Josh Ockmann walks into a dimly lit university library late at night, searching for a man named Douglas Ziegler. He moves between stacks carrying a small flashlight and a laptop bag; as he approaches a locked computer terminal, something reaches out of the screen. A humanoid apparition clamps against his chest and presses him into the railing, and Josh's body goes limp as an invisible force drains his life. Days later, his girlfriend Mattie Webber climbs the stairs to his apartment, calling his name and finding the place in disarray. She opens a closet and discovers Josh's pet cat barely alive from starvation; when she rushes back to the living room to tell him, she freezes at the sight of his motionless body suspended from a ceiling beam: Josh has killed himself, the nylon Ethernet cable knotted around his neck and supporting his weight. Mattie unhooks him and drops to the floor with the cable still looped over the beam, stunned into a trembling disbelief.

After Josh's funeral, Mattie receives an avalanche of electronic messages that appear to be from him--emails and instant messages that alternately beg for help and repeat the single phrase, "HELP ME." She and her friends speculate that Josh's machine is still running and an automated loop or virus is sending the messages. In the days that follow, other students and neighbors begin to vanish or collapse without explanation. At home, Mattie opens a package Josh mailed two days before he died; inside she finds several rolls of red tape and a brief, frantic note that reads that the tape "keeps them out," though Josh admits he does not understand why it works. She wraps the tape around a light fixture and around an interior doorway, following his instruction, and the strips cling tightly as if they are meant to form a fragile barrier.

Dexter McCarthy, a man who bought Josh's computer secondhand, discovers disturbing files on the hard drive. He contacts Mattie and brings a laptop full of encrypted clips and voice recordings Josh recorded while investigating a colleague named Douglas Ziegler. Mattie meets Dex in a coffee shop where he plays the files: Josh has been infiltrating Ziegler's system and filming conversations about a research project that tuned into "frequencies no one knew existed." In one recorded segment, Ziegler speaks into a webcam with a pained, urgent cadence, explaining that when those frequencies were opened, something crossed over. On-screen, Ziegler's hands tremble as he demonstrates rooms wrapped in red tape. The footage ends with a frantic cut as Ziegler's expression collapses into fear.

Mattie and Dex trace Josh's last known activities to a remote lab and to archived messages Ziegler left on his own machine. They find, taped inside Josh's old computer case, a USB flash drive and a printed program--Josh's attempt to counteract whatever his hack unleashed. Josh's counterprogram is physically affixed inside the PC with strips of the same red tape, apparently hidden there when he realized that the drive itself would be a target if left exposed. Dex, who initially purchased the machine obliviously, now realizes how deep Josh's involvement ran: Josh had created a code that could spread through low-bandwidth channels, and he believed he had a fix hidden on the stick.

Mattie visits the apartment of Douglas Ziegler to confront him in person. She finds his unit sealed and plastered with red tape on walls, doorframes, and light switches. When she knocks, a disoriented Ziegler opens the door; he speaks in clipped sentences about "them" and the frequencies he discovered. At a moment of terrifying instability, he suddenly lunges toward the window, mutters that there is nothing left to be done, and then, before Mattie can stop him, he takes his own life by fastening an electrical cord to a curtain rod and dropping backward. Mattie reels away, the red tape hanging limp around the doorway as an echo of Josh's warning, and she grabs her phone to call Dex.

Dex and Mattie watch the video evidence Josh left--clips showing Ziegler talking about dead spirits traveling back through low-bandwidth technology and images of a spectral mob, pale and malformed, moving through screens. In the footage, Ziegler insists the entities move most easily through old modems and degraded signal channels, and he demonstrates that sheets of red tape placed over wires and ports seem to disrupt their passage. Dex tests a small strip and finds it repellent to the pale apparitions that begin to gather visually in the corrupted video files. The two of them begin to piece together Josh's last actions: he and Ziegler had matched frequencies that opened a portal from the realm of the dead into the network of the living; Josh then attempted to build a patch that would force the portal closed again.

