Welcome to the final installment of this series - the end is near! The last we heard of our Damsel heroine, Elodie’s father died trying to rescue her, Elodie’s stepmother risked her life to find her stepdaughter, and Floria is now in the clutches of the dragon.
Time to wrap this up.
The final section of the movie covers roughly the last thirty minutes of the movie. Elodie quickly makes her way back through the parts of the cave under the mountain, cuts her hair, and prepares for battle. In a touching frame, viewers see the dragon cradling Floria while mourning her deceased children (daughters by the way). As Elodie and the dragon finally face-off, our female princess-now-warrior tries to tell the dragon the truth that she has misunderstood for centuries:
The human sacrifices were innocent; the dragon has been killing innocent daughters just as her innocent daughters were slain.
The dragon mother does not listen and Elodie is forced to fight her in a heart-wrenching chain of events. Elodie suffers many wounds, the dragon’s eye is stabbed, Elodie also lands a wound on the dragon’s underbelly, and then Elodie figures out how to deal the final blow.
“I am not one of them.” - Elodie
“Accept your fate…as I have mine. We are to die alone.” - Dragon
Slowing down to listen to what sound like whispers from centuries of innocent girls, Elodie discovers a curved piece of stone that reflects the dragon’s breath. Luring the wounded dragon to the stone, Elodie jumps out of the line of fire just in time to witness the dragon suffering from her own reflected fire; it is over.
Time to unpack.
Throughout this film, lies and truth have played a major role in the plot and characterization. Elodie’s “greatest weakness” is that she always tells the truth, and in her most dire hour, she faces death to make sure the truth is known. To me, the dragon is the most misunderstood character of the whole film; she has been deceived for centuries and acting on her own sense of justice. The dragon seems to operate under a more ancient eye-for-an-eye system while Elodie mostly seems to follow knightly virtues, and at the climax of the film, the two ethical systems come face-to-face. Also, the overwhelming sense of empathy one cannot help but feel for the dragon mother at this point in the film harkens to the age-old question of, “can you feel sorry for a monster?” Consider this perspective Chapman takes on the empathy readers might feel towards the monsters in Beowulf:
“Sympathy for Grendel and his mother inheres not only in these passages, but perhaps even more strongly in the dramatic situations where the monsters play a part. In the fight with Beowulf, Grendel does not resist; his whole intent is to escape. Grendel's mother undertakes her venture in no spirit of pride or anger, but under the necessity of revenge. A melancholy desperation about both monsters in their actions against the hero arouses pity despite the moral polarities” (334).
Grendel and his mother are simply acting on instinct, instinct based on fear or motherly love. In the same way, the dragon is simply acting as a mother avenging her children. Revenge, however, is incongruent with the ethical code in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as knights are supposed to follow Christian values like mercy and forgiveness (even though a perfect knight would not need forgiveness, but that is a thought for another day). It is interesting to juxtapose the ethical codes of Beowulf and Sir Gawain when remembering they are both Medieval texts that write about plots that occurred roughly around the same time.
So, as the dragon mother lay defeated, will Elodie deliver the fatal blow after telling her the full truth?
Without spoiling everything, let us skip (as the film does, rather abruptly) forward to the latest wedding ceremony in the Kingdom of Aurea. The royal family has not given up trying to appease the dragon with sacrifices, but this wedding will be the last one. As the camera follows a rolling coin into the courtyard where the wedding is taking place, viewers are reminded of the coin thrown into the pit along with Elodie.
Elodie has returned…for revenge!
Looking like death incarnate, Elodie disrupts the ceremony, tells all who will to leave while they can, and lo and behold, the dragon appears above her. Elodie exclaims to the remaining royal family, “This is the end of your story,” and the dragon exacts justice and burns the castle and its rulers to the ground.
Before recapping the final scene of the movie, it is important to note that while Elodie and the dragon avenge all of the innocent girls over centuries and the innocent dragon children, there is proof of mercy and forgiveness: Elodie let the dragon live. Even after kidnapping Floria, participating in the lie the Kingdom of Aurea fabricated, and killing her father, Elodie lets the dragon live - they are even friends at this point.
After justice is served, Elodie walks away from the castle, and the shadow of the dragon flying above her makes it look like our heroine has grown wings. This image is quite powerful, but what makes it so powerful is continued right up until the end of the film. The last few characters we see are Elodie, Floria, the stepmother, and the dragon.
Women outlasted men, deception, and certain death.
The film Damsel perfectly blends Medieval virtues and values from Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to create a riveting plot with a female protagonist at the forefront. Elodie stands for two ethical codes at the same time and yet, she and the film suggest that what Medieval literary history is missing is “girl power” and emphasis on landscapes, rituals, and creatures through a female lens.
I hope you enjoyed this series, and if you liked any of these posts, go watch the movie!
Works Cited
Chapman, Robert L. “Alas, Poor Grendel.” College English, vol. 17, no. 6, 1956, pp. 334–37. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/372370.
“Damsel (2024): Transcript.” Scraps from the Loft, 8 Mar. 2024, scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/damsel-2024-transcript/