Clayface Ending Explained: Matt Hagen's Dark Fate in the Gotham Sewers

The ending of Clayface is extremely dark, and it leaves Matt Hagen alive in the Gotham sewers, alone and acting out a romance with a copy of the woman he's obsessed with. I won't go through every single scene, but the film follows the rise and brutal fall of Hagen, and its final 45 minutes are absolute chaos. That stretch is definitely my favorite part of the film.

Below I go through how Hagen gets there, how the ending plays out, and every person he transforms into.

Matt Hagen's career is destroyed after he crosses a Gotham crime boss

Hagen grew up poor but became a fantastic actor with a big career ahead of him. That changes after he gets involved with the girlfriend of one of Gotham's most ruthless crime bosses. The crime boss and his men break into Matt's bedroom, pin him to the bed, and repeatedly slash his face with blades.

The girlfriend then makes up a fake story claiming that she is the victim. The crime boss's people use his ties, and talk to Matt's friend, to get connections back where Matt grew up and spread fake stories about him.

A greedy plastic surgeon then botches multiple operations just to milk Matt's money. Bankrupt, Matt is forced to wear a plastic mask in public to hide from the paparazzi, and he has to move back to one of Gotham's most impoverished districts.

An unapproved treatment restores his face, then turns him into something else

While looking through an old magazine, Matt finds hope. He volunteers to be a guinea pig for a nanotechnologist whose unapproved cellular regeneration treatment is driven by AI. With nothing going for him anymore, he begs her to test it on him, insisting he would rather die than stay disfigured and keep living the life he was living.

The scientist had lost all of her funding and was losing hope in her research. She injects Matt over several weeks and eventually restores his handsome face, and they believe it is a success. Eager to reclaim his fame, Matt crashes an industry premiere celebration and steals the spotlight, only for his facial skin to suddenly sag and peel like wet mud in front of the crowd.

Matt escapes without anyone seeing him, then heads to the scientist's office, steals the serum, and takes a massive overdose. He believes it worked, but it changes his flesh so that it reacts to his emotional stress. During further testing while Matt sleeps at night, she realizes his nano cells mimic whoever is on his mind, shifting him into anyone he is angry or happy about.

The first accidental killing turns into a revenge spree

Matt's cells take over more and more as he confronts his former representative, and this is the first time he accidentally kills someone. From there he becomes consumed by revenge, which leads to several more deaths, and he shapeshifts to cover up his crimes.

After murdering his best friend and stealing his identity, Matt confesses his love to the scientist and kisses her. She pulls away because she has a boyfriend who works for the police force.

The nightclub massacre is the best part of Clayface

Throughout the second half, Matt uses his shapeshifting to take out his best friend and anyone among the crime boss's men who crossed him. The best part of the movie to me is when he infiltrates the nightclub party where the crime boss and his men are. Matt switches from one of the crime boss's men to the next, using his shapeshifting to kill every single one of them and fool everyone else in the club, because no one knows it's him.

After slaughtering the bodyguards, Matt kills the crime boss's lover, who tricked him earlier in the film. He then murders the crime boss by bleeding nano cells onto the mobster's face. Those nano cells then try to go back into Matt, and it's one of the craziest deaths in the entire film.

The scientist triggers a kill switch and Clayface dissolves into the sewers

Consumed by a possessive fixation on the scientist, and looking to silence the police investigation into his killing spree, Matt visits her home. He takes over the body of her police boyfriend and tricks her when she comes back with all the evidence. She then discovers her boyfriend's corpse in the next room, and that's when she realizes it was Matt all along.

Horrified, she shocks Matt with a taser. As he turns into Clayface's true form, she presses the emergency kill switch, dissolving his monstrous body into a puddle of sludge that washes down into the Gotham sewers.

The final scene shows Matt survived and is still obsessed

It seems Matt and Clayface may be dead for good, but the last scene shows that isn't true. The scientist walks around and seems to think people are staring at her, and a homeless man asks her for a dollar. We then see that man walk into the sewers and open a door. He's really Matt, and he morphs into both the scientist and himself at the same time, holding a conversation that plays almost like a hallucination, because it's what he wishes had happened.

It might seem that she followed him into the sewer, but it's revealed that he is completely alone. He has molded a physical replica of her out of his own clay body as he acts out this delusional romance, still obsessed with her. We then see Clayface in his full form, and the movie ends.

Every person Clayface transforms into, from the sleep study to the sewers

Here is every person he transforms into. The first is the scientist, during the sleep study she runs on him at night. The second is his former representative and lawyer, whom he turns into after accidentally murdering him, so he can get away. The third is his best friend.

The fourth is one of the crime boss's men. He was the one trying to confront the scientist in the alley to send a message, and Matt uses him to infiltrate the club and set up one of the best scenes in Clayface. The fifth is a random man in the bathroom who worked for the crime boss, and the sixth is another of the crime boss's men in the club. The seventh comes in one of the most memorable scenes in the film.

The eighth is a woman in the club who has a battle on the stairs with one of the crime boss's men. The ninth, and one of the most unexpected, is the scientist's partner who worked for the Gotham police. The tenth is the homeless man at the end who walks into the sewers and reveals himself to be Clayface, showing that he survived. There may have been one or two I missed during the quick club scene, but if so, it was one of the crime boss's men.

I thought Clayface was awesome. What was your favorite transformation?