Fear Street Prom Queen Ending Explained: Who Are the Killers?

Netflix’s ‘Fear Street: Prom Queen’ is a slasher film that takes the viewers back to the horrors of high school and its unending popularity contests. Fittingly, the film, set in the 80s, takes place over the course of arguably the most important night of the year: Prom. At Shadyside High School, Tiffany Falconer and her gang of IT girls are all in the running for the coveted title of this year’s prom queen. As such, Lori Granger, the social reject who bears the burden of her family’s tragedy, stands out like a sore thumb within the court. Yet, she’s determined to snag the crown and change her pre-prescribed fate in the world of teen hierarchy. However, all of this becomes a minor concern when a killer—or two—shrouded in red raincoats begin hunting down the prom queen candidates, picking them off the board one by one. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Fear Street: Prom Queen Plot Synopsis

In the year 1988, Lori Granger is prepared to rewrite her story by proving she’s more than her town’s designated sob story. Her father died before she was born, and to this day, the rumor and gossip mill continues to blame her mother for the murder. Tiffany Falconer, the most popular girl in the high school, who has made it her mission to torment Lori, is the biggest proponent of these assumptions. Naturally, the latter’s decision to enlist her own name in the running for the prom queen title only further encourages the bully to make her life a living hell. However, while the social outcast is a perpetual underdog in the competition, it’s not as if Tiffany has no real competition.

Christy Renault, the resident rule breaker and pot dealer, of the Shadyside has also entered her name into the race, simply to piss off the the queen bee. However, she swiftly loses her top spot a couple of days before Prom, when an axe murderer comes after her in the dark of the night. The next day, when she’s a no-show at the ceremony practice, she’s automatically disqualified from the race. Yet, no one, save for Megan, Lori’s best friend and one of Christy’s prime customers, seems to care about her disappearance. Lori continues hoping for a fairytale ending to her high school years, which will be achieved through the prom queen title. In turn, Tiffany continues to agonize over her for her perceived naivety. Eventually, prom night rolls around, and the most important few hours of these high schoolers’ lives begin.

When the court is announced at the beginning of the event, Tiffany and the other candidates upstage Lori by putting on a star-spangled performance in unitards, which blatantly excludes the latter. In the aftermath of the performance, the first kill of the night takes place in an empty classroom as the red-raincoat killer brutally murders top-grader Linda and her date. Back at the main event, Lori and Megan get into a fight after the former gets annoyed by her friend’s on-brand, yet grisly, prank involving a replica of Tiffany’s decapitated head in the punchbowl. Thus, the two friends drift apart for the night as Lori tries to step up to her bully and prove that she’s deserving of the crown.

Consequently, the two get down to a funky dance battle, while more murder continues to unfold in the dark corners of the school. As the night unfolds, Tiffany starts lashing out more and more toward Lori, who goes from the most overlooked candidate to her prime competition. Her scathing remarks take such a vicious turn that even her most blindly loyal friend, Melissa, turns on her and begins sympathizing with the other girl. Likewise, her boyfriend, Tyler, also dumps her in the middle of the Prom to finally make a move on Lori. Nonetheless, as soon as the pair sneaks away from the party hall for a private moment, the killer, one half of an identically dressed duo, makes them their next target.

Fear Street Prom Queen Ending: Who is Behind the Murders?

For the most part, the prom killings happen in the background to the main story as teenagers get killed in horrifying ways, all without alerting anyone’s notice. Since everyone dies in the shadows and their bodies are stashed away quietly all the same, it isn’t until Lori comes directly under danger that the killer-on-the-loose becomes an active problem. Earlier, horror-loving Megan, who is mourning the loss of her weed stash for the night, notices the danger signs and tries to warn her friend, only to be met with hostile skepticism. Even so, Lori can’t deny the existence of the killer once they slash through Tyler’s face right in front of her eyes.

Unlike the other victims, Lori is fortunate enough to be able to run away from the scene, but finds herself back into the arms of danger when she traverses into the basement, following the sound of her best friend’s screams. In the basement, the duo finds the stashed away bodies of the night’s multiple victims. While one of the killers locks the two best friends inside the basement, the other one pursues them, even after they manage to escape via a broken window. Therefore, as Lori runs out to the party hall, the killer is finally revealed to the previously oblivious crowd. Once out in the open, the killer goes on a free rampage, cutting down everyone in their path, be it student or staff.

The prime target remains clear: Lori, one of the last-standing prom queen candidates. Ultimately, she and Megan manage to overpower the killer with the former delivering a devastating move by stabbing the killer in the face with her rightfully earned prom queen crown. Thus, the killer is inevitably forced to unmask and reveal himself as Dan, one of the school’s teachers, and Tiffany’s father. The implication remains clear: the father wanted her daughter to win the title, a dream passed down to her from her mother. Therefore, he resorted to desperate, murderous measures to rig the game in her favor.

Yet, as the police take Dan away, the mystery of the other killer’s identity remains. The rest of the school is oblivious to the fact that the father isn’t working on his own, and in fact has a partner in crime. As such, everyone is allowed to return to their homes while Nancy stays back to answer some questions. In her absence, Lori offers her company to a severely traumatized Tiffany. Thus, while the mother wraps up Sheriff Goode’s interrogation, the teens find themselves falling asleep in front of the TV. That is until an eerie noise wakes Lori up, and she realizes Mrs. Falconer is back home, armed with a sharp blade and a wicked grin. All along, she had been Dan’s secret partner, hidden behind a killer’s mask and a blood-red raincoat. The killing spree, it turns out, has always been a family affair.

Why Are the Falconers Killing Prom Queen Candidates?

