Sam Raimi's Alternate Send Help Ending Explained

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Sam Raimi's desert island picture "Send Help" is a wish-fulfillment film for anyone who has ever had to deal with a difficult boss. Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a long-time office worker whose tenacity and skills keep the business humming. Because she's mousy in appearance, however, and because she likes to eat pungent tuna fish sandwiches in the office, her ultra-male a-hole co-workers dismiss her and claim her work as their own. Her new boss, the spoiled brat Bradley (Dylan O'Brien), is unimpressed with her, and denies her a long-promised promotion because, welp, she doesn't play golf.

The tables turn, however, when Linda and Bradley crash-land on an uncharted desert isle on their way to a business conference. Linda is a fan of the TV series "Survivor," and has studied survival techniques for years. Bradley has no discernible skills whatsoever. All of a sudden, Linda holds all the power, and can provide water, food, shelter, and comfort to them both. Will Bradley shake off his brattiness and learn to be humble? Or will this explode into comedic, violent antagonism? Knowing what we do about Sam Raimi, it will likely be the latter. 

There is a twist ending to "Send Help," which I shan't reveal here, but which the film broadcasts pretty early on. It will be especially obvious to anyone who has seen Ruben Östlund's 2022 Oscar-Nominated film "Triangle of Sadness."

"Send Help" is now on on Prime Video, Apple TV, and other online retailers, and hits physical media on April 21 (you can pre-order it), and it contains the film's alternate ending. It seems that Linda was originally intended to have a final, wicked scene with her co-worker, played by Dennis Haysbert. The final scene is described in a recent article in EW.

Caution: spoilers ahead.

In the theatrical cut of "Send Help," Linda does manage to escape the uncharted desert isle, having bested Bradley in a final, bloody confrontation. Back in civilization, Linda has parlayed her experience on the island into a career writing self-help books. She is now rich and drives a fancy car. The final shots are of Linda riding off into the sunset. She has told people that Bradley simply didn't survive the plane crash. Linda got her comeuppance, and Bradley, one could argue, got what he deserved.

The extended ending, however, added an additional dark twist to Linda's survival, and it has to do with some horrible things Linda did back on the island. You see, partway through "Send Help," Bradley's fiancee, Zuri (Edyll Ismail) arrived on the island looking for him. Zuri found Linda first, however, which Linda doesn't appreciate. Linda, it seems, was perfectly happy to be stranded and didn't want to be rescued. She certainly didn't want to see bratty Bradley return to his old life and become a corporate a-hole again. As such ... well, she does something very terrible to Zuri. 

It seems that, in the alternate ending, Dennis Haysbert's character, named Franklin, found out about what happened to Zuri, and implied that he intends to blackmail Linda. The actual details of the scene will have to be watched to be discovered, but it seems that Linda was prepared for this contingency and manages to get the drop on Franklin. Don't you dare blackmail Linda Liddle.

The special features will be made available through the film's digital purchase, and the physical release will have over two hours' worth of bonus content.

Those who have seen "Send Help" might have left the theater asking themselves if Linda Liddle was a good person. The power dynamic is delicious, of course, and the premise has audiences aching for Linda to become a more assertive person. She was oppressed back at the office, a victim of workplace misogyny, and wholly underestimated merely because of the way she looks. As the only survival expert on the island, we're happy to see her become assertive, even aggressive, with Bradley. Bradley, meanwhile, needs to be taught a lesson. 

Sam Raimi, however, is too playful and too aggressive a filmmaker to let the dynamic stay there, and begins to push "Send Help" into some pretty dark territory. Linda doesn't just become aggressive with Bradley; she literally threatens his life. In an excruciating scene, she drugs Bradley and threatens to castrate him. By the end of the movie, Linda and Bradley are doing some pretty brazen acts of violence against one another. 

Indeed, the violence is so aggressive, one might begin to question if Linda has become a terrible human being. She didn't just regain her agency, she became vicious. She was willing to kill for her newfound power. That's a much less conventional "inspiring message." 

If the alternate ending of "Send Help" sees Linda facing down a blackmailer, then it implies that she remained aggressive and kind of monstrous. There's a wicked sense of fun to that, and Sam Raimi loves to blend comedy and horror, but the alternate ending would alter the moral of the story. Linda wasn't just free to be assertive. She would have entered her villain era.