Mattie and Dex assemble a ragtag group to locate the central hub spreading the infection: a subterranean server cluster linked to campus and to local service providers. They travel to an aging communications building and force their way into a locked basement where a bank of modems and routers glows with an otherworldly light. Dex carries Josh's flash drive; Mattie clutches rolls of red tape around her shoulders. They are greeted by the corrupted inhabitants of the network--figures that manifest from monitors and cords, gray-skinned and wet-looking, moving jerkily on crooked limbs. One of Mattie's friends, Isabelle Fuentes, arrives unexpectedly; she is pulled toward a flickering monitor by some imperceptible tug and, despite Mattie's grabbing hands, Isabelle's eyes glaze over as a pale hand reaches through the screen and presses against her face. Isabelle crumbles into a fine gray dust that pours from her mouth and nostrils onto the concrete floor, leaving Mattie to scream against the walls.

Within the room, the specters do not bite or slash; they steal resolve. Dex and Mattie notice that victims do not fight after they look directly at the creatures; instead their limbs go limp and they slump as if their will has been erased. Stone and Tim, two other friends who had accompanied Mattie, freeze mid-step; a thin, flexible tendril snakes from a monitor and wraps around Tim's throat while Stone screams until her voice is smothered; both are absorbed into the greyness, their skin slackening and turning to powder that the spirits seem to inhale like a fog. Outside the server rack, someone bangs on the door as another pale face appears in the doorway and the red tape hanging there flutters, then goes slack. Mattie wraps the tape around a server column and it crackles as the ghostly figures recoil from its width.

Dex and Mattie insert Josh's counterprogram into the main console. Dex types the recovery command, watching the code crawl across the screen as he hits Execute. The network seizes and a hush seems to pass over the room; monitors go black and the apparitions retreat into the screens with a collective slither. For a brief, tense moment, the building is still. Then, without warning, a horn blares outside and a far-off roar turns into a thunderous impact: a commercial airliner, off course, slams into the upper stories of the building directly above them. The roof explodes inward as the jet tears through walls and hallway, and a sheet of flame and paper rains down into the lobby stairwell. Debris collapses around the basement door and the building shudders. Dex grabs Mattie's arm and pulls her through a service exit as concrete and wiring grate down into the basement, the server room filling with the acrid smoke of burnt insulation. They crawl, coughing, out into the street as the tower above them burns and the sky glows orange.

They flee the city in a battered truck, driving under an oppressive silence. Phone towers still hiss with intermittent static; billboards flicker in impossible patterns. Over the AM dial, a military voice cuts in with a terse announcement: the Army has established several safe zones with no Internet, no cell service, and no televisions--pockets where survivors gather physically rather than digitally. The broadcast instructs civilians to make for the nearest designated area by road. Mattie hears nothing but the dead-eyed glance of the man steering behind the wheel as they pass abandoned cars and shuttered storefronts; piles of ash sit in doorways where people once stood. Dex drives erratically around a stopped bus, and when the truck slows, pale forms begin to emerge from dark alleys and from underneath overpasses. They press themselves against the truck in small, cold hands, pulling at the window seals.

The next morning the group wakes in the truck to find the vehicle ringed by grey people. They pound on the sides and chant in hollow voices. Dex floors the engine and swerves, slamming through a group of the creatures; one fast-moving, malformed figure with four arms lunges into the windshield and claws at the hood, but Mattie slams the transmission into gear and they do a high-speed maneuver that sends the creature tumbling off into a spray of dust. Mattie finally tosses her own cell phone out the window and watches it shatter on the asphalt; the device had become a tracker, a beacon that the entities used to home in on them. In the rearview mirror the road behind is emptying of cars and people; everyone who stays behind becomes still and quiet and finally disappears into the same fine gray dust.

As they approach the coordinates broadcast by the military, they find a ring of makeshift barricades surrounding a collection of tents and a small community of survivors. Soldiers in fatigues check truck beds and personal bags for electronics; men and women stand behind a line of sandbags flanked by people wearing masks and heavy coats, wrapped in red tape around their wrists and collars. The soldiers motion Dex and Mattie into the camp and lead them through a checkpoint where, one by one, they turn over phones and laptops to be crushed. A volunteer doctor bandages a young man whose lips have been chewed raw by teeth marks; another survivor, a woman with a baby, stares at Mattie like she is a stranger who might contaminate the small zone with contact. In the tent city, people speak in low voices about what happened downtown--the screens, the websites that asked "Do you want to see a ghost?" and the images that relentless viewers could not look away from. They tell Mattie that entire apartment blocks streamed the page and then everyone in them slumped over and vanished.

