Damsel (2024)

Centuries before the present action, the first sovereign of Aurea mounts an assault on a dragon that occupies a crag in his realm. His force is overwhelmed: every one of the king's soldiers falls beneath the dragon's flames and claws, and the monarch himself is left standing alone before the creature, exposed to its will.

In the present day, Lord Bayford receives an envoy from Queen Isabelle of Aurea proposing a marriage between his eldest daughter, Elodie, and the queen's son, Prince Henry. Lord Bayford, pressed by debts and hoping to secure resources for his impoverished lands, urges Elodie to accept the union and the bride price that accompanies it. Elodie consents under her father's counsel. Lady Bayford, Elodie's stepmother, distrusts Queen Isabelle's motives and begs Elodie to call off the arrangement; Elodie refuses, persuaded that the match will help their people.

Elodie travels to the Aurean capital and meets Prince Henry. At first the pair show little enthusiasm for one another, both reserved and ill at ease in the ceremonial trappings of a royal court. As they spend time together, however, they discover a shared restlessness and yearning to see the world beyond the court, and a tentative, genuine rapport develops between them. Their private exchanges grow warmer even as public rituals proceed.

After the formal wedding, Queen Isabelle brings the new couple to an ancestral mountain ritual site to mark their union in the way Aurea has observed for generations. The queen recounts an old pact: following the first king's attack on the dragon, his lineage secured peace by offering three daughters of the royal house as sacrifices to the beast. At the mountain precipice they enact a ceremonial binding. Elodie and Henry cut the palms of their hands and press them together, mingling blood as part of the rite. Henry bears Elodie across a narrow, exposed causeway that runs above the dragon's lair. At Queen Isabelle's insistence, with courtiers watching, Henry propels Elodie over the edge into the chasm below.

Elodie plummets and strikes rocks. She lands battered and barefoot in the dragon's domain. Flames lick at her and the dragon singles her out; it scorches her leg with fire while she scrambles away. She escapes across the ash-blackened ground as the dragon advances and burns the area of the mountain. While fleeing, she finds a dimly lit cavern where silken, bioluminescent worms hang like glowing threads. She gathers several of these worms and uses their light to move through the dark. In a chamber she finds a message carved into the wall that declares the place unreachable by the dragon, along with the carved names of past victims and a crude map etched into stone. Exhausted, she sleeps on the cave floor; the worms' secret properties cause the burn on her leg to knit while she rests.

Following the etched map, Elodie climbs toward a high ledge and comes upon a dead end at a sheer drop. Nearby she discovers the remains of dragon hatchlings--small, charred carcasses and broken eggshells--evidence that dragon offspring had died here. The sight explains why the dragon demands brides from the royal house: the dragon has suffered losses of its young, and the ritual sacrifices are meant to placate it.

A rescue party, organized by Lord Bayford and driven by fear for Elodie's life, tracks her to the mountain. The dragon descends upon them as they search; it tears through the rescuers with fire and brute force. Soldiers fall; their bodies catch and burn. Lord Bayford is among those killed when the dragon strikes the rescue party, his life ended by the dragon's attack. The slaughter creates a moment of chaos that Elodie seizes. She mounts one of the party's horses and flees across the ridge. When the dragon chases, she dives beneath an overhanging rock and hides; from her concealment she watches the dragon set the surrounding slopes ablaze, reducing the search area to smoke and scorched stone.

Back in the capital, the failure of Elodie's sacrifice alarms Queen Isabelle. Determined to preserve the pact and her family's hold on the kingdom, the queen orders the abduction of Elodie's younger sister, Floria, to serve as a replacement offering. Lady Bayford, frantic, reaches Elodie with the news that Floria has been taken. Learning that the dragon has been used as bait and that Floria is alive but being held to lure others, Elodie resolves to go back to the mountain to retrieve her sister.