The Falconer family’s reveal as the killers comes as a bit of a shock. Even though the parents have been blatant about their desperation for Tiffany to win the title of prom queen, their otherwise mundane personalities don’t showcase any signs of family-wide homicidal desires. It’s easy to believe that Dan is simply a supportive father and Nancy a pageant mom who is eager to live out her dreams through her daughter. Nonetheless, it seems they’re willing to go to extreme lengths to secure this win for their family. Back in the day, when Lori’s mother was in high school, their Prom was ruined in the wake of the discovery of her father’s dead body. As a result, Nancy never got to live out her dream of earning the prom queen crown since the event got cancelled.

For the same reason, Nancy seems to have now desperately pinned all her hopes onto her daughter, encouraging her to win the title for the Falconer name. Therefore, in the moment, she allows her husband to take the fall for the entire thing on his own while she gets away from the nightmare scotch-free. Even though their plan of securing the win for their daughter, through questionable means, is over, they can still exact revenge on the Grangers for consistently ruining Prom for their family. It isn’t until the homicidal mother returns home and the teenagers find themselves hiding in a closet that Lori unlocks the final piece of the puzzle. While there may have only been two masked killers, they’ve always had a third accomplice with them: their equally unhinged daughter, Tiffany.

Does Lori Survive?

In the end, Lori and Tiffany are the only two prom queen candidates to emerge from the evening unscathed. The latter’s reason for survival is a lot more obvious, while the former has her chance and ride-or-die best friend to thank for her luck. Nonetheless, this luck seems to last for only so long, since by the end of the night, she finds herself trapped in a house with two people out for her blood. Even after she’s able to overpower and outrun Tiffany, it isn’t long before her mother backs her into a corner, seemingly sealing her deadly fate. Nancy has a bone to pick with the Granger family, for more reasons than one, and she’s happy to take it out on the sole heir.

Once Nancy has Lori cornered, she allows her daughter to take over and exact the fatal wound that will deliver the young girl to her demise. The mother-daughter duo don’t seem particularly concerned with getting away with the murder, considering they’re bound to be the obvious suspects for Lori’s murder in light of Dan’s arrest. Instead, their entire focus is on ensuring their victim’s demise. The Falconers as a whole seem to take a certain pleasure in belittling others and upholding the status quo, with themselves at the very top. The same, paired with their running rivalry with the Grangers, makes the young girl the perfect victim.

Yet, Lori isn’t the meek teenager she was at the start of the story. Over the course of the previous night, she has successfully turned her life around, even if it is through earning shallow high school accolades and getting the even shallower guy. Therefore, when push comes to shove, the recently crowned prom queen takes her destiny in her hands and kicks Tiffany right over the first-floor railing. As a result, the other teen dies, impaled on the thorny centerpiece in the foyer. Afterward, when an armed Nancy comes after her, she stands to her defence and uses one of the many trophies on display to bash the woman’s head in, cementing her fate as well. Ultimately, Lori proves her worth and fights for her life, and emerges victorious—and alive—on the other side.

How Did Lori’s Father Die? Did Her Mom Kill Him?

Initially, the death of Lori’s father, who is never explicitly named, appears as a worldbuilding element that serves the purpose of establishing the protagonist’s backstory. Her mother’s ruined reputation in town is the prime reason for her own miserable high school life as a helpless punching bag for Tiffany and the others. Yet, there’s more to the story than initially meets the eye. Given Lori’s amicable relationship with her withdrawn mother and the fact that the latter was never truly charged with murder, the idea of her killing her boyfriend always remains somewhat unbelievable. As the town, and especially the Falconers, like to tell it, the story goes like so.

Lori’s mother, Rosemary Granger, was a teenager from Shadyside who fell in love with a Sunnyvale heartthrob. During the course of their relationship, which many believed to be purely physical, the teen girl ended up getting pregnant. At the news of the pregnancy, Rosemary’s boyfriend ended up walking out of her life, which drove her to do the unthinkable and murder him by the river. Later, although his body was found, his former girlfriend couldn’t be tied to the murder, thus allowing her to walk away from the event. Yet, the reality unfolded quite differently. As it turns out, before Rosemary, Nancy held the affection and attention of the Sunnyvale boy. Therefore, she was filled with hatred when he dumped her for another girl. As such, she ended up killing him and allowed speculations of the involvement of Lori’s mother afterward.

Fear Street Prom Queen End Credits Scene Explained: What Does the Pentagram Mean?

At the end of the story, the Falconers lose their waged war against Lori Granger, who emerges as the final girl in the horror show that was her prom night. She personally delivered Nancy and Tiffany to their deaths and is happy to leave the entire incident behind her. Yet, in her absence, a cryptic turn of events takes place. Where Nancy’s body is bleeding out onto the floor of her living room, her blood traces the shape of a peculiar pentagram. So far, the story remains fairly detached from any supernatural interferences. The killers are all humans, and their motivations are also steeped in their mundane suburban drama. Nevertheless, this pentagram suggests otherwise.

The pentagram is actually the witch’s mark, a symbol previously spied in the original ‘Fear Street’ trilogy. The Goode family has been utilizing this symbol since 1666 to make human sacrifices and carry out murders in Shadyside. As such, this introduces the possibility that Nancy was also a sacrifice of the Goode family. This makes Sheriff Goode the most obvious suspect who could have sacrificed Nancy to the Witch’s Mark/ the Devil’s Mark. It’s possible that he saw the homicidal potential in the woman following the murder of the Sunnyvale boy, which compelled him to target her. Furthermore, since the mark only appears beside her corpse, it’s likely that she was the only one connected to it, and her family was simply following her orders without the need of a supernatural connection. Ultimately, this scene serves as an efficient way to tether this standalone film with the overarching franchise.

Fear Street Prom Queen Ending and Mid Credits Scene Explained