Inside one guarded hut, Dex and Mattie watch a looping surveillance reel played by a maintenance crew: it shows dozens of people watching a single web page in a packed auditorium. As each person clicks and watches the same churning specter on the screen, they pause, their eyes go wide, and their posture sags. A woman near the back clutches her stomach and collapses; her body falls forward and she disintegrates into ash that drifts away on the ventilation current. The maintenance crew presses pause and points to the edges of the frame where signals were logged coming from a particular cluster of servers--the same network Dex and Mattie had attacked and thought they had cleansed.

The survivors debate whether the virus Josh wrote succeeded. Some insist that the upload crashed the system and bought them time; others insist the reboot proves the infestation reasserts itself as infrastructure regenerates. Dex insists he did everything he could, that Josh's code was the only plausible defense. Mattie plays the last voice mail Josh left on her phone, a file that sounds clipped and frightened; in it he articulates his guilt for having opened the frequencies and his hope that someone will find the stick he hid. She listens to his timbre and remembers how he went from an impulsive hacker to a man convinced he had unleashed something monstrous. She vows, to no one in particular, to keep moving, to keep surviving in a world with fewer lights.

Outside the safe zone's perimeter, a satellite image shows the emptiness of entire downtown areas. The camera pans over glass towers whose dark windows reflect nothing but sky. The broadcast presses on the importance of avoiding re-establishing long-range networks. The Army narrator warns survivors that cities are compromised; the hardware itself can harbor the dead. Dex and Mattie load supplies into the back of the truck and meet other survivors who aim to travel to outpost coordinates farther inland.

In the final moments, Mattie narrates in a low, factual voice as she sits in the passenger seat and stares at the receding skyline. She catalogs the adjustments everyone makes--no more phones, no more Internet, the re-learning of how to barter and to live by the land. She watches people around the camp stitch small, dense folds of red tape over generator terminals and board up satellite dishes with strips that refuse the pale intruders. The camera pulls back to show the truck driving over a cracked overpass and into a countryside that appears untouched at first glance. Yet in the window of an abandoned apartment twelve blocks behind them, a figure stands at a glass pane and looks out at the emptiness; it is Josh, not as the man she knew but changed into one of them--grey skin, still eyes, watching the road where life had once moved. He presses a palm to the glass and whispers nothing. The image smudges as his hand slips away and he turns back into the shadows of the city.

Mattie sits forward, gripping the tape in her hands. She folds it and hands pieces to two nearby survivors who will use it to seal their tent. She watches the road and reports precisely what she sees and what she knows: the cities are not empty of life, but of the human will to live as it once existed; the modern networks that fostered connection now transmit something that can absorb people into a gray existence. She breathes in and out, looks at the faces in the truck, and then stares ahead into the fields as the vehicle crosses into the uncertain day. The film closes on the truck receding into a horizon line framed by a sky that promises nothing; the last frame lingers on the city window where Josh's figure dissolves into a flicker, a final confirmation that the world Mattie knew has been altered forever and that the survivors must now persist without the technologies that once defined them.

The ending of the 2025 medical drama series Pulse concludes with Dr. Danielle "Danny" Simms and Dr. Xander Phillips confronting their fraught relationship and the intense pressures of their roles during a hurricane crisis, culminating in a tense decision about who will become the permanent Chief Resident at Maguire Hospital.

Expanding on the ending scene by scene:

The final episode, titled "Kennedy," opens with the hospital still under lockdown due to the hurricane, with emergency cases flooding in and the staff stretched to their limits. Danny, now acting Chief Resident, is grappling with the weight of leadership and the fallout from her complicated past with Xander, who has been reinstated to help manage the crisis.

Early in the episode, Danny and Xander face each other in the ER, their unresolved conflict palpable. Flashbacks intersperse the present, revealing the origins of their fallout, including a sexual harassment complaint that fractured their trust and the hospital staff's unity. The tension escalates as they are forced to collaborate on critical cases, their professional and personal boundaries blurring under pressure.

Midway through the episode, a critical patient arrives with life-threatening injuries from the hurricane's aftermath. Danny leads the team in a high-stakes surgery, demonstrating her capability and resolve. Xander supports her but remains distant, their interactions marked by a mix of respect and lingering resentment.

As the storm intensifies outside, the hospital's power flickers, symbolizing the fragility of their situation. The staff debates who should be the permanent Chief Resident, with factions forming around Danny and Xander. The civil war within the hospital staff mirrors the external chaos, highlighting the strain on relationships and leadership.

