Hold Your Breath Ending Explained

WARNING: SPOILERS ahead for Hold Your Breath.

The Hulu original movie Hold Your Breath ends with Sarah Paulson’s protagonist Margaret Bellum being lost in a deadly dust storm. Hold Your Breath was released exclusively on Hulu on October 3, 2024. The film, directed by Karrie Crouse and William Joines and written by Crouse, takes place in Oklahoma in the 1930s as horrific dust storms infiltrate the rural area, inspiring strange things to happen. Paulson leads the cast of Hold Your Breath which also includes Amiah Miller, Alona Jane Robbins, Annaleigh Ashford, and 2-time Emmy winner Ebon Moss-Bachrach. The film debuted with a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 42% and has received mixed reviews.

Throughout Hold Your Breath, Paulson’s Margaret and her two daughters Rose (Miller) and Ollie (Robbins) must defend themselves from a series of dust storms that seem to have mysterious and sinister powers. They cover every crack and crevice in their home with the intention of keeping out the mythical Grey Man, who is a character in a spooky story that apparently comes to life. The opening passage of the story reads, “The Grey Man…seeps through the cracks…You’ll breathe him in…do terrible things.” Margaret does her best to protect Rose and Ollie, especially after losing a daughter to the scarlet fever before the events of the film. In the end, Margaret is unable to protect them from the true threat: herself.

The Grey Man’s True Identity Explained

Wallace Grady is the human manifestation of the Grey Man

The Grey Man is believed to be a mythical figure and a surrealistic threat in Hold Your Breath until Moss-Bachrach’s drifter character Wallace Grady strangely appears from underneath the floorboards of Margaret’s barn. Wallace is wearing Margaret’s husband Henry’s jacket, which makes her immediately suspicious of him. Wallace, who comes off as a watered-down version of Robert Mitchum’s Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter, explains that he met Henry and arrives with good intentions. He, like Harry Powell, is a preacher and a con man who professes to be a man of God. Wallace helps Margaret by producing feed for her cattle and strangely seems to inspire rainfall after a long drought.

Although Wallace seems to be a makeshift prophet of sorts, Margaret receives a letter from her husband explaining that a mysterious preacher stole his jacket and made off with gifts he had gotten for Rose and Ollie. Margaret kicks Wallace out once he is exposed, which is where his true identity becomes more ambiguous. He returns only through hallucinations from Margaret’s perspective, as the sinister dust seems to have taken over her grasp on reality. Effectively, Wallace is Margaret’s manifestation of the Grey Man. Through the dust, the Grey Man insidiously takes control of Margaret and inspires her to “do terrible things” as was written in the seemingly fictional story.

What Happened To Margaret & Her Daughters

Rose & Ollie escape their possessed and dangerous mother

Unfortunately for Margaret, the full effect of the Grey Man consumes her at the end of Hold Your Breath. She is left gasping for air in a vicious dust storm where she dies in the final moments of the film as her daughters are able to escape to greener pastures. It becomes clear to Rose, the eldest of the two living daughters, that her mother’s hallucinations of the Grey Man have made her extremely volatile and dangerous, especially after witnessing her murder of Sheriff Bell. Although Margaret was evidently possessed, Rose had no other option but to cut her loose and let the dust consume her. Rose and Ollie get on a train and see fields of wheat, which their mother had told them tales about but they had never seen.

What The Dust On The Train Means For Rose & Ollie

Rose and Ollie will likely never feel truly safe again

The final shot of Hold Your Breath is of lingering dust in the air next to Rose and Ollie on the train. Although they are off to a better life and could potentially be reuniting with their dad, who inexplicably does not appear in the movie whatsoever, the emergence of dust in the air has an unsettling connotation to their collective fate. The Grey Man could be following Rose and Ollie even after they escaped from their hometown but the ending is intentionally left ambiguous, allowing the audience to decide whether Margaret’s daughters are truly safe or will suffer the same end. The scene certainly sends the message that Rose and Ollie will likely never feel truly safe again, no matter where they are.

