‘White Noise’ Ending Explained: How the Grocery Store Represents Death

White Noise on Netflix breaks down one of the most universal fears: death. It’s something we don’t like to think about—that one day, no matter how healthy we eat and how much exercise we get, our bodies will cease to exist. But after living through the early years of the pandemic in 2020, many of us were forced to deal with the reality of death. That’s what filmmaker Noah Baumbach was thinking about when he read Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel and realized just how relevant the story was to modern times.

Written and directed by Baumbach, who adapted DeLillo’s novel of the same name, White Noise stars Adam Driver as a pompous college professor whose life is thrown into chaos by an “airborne toxic event.” Sound familiar? The film is absurd, but also all too real. Though you may think Baumbach tweaked the story to better parallel the COVID-19 pandemic, the White Noise movie is a fairly faithful adaptation of the White Noise book.

Of course, that also means that the movie follows the same bizarre plot structure as the book, which may leave many viewers confused. If you got lost, don’t worry. Decider is here to help. Read on for an analysis of the White Noise plot summary, White Noise ending explained, and what that White Noise ending means.

White Noise plot summary:

Part 1 of the film, titled “Waves and Radiation,” introduces the cast of characters. Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) is a professor at the fictional College-on-the-Hill in Ohio in the ’80s. Jack prides himself in being the leading expert voice in the field of “Hitler studies,” a field he invented. He’s embarrassed by the fact that he doesn’t take German, and is taking secret lessons, in the hopes of getting up to speed on the language before the college hosts the annual “Hitler conference.” This is obviously objectively ridiculous, but Jack is admired by his colleagues, especially his friend Professor Murray (Don Cheadle), who hopes to be an expert on Elvis the way Jack is an expert on Hitler.

Jack is happily married to his fourth wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), with whom he is raising four children. Babette’s oldest daughter Denise (Raffey Cassidy) is suspicious of Babette, after she discovered a pill bottle for “Dylar” that Babette threw away. Denise tells Jack that she was unable to find Dylar listed in any of her medical journals, and she suspects the medication may be affecting her mother’s memory. When Jack confronts Babette, she denies taking any pills but admits her memory has gotten worse.

Jack and Murray deliver impromptu, simultaneous lectures on Elvis and Hitler, to a crowd of rapt students. At the same time, nearby, a train carrying toxic gas crashes into a semi-truck. Thus begins Part 2, titled “The Airborne Toxic Event.” In a sequence that will remind viewers all too much of the early days of coronavirus in 2020, rumors of the crash travels around the town. Jack’s