Push Ending Explained: Is the Client Dead or Alive?

Shudder’s horror drama film ‘Push’ follows Natalie Flores, a pregnant realtor who is grieving her husband, who died in a car crash many months ago. In the aftermath of the tragic loss, she throws herself into her work, trying to sell a seemingly unsellable house from the 1890s. As she prepares to sell the isolated estate of 1428 Craven Road in Northern Michigan, she finds herself in a deadly cat-and-mouse chase against a mysterious man pretending to be an interested Client. The narrative explores the themes of trauma, supernatural phenomena, spirits, love, loss, motherhood, and obsessive vengeance. As the storyline reaches its climax, the protagonist finds herself in a difficult situation, challenged by her body, mind, and her impending doom that arrives in the form of a man who desperately wants to hurt her and her child. Thus, as the night sets in, it’s her survival against the strange Client’s deranged goals. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Push Plot Synopsis

The story begins in Barcelona in 1993. Natalie Flores dreams about the moment when her husband asked her to come with him to America. However, shortly afterward, he had died in a car crash right in front of her eyes. Her apathetic relatives had condemned her for her decisions, especially the one about moving to America. They believed that she was someone who couldn’t look after herself and would always need her family’s support. As such, she makes the decision to move to the States and build her own life there. Eight months later, a visibly pregnant Natalie goes to Northern Michigan to try to sell a remote grand old house at Craven Road. She’s eager to land the impressive sale and achieve some stability in her career as a realtor. Yet, her thoughts remain plagued by memories of the tragedy that killed her husband. Furthermore, she also worries about her unborn baby’s future.

Natalie walks into every corner of the old mansion overlooking the forest and the hills, and prepares the property for a potential client. The protagonist hears a knock on the door and finds out that a mysterious man (known only as the Client) has already entered the house. When approached, the Client claims to be interested in the estate after randomly coming across an “open house” advertisement on his way. Despite the late hour, the realtor decides to show him around the house, narrating its history, claiming that it was built in 1890 and is registered by the Historic Preservation Society. As the sun almost sets, the Client asks her about the owners, and she tells him that they were murdered in the house. However, upon hearing this, the Client shares his belief that he can still feel their presence.

After speaking mysteriously, the Client leaves. When Natalie tries to leave, her car refuses to start, following which she comes back inside, and it is revealed that the Client is still there, stalking her from a dark corner. She calls a mechanic to fix the car, who shows up on time and starts the repair work to help her leave. However, when Natalie finds him brutally killed and placed on a chair moments later, she realizes that she’s trapped in the big house. Worse yet, the peculiar Client reveals his true intentions of wanting to kill her and her unborn child by any means necessary. She traverses through several dangerous spaces to escape the wrath of her attacker, and also to save the baby inside her womb. As the cat and mouse game takes dangerous turns, the expecting mother realizes she has to do everything in her power to survive the threat if she and her child want to make it through the night.

Push Ending: Is the Client Dead or Alive?

The Client is initially shot by Natalie near the house with a shotgun to defend herself. He is then taken to the county hospital by the police, where it is revealed that he has survived the gunshot. Natalie identifies him to the police, who tell her that he calls himself Gabriel Marquez. Natalie finds out that Gabriel has escaped by murdering police officers, following which she and the attacker come face to face in the pediatric ICU, where the deranged man is stabbed violently by the protective mother. In a shocking end credits scene, it is revealed that Gabriel is still alive. He wakes up suddenly under the lights above a hospital mortuary bed, and the narrative comes to a halt. It is interesting to note that the plot is set in 1993, but Gabriel, who looks under 40, claims that he was born in the house at Craven Road in 1929.

Gabriel also tells Natalie in a certain scene that she should start believing in ghosts. The fact that Gabriel survived both the shotgun and the multiple stabbings by Natalie proves that he is not a normal human being, and is possibly a ghost or a spirit in a human body who cannot be killed. He also exhibits a supernatural connection with lights and other objects like a music box, where they seem to react to him by flickering or playing music. If the possibility of him being a ghost is ruled out, then the other reasoning is that he is presumably a human being with extraordinary abilities who can survive any kind of attack. It is important to note that in an earlier scene, it was revealed by a doctor that Gabriel believes his life is connected to the existence of the house, so in a strangely “Horcrux” like situation, the house might be ensuring that he survives any scenario that leads to death. Whether he is a ghost or a man with superpowers, he remains “alive,” despite all the complexities with the usage of the term.