Why Margaret Killed Esther & Sheriff Bell

Margaret imagined that Esther was Wallace

Wallace appears to be speaking to Margaret in the midst of a dust storm, but his voice is fused together with Esther’s, which is the first hint that Wallace may have been Esther at that moment. Esther had walked into the town dance with a reverend, who Margaret initially sees as Wallace. Margaret begins to see Wallace/The Grey Man in everyone around her, even Sheriff Bell and her own daughter, Rose.

Ultimately, Margaret believed she was shooting at Wallace when he shot and killed Esther and likely believed that Sheriff Bell was Wallace as well when he stabbed her. She did, however, seem to comprehend that she had killed the Sheriff and that she would be hanged, which suggests that she actually knew she was killing the sheriff when he attempted to take Rose and Ollie from her.

Is Wallace Real Or Imagined By Margaret?

Margaret was prone to sleepwalking and delusions

Wallace might have been real when he was first introduced in the film, although the fact that he reemerges through various people suggests that he is, in fact, a demonic type of spirit or mythical creature. There’s no doubt that Wallace Grady is the human manifestation of the Grey Man and is the evil force that Margaret sees as she hallucinates, completely entrenched in the psychotic effect of the strange dust.

It’s also established in Hold Your Breath that Margaret has been prone to sleepwalking and other types of overlaps between her dream state and the real world, which is why she is prescribed sleeping pills. In short, The Grey Man is completely imaginary, but Wallace could have been a real character who Margaret delusionally perceived as the Grey Man.

Did Rose & Ollie Actually See Wallace?

They see him at first but not through their mom’s delusions

Once Margaret is identified as an unreliable narrator in Hold Your Breath, scenes in which Wallace interacts with Rose and Ollie become suspect. In the initial scene where Wallace heals Rose and gets her nose to stop bleeding, Margaret and her daughters all appear to perceive Wallace. It’s only after Margaret kicks Wallace out of her home that his true identity becomes mysterious, as Wallace could have been a real con man but not necessarily the Grey Man. Margaret sees Wallace as the Grey Man towards the end of the film when Rose seems to be agreeing with her mom out of fear. Rose may not actually see Wallace once Margaret’s delusions take over. At one point, Margaret sees Rose as Wallace and nearly kills her.

Was Esther Also Affected By The Grey Man?

Esther’s recovery is never explained in the film

Esther appears to have been overcome by the Grey Man and the dust, which forced Sheriff Bell to take her son away from her after one of her other kids had died in a dust storm. She yells out to Margaret, “You’ll be just like me!“, which appears to foreshadow Margaret succumbing to the Grey Man’s influence. It’s never explained in Hold Your Breath how exactly Esther was able to make a full recovery after seemingly being consumed by the dust and the Grey Man.

Esther mentions that she met a preacher named Everett Lee, who is never shown on screen, and arrives at the dance with a reverend. Presumably, Esther found religion to pull herself out of the Grey Man’s grasp. Once it’s established that Margaret has a warped perception of reality, it becomes difficult to know what is real and imagined, even in the early scenes of the film.

The Real Meaning Of Hold Your Breath’s Ending

The entire Grey Man plot could be inside Margaret’s head

The biggest unanswered question in Hold Your Breath is whether Wallace is truly the Grey Man or if he is simply how Margaret perceives the Grey Man in her altered and compromised mind state. While it’s evident that dust storms have taken the lives of several people in their Oklahoma town, the legitimacy of the sinister magic in the dust could be entirely imagined by Margaret. She is the only one who follows the trajectory of the fictional Grey Man story after “breathing him in“, which results in her terrible actions.

Margaret was already known to exhibit unstable behaviors after losing one of her daughters, which is why Rose says that she is not supposed to sleep in the same room as her. She was prescribed sleeping pills which she also stopped taking in order to stay up to protect Rose and Ollie from Wallace, who could be a very real threat, but ends up becoming imaginary based on Margaret’s instability and lack of sleep. Ultimately, the Grey Man could be a vehicle to portray Margaret’s psychotic break in Hold Your Breath and could be a coping mechanism she invents in response to her immense grief after losing one of her children.