Elodie returns to the dragon's domain and prepares a plan to reach Floria. She creates a diversion--leading the beast away by drawing its attention and engaging it directly--while instructing Floria to hide and wait for a chance to escape. When Elodie confronts the dragon, she speaks to it, asserting that the Aurean royalty have deceived everyone. She explains that in the wedding ceremony the brides' and the royal blood were mingled by joining their cut hands, and that the dragon was misled into thinking the princesses were native to Aurea. The dragon rejects this claim, holding to its account that the first king's attack was an unprovoked slaughter and that the sacrifices are a rightful penance. The dragon launches into combat with Elodie, striking and burning as it defends itself and its legacy.

Their fight is fierce and physical: Elodie dodges frenzied strikes, lures the dragon into exposed positions, and manipulates the terrain to her advantage. At a critical moment she maneuvers in such a way that the dragon directs its own fire against itself; the beast recoils and sustains burns of its own making. With the dragon wounded and disoriented, Elodie gains the upper hand and forces it into submission. Up close and under threat, the dragon listens as she lays bare the truth of the royal deception and the map of how the blood mixing misled it about the victims' origins. She takes the glowing silk worms from her pouch and places them on her own wounds and then on the dragon's burned scales; the worms' luminescent filaments close flesh and mend singed hide. Elodie heals herself and heals the dragon in the same gesture, and the dragon, its fires cooled by the ministrations, accepts the revelation.

Elodie rides the dragon back toward the capital and interrupts another wedding ritual at the palace where a new sacrifice is being prepared. She bursts into the ceremony and publicly exposes the treachery: that Queen Isabelle has been orchestrating the exchange of brides and using the kingdom's tradition to conceal murderous bargains. Elodie warns the new bride and her family to flee and urges anyone who can to leave the palace grounds. As chaos erupts among courtiers and priests, the dragon arrives and unleashes its fire upon the structure. Flames consume tapestries and wooden beams; smoke billows through vaulted halls. The dragon drives its breath into throne rooms and galleries, and Aurean nobles and members of the royal household who remain inside are trapped by the inferno.

Queen Isabelle stands amid the conflagration and fails to halt the collapse of her power. Prince Henry, who had been remorseful for his role in casting Elodie from the mountain and who had formed a bond with her earlier, sees what his mother has engineered and makes a conscious choice. He remains at the palace rather than flee. As flames engulf corridors, Henry accepts the consequences of the monarchy's actions and does not attempt to escape the burning halls. The dragon's assault leaves the palace a furnace; the Aurean royal family and their nobles die in the blaze as the structure collapses under heat and flame. The dragon's fire is the direct cause of their deaths: royal figures and courtiers are consumed by smoke and burning timbers, and the palace falls into ruin around them.

After the palace is destroyed and the city reels, Elodie gathers Floria and Lady Bayford, who have fled the court. They secure supplies and load provisions, household goods, and what coin they can carry onto a ship. The dragon accompanies them to the harbor, allowing them space and escort as they prepare to sail. The three women board the vessel; the dragon lifts into the sky above the harbor and flies along the coastline. Elodie, her sister, and Lady Bayford watch Aurea recede as the ship moves into open water, laden with the material relief Elodie sought to obtain for her home. The dragon circles above, its shadow passing over the sea as their boat cuts through the waves toward home. The film ends with Elodie, Floria, and Lady Bayford traveling by ship, accompanied by the dragon, and steering for their homeland with the spoils and survival they have seized in the aftermath of the royal betrayal and the palace conflagration.

Short, Simple Narrative Ending:

Elodie escapes the dragon's lair, returns to her kingdom, and discovers her sister has been taken by the dragon as a new sacrifice. She confronts the dragon, reveals the truth about the royal family's deception, and tricks the dragon into realizing they were both victims. Elodie saves her sister, and instead of killing the dragon, she chooses empathy. The dragon burns down the palace, killing the royal family, and then follows Elodie back to her homeland.

Expanded Chronological Narrative of the Ending:

After escaping the dragon's lair, Elodie returns to the kingdom of Aurea, only to learn that the dragon has taken her younger sister, Floria, as a new sacrifice. The royal family, led by Queen Isabelle, prepares another ritual, intending to offer Floria to the dragon in the same way they offered Elodie. Elodie rushes to the ritual site, determined to stop the cycle.

