The dramatic 'Furiosa' ending, explained

• Director George Miller gives "Furiosa" a dramatic conclusion.
• It features a faceoff between the two leads played by Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth.
• The final sequence is one that will stay with you for some time.

"Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" is a thrilling revenge tale set over 15 years that finds Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) plucked from her family in "The Green Place" as a child by the egotistical Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and his gang. Growing up in the Wasteland and eventually under the rule of Immortan Joe, Furiosa's lifelong quest is to find her way home and kill Dementus, the man who filled her life with chaos.

But by the end of "Furiosa," she's only able to accomplish one of those goals.

The ending features a dramatic showdown between Furiosa and Dementus in the middle of the Wasteland

At the conclusion of the movie, Furiosa teams with Immortan Joe to successfully end Dementus's reign at the Gas Town outpost, which is known as "The 40-Day War." That leads to Furiosa's high-speed bike race through the Wasteland to track down a fleeing Dementus.

The warlord and his goons split up in different directions to distract Furiosa. The villain rides off into the Wasteland in the middle of a sandstorm, thinking he has escaped her wrath, letting his ego get the better of him.

But Dementus later wakes up in his makeshift shelter to find that Furiosa has emptied his water flask and stolen the front wheel of his bike. She strands him in the middle of nowhere, similar to the way he captured Furiosa's mother, Mary Jo Bassa (Charlee Fraser), in the opening sequence.

Furiosa beats him into submission and ferociously demands that he give her back the memory of her mother because the warrior is haunted by the way Dementus crucified her. Unfortunately, he can't recall Bassa's death because of how many people he's killed over the years.

By this point, the mustachioed villain has accepted his inevitable fate. But he taunts Furiosa, questioning whether she has it in her to make his death "epic."

The fate of Dementus is a shocking one

The demise of Dementus in the final scene of the movie is quintessential George Miller as it mixes violence with a poetic sense of irony.

In a voiceover from The History Man, he explains that most believe Furiosa cut out Dementus' tongue and then shot him in the head to kill him. However, as the years passed, other stories began to spread. One was that she chained Dementus to the back of her car and dragged him for days before killing him, similar to how Dementus killed the original War Rig driver, Praetorian Jack. Another is that she strung up Dementus on a stake and tortured him, as he did to Furiosa's mother.

But The History Man then revealed Dementus's true fate, told to him straight from Furiosa's lips. High above the Citadel outpost, Dementus spent the rest of his days lying in a room where a peach tree grew from his body.

Furiosa was in possession of peach pits from "The Green Place." Earlier in the movie, we saw one pit that was stuck in the wig she created to escape Rictus Erectus grow into a small tree. Now, we see that under Furiosa's care, the pit created a massive peach tree with an elderly and emaciated Dementus as the root. Miller here shows the irony that a massive piece of sweet nature could come from the body of such evil.

We then see Furiosa pluck the first peach from the tree and bring it to The Breeders, the wives of Immortan Joe, who play a major role in "Mad Max: Fury Road."

The final shot of the movie shows Furiosa hiding the wives in the War Rig, ending the movie the night before the events of "Fury Road" begin.