she likes to call family.

Will there be a Five Nights at Freddy’s 2?

In the end, we see William struggling in the corner of a room, seeking help from one of the ghost children. The ghost, however, shuts the door without helping him ease the pain. But the intriguing part is at the end of the film, someone wakes up the driver of a taxi and places a toy beside him. The driver is the same one from the past who helped Abby reach Freddy with the robot toy that night. Who placed the robot? Well, there is no certain answer to that. So, this may be the premise of an upcoming sequel.

Read More: From ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ to ‘M3GAN’: Top 10 Blumhouse Movies According to Global Box Office

Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) Movie Trailer

Five Nights at Freddy’s Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail,
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller | Runtime: 1h 49 Mins

Where to watch Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)