She confronts the dragon, who is about to take Floria. Elodie yells at her sister to hide, then addresses the dragon directly. She explains that both she and the dragon were tricked by the royal family--the dragon believed Elodie was of royal blood because her blood was mixed with Prince Henry's during the wedding ceremony, and the royal family used this deception to appease the dragon with false sacrifices.

At first, the dragon does not believe Elodie. But Elodie tricks the dragon into harming itself, proving that she is not of royal blood. The dragon realizes the truth and stops its attack. Elodie then tells the girl who was about to be sacrificed to run, breaking the cycle of deception.

The dragon, now aware of the royal family's betrayal, turns its fury on the palace. It burns down the entire palace, killing Queen Isabelle, Prince Henry, and the rest of the royal family. The dragon does not harm Elodie or her sister.

Elodie and Floria return to their homeland, accompanied by the dragon. The dragon follows them, no longer a threat, but a companion. The film ends with Elodie and her family safe, and the dragon at their side, symbolizing a new beginning.

Fate of Each Main Character:

• Elodie: Survives, saves her sister, and returns home with her family and the dragon.
• Floria: Rescued by Elodie, survives, and returns home.
• Queen Isabelle: Killed when the dragon burns down the palace.
• Prince Henry: Killed when the dragon burns down the palace.
• The Dragon: Survives, follows Elodie and her family back to their homeland, no longer a threat.

The movie Damsel (2024) does not have a post-credits or end-credits scene. There is no mid-credit or post-credit sequence included after the film's credits, so viewers can leave once the credits start without missing any additional scenes or story content.

This absence aligns with the film being a standalone story without hints at sequels or a larger cinematic universe. The film concludes its narrative fully within the main runtime, and no extra scenes are used to extend or tease further plot developments.

The glowing silk worms in the cave serve as a light source for Elodie and have healing properties, as they heal the burn on her leg inflicted by the dragon. They help her navigate the dark cavern and survive her ordeal.

Elodie finds a chamber in the cave with a note, names of past victims, and a map carved into the wall. She also discovers the remains of dead dragon hatchlings, which reveals that the first king provoked the dragon by killing its children. The royal family has been sacrificing daughters each generation to appease the dragon, but the original pact was based on a lie. This knowledge helps Elodie understand the true nature of the sacrifice and the deception involved.

Elodie's father, Lord Bayford, urges her to accept the marriage proposal to save their impoverished people, but he later leads a rescue party that is killed by the dragon. He admits trading his daughter's life for gold and prosperity but is consumed by guilt. Her stepmother, Lady Bayford, becomes suspicious of Queen Isabelle's motives and tries unsuccessfully to convince Elodie to end the engagement.

Elodie uses her wit and bravery to survive and escape the dragon's lair. She tricks the dragon into harming itself, which convinces the dragon that they were both deceived by the royal family. This cleverness, combined with her empathy, allows her to survive and later confront the royal family's betrayal. The dragon then burns down the palace, and Elodie returns home with the dragon.

Initially, Elodie and Prince Henry are uninterested in each other, but they begin to bond over their shared desire to travel. However, after the wedding, Henry participates in the ritual that leads to Elodie being sacrificed to the dragon. His role is complex, as he carries Elodie across the dragon's lair and throws her down the chasm, following the royal family's orders. Their relationship is marked by manipulation and betrayal rather than romance.

The 2024 movie Damsel is rated PG-13 and is not considered family-friendly for young children due to its strong creature violence, action, and bloody images. It contains scenes that may be upsetting or inappropriate for children and sensitive viewers, including:

• Intense encounters with a fire-breathing dragon causing people to be burned or killed.
• Scenes of stabbing, visible bloody wounds, and corpses.
• Themes of human sacrifice and peril, including young women and children being threatened or endangered.
• Scary and violent sequences involving a vengeful dragon and dangerous situations.
• Mild language and some brief sexual content or flirtation, but no nudity.
• Emotional themes such as betrayal, generational curses, and death of a parent, which may be disturbing for younger children.

Overall, Damsel is more suitable for mature teens and adults who can handle dark fantasy themes and moderate violence. Parents should exercise caution before allowing children under 13 to watch it, especially sensitive or younger viewers.