Clayface ending explained: is Matt Hagen dead or alive — and what the final scene means for the DCU

James Watkins' film opened in theaters on October 23. It's the third film in James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Universe, written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt, a rising actor whose face is destroyed by a gangster. Naomi Ackie plays Dr. Caitlin Corr, the fringe scientist whose experimental nanotech treatment rebuilds him and turns his body into something that can take any shape. Max Minghella plays her fiancé, Gotham police detective John Borrelli.

How the revenge ends

Matt spends the film working through the people who ruined him. The last two on his list are crime boss Markos Szabo and Theresa Lopes, and he kills them both at the Gotham club where he first met Theresa.

Then he goes after someone who never wronged him. Borrelli has been investigating the deaths and getting close, and he is also the man Caitlin is going to marry. Matt kills him and takes his identity to get to her.

The kill switch

When Caitlin finds out, she shoots Matt, and he falls from a window into the storm outside. On the street, he finally loses control of his shape and becomes the brown-gray Clayface of the comics. In a moment of clarity, he begs her to end it.

Caitlin's treatment has a built-in failsafe. She triggers it, and Matt's body breaks down into a paste that washes into the sewers. For a while, the film plays as if that's the end of him.

The final scene

It isn't. Caitlin tries to go back to her life, and on the street she hands some change to a homeless man. He bows to her the way Matt used to, and she flinches.

The man walks back to a shack in the sewers and turns into Matt. A moment later, Caitlin is there too. She says she followed him, tells him she loves him, and they embrace. Then the film shows what's actually going on: there is no Caitlin. Matt has made her out of himself, and he's playing both sides of the conversation.

"I was trying to introduce the character as a full meal in itself," Watkins told Variety.

So is Matt dead?

No. The final scenes establish four things about him:

• He survived the kill switch.
• He can still become other people, down to a stranger on the street.
• His powers have grown: he can now produce a second, separate person.
• His obsession with Caitlin survived along with him.

There's no mid-credits or post-credits scene, so the shack is the last thing the film shows.

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What it means for the DCU

Matt has already been seen after this film, just not in live action. Clayface appeared in the animated Creature Commandos, voiced by Alan Tudyk, as a shape-shifting impersonator for hire who ends up fighting Rick Flag Sr. and Eric Frankenstein. Gunn has confirmed that's the same Matt Hagen.

The timeline makes that work. Gunn confirmed on Threads before release that Clayface takes place before 2025's Superman: "Before. It's the first DCU film out of chronological order." The ending is how Matt gets from Caitlin's lab to the version the DCU already showed.

What the film doesn't connect him to is Batman. There's no Batman in it, no mention of him and no Easter eggs pointing his way. Watkins left the question of what comes next to his bosses. Asked by Variety about Clayface's future, he said: "That's a question for James Gunn."

Gunn has said only that the film "isn't the last we'll see of Clayface," adding: "And I can't wait for you guys to see what we do with him."

The film opened at No. 1 in North America with $24.5 million, and $43 million worldwide, against a reported $44 million budget.

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