In the climax, Danny and Xander have a private confrontation in an empty hallway. They lay bare their grievances and fears, acknowledging the damage done but also the necessity of moving forward for the sake of the hospital and their patients. This moment is charged with emotional honesty but does not resolve their relationship fully.

The series ends with the hospital stabilizing as the hurricane passes. The final scene shows Danny standing in the ER, looking out at the calm after the storm, symbolizing her acceptance of the challenges ahead. Xander is seen preparing to leave the hospital, his fate ambiguous but suggesting a departure from the leadership conflict.

The fates of the main characters at the end are:

• Dr. Danielle "Danny" Simms: She remains the acting Chief Resident, poised to take on permanent leadership despite the personal and professional turmoil she has endured.

• Dr. Xander Phillips: He steps back from the Chief Resident role, leaving the hospital to some degree, his future uncertain but separate from the ongoing leadership.

Other main characters are shown continuing their work in the ER, affected by the events but committed to their roles.

This detailed ending highlights the intense pressures of hospital leadership during crisis, the complexity of personal relationships in high-stress environments, and the unresolved tensions that persist even as the immediate storm passes.

The movie titled Pulse produced in 2025 does not have any information indicating the presence of a post-credits scene. The search results related to Pulse (2025) focus on the plot and ending of the medical drama series but do not mention any post-credits or after-credits scenes. Additionally, the list of films with post-credits scenes does not include Pulse (2025).

Therefore, based on available information, Pulse (2025) does not feature a post-credits scene.

During the hurricane in Pulse (2025), Danielle 'Danny' Simms, a nurse at a Miami trauma center, faces the challenge of managing an influx of injured high school athletes from a bus accident caused by the storm. She reluctantly accepts a temporary promotion to chief doctor due to staff shortages. Alongside treating multiple trauma cases, including the bus driver and the hospital director's daughter, she also deals with escalating flooding in Miami. Concurrently, she files a sexual harassment complaint against her former boyfriend, Dr. Xander Phillips, which causes tension and resentment among hospital staff, complicating her professional and personal life during the crisis.

The sexual harassment complaint filed by Danielle Simms against Dr. Xander Phillips leads to his suspension and causes significant tension among the hospital staff. The complaint is leaked, resulting in resentment and jealousy among Danielle's colleagues. The staff struggles with their personal feelings and the fallout from the complicated and illicit past relationship between Danielle and Xander. This interpersonal drama unfolds amid the high-pressure environment of the hospital during the hurricane crisis, affecting teamwork and professional boundaries.

The hurricane in Pulse (2025) serves as a central plot device that triggers a surge of trauma cases at the Miami trauma center, forcing the medical staff to work under extreme pressure. It causes a bus accident involving high school athletes, flooding large parts of Miami, and leads to a hospital lockdown. The disaster intensifies the personal and professional conflicts among characters, including Danielle and Xander, as they must navigate their complicated relationships while managing life-or-death medical emergencies. The hurricane's impact extends beyond the immediate crisis, influencing the characters' decisions and interactions throughout the series.

Danielle Simms and Xander Phillips have a complicated and illicit romantic history. They were previously in a relationship and essentially living together. This past relationship becomes public knowledge after Danielle files a sexual harassment complaint against Xander, which is leaked to the hospital staff. The revelation complicates their professional interactions and affects the dynamics within the hospital, as colleagues react to the personal drama amid the ongoing medical crisis.

During the hurricane crisis in Pulse (2025), key patients include a bus driver and several high school football players injured in a bus accident caused by the storm. Additionally, the hospital director's daughter is among the critical cases. The medical team, led temporarily by Danielle Simms, rushes these patients to the operating table to treat blunt trauma and other injuries resulting from the accident and the hurricane's impact on Miami.

The 2025 medical drama series Pulse is not family friendly and is rated TV-MA, indicating it is intended for mature audiences.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting content includes:

• Medical gore: graphic surgeries with visible incisions, blood, bones, and organs.
• Nudity: scenes showing patients and staff partially nude, including side views of female breasts and male nudity during medical procedures.
• Sexual content and harassment: depiction of sexual harassment allegations and some sexual situations, though described as complex rather than explicit.
• Strong language: occasional use of strong profanity such as the f-word and s-word.
• Emotional intensity: the show deals with heavy interpersonal drama and trauma among hospital staff, which may be distressing for sensitive viewers.

Overall, Pulse contains mature themes, graphic medical scenes, nudity, and strong language, making it unsuitable for children or sensitive audiences.