Why Does the Client Attack Natalie?

The Client (Gabriel) keeps attacking Natalie and her unborn child throughout the course of the film. Though his motivation behind specifically targeting Natalie remains a mystery, several important clues are revealed in the narrative. Based on these clues, it can be presumed that Gabriel attacked Natalie due to her pregnancy and the fact that she was trying to sell the house. In a horrifying scene, he tells her that he knows more about the house than she does, including every corner and room, and also about the lies that are told inside. In one chilling instance, he even threatens to cut her baby out of her belly.

This could possibly mean that Gabriel Marquez actually has a history with the house, and was the son of Victor and Camila Marquez, who used to own the house. He spits on their grave, which dates back to 1944, when he was 15 years old. We know through Natalie’s narration that the previous owners of the house were killed, and there have been freak accidents around the house, which have prevented anyone from buying it for so long. This leads to the possibility that Gabriel killed the previous owners as he didn’t want anyone to stay at the house, and also that he killed his own parents in 1944, possibly because he was either abused by them or bullied.

Gabriel is either targeting Natalie to prevent her from selling the house to anyone, or he’s specifically interested in killing her unborn child to achieve a deranged sense of justice for the atrocities that he suffered in his childhood, or to save the baby from suffering as he did. His experiences in his childhood may have led him to believe that children shouldn’t survive in the world, especially those who enter the house he thinks belongs to him. He may have thought that by killing the unborn child of the protagonist, he was saving a child from all the pain and trauma that awaited, exhibiting a sort of violent savior complex. Since we cannot be sure if Gabriel is actually a human being with extraordinary abilities or a ghost hunting down people at the house, it is not easy to understand why he targeted Natalie. However, his experiences with his parents and childhood trauma make him behave violently.

Does Natalie Give Birth? Do Her and the Baby Survive?

Natalie gives birth to her son amidst violence and chaos at the house where Gabriel is trying to kill her. She hides behind a stone structure and pushes the baby out of her womb with all her might. In a rather graphic scene, she even rips apart her son’s umbilical cord with her teeth and continues hiding from her attacker. In a pivotal scene, she protects her baby boy by shielding him and shooting Gabriel with a shotgun. At the hospital, after she is attended to by doctors and identifies Gabriel to the police, she sees her son in the ICU battling for his life. He was found unresponsive by the doctors, who tried to revive him by providing him with intensive care.

As Natalie learns about Gabriel’s past and his strange connection with the house, she realizes that her baby his still in danger. In the nick of time, she manages to save her baby boy by stabbing Gabriel multiple times in the pediatric ICU. She walks out of the ward, still in a patient’s gown, and with her son securely in her caring arms. It is shown in an earlier scene that her son has opened his eyes and started to recover. It can be presumed that Natalie and her son both survive the ordeal and are very much alive at the end of the storyline. However, a very real possibility of continued danger looms in the duo’s future. This is especially true if Gabriel had indeed come after them due to a twisted revenge fantasy born of his possibly abusive childhood. Even so, if such an occasion arises in the future, Natalie has proven her unending determination to save her child at any cost.

Why Did Natalie Set Off the Fire Alarm?

Natalie realizes in the county hospital that Gabriel will not stop until he has killed her and her son. In a pivotal moment, she spots the hospital’s escape plan in case there is a fire-related incident. Natalie observes the escape diagram on the wall closely and proceeds to set off the fire alarm in the hospital. She does this because it provides her a cover using which she can eliminate Gabriel forever and get her baby out of the hospital before it’s too late. When the fire alarm starts buzzing, she grabs a surgical scalpel and starts walking towards Gabriel’s ward, but finds that he has already escaped by murdering the police officers.

Her motivation to set off the fire alarm and fight Gabriel alone stems from the fact that she has been alone in her life, without any emotional support from loved ones. Her pessimistic view arises from years of being ignored by others, which makes her more protective of her baby. She finds it difficult to trust the hospital staff or the police to provide her protection, as she isn’t used to anyone helping her when she needs it the most.

As the alarm continues distracting the whole building, she starts to run away, and Gabriel follows her. He even tries to shoot her with a gun he stole from one of the officers. Her decision to set off the fire alarm works in her favour as she is able to fight off Gabriel in the pediatric ICU and eliminate him. She uses the chaos provider by the alarm to safely walk out of the hospital with her baby in her arms. If Natalie hadn’t set off the fire alarm, her fate would’ve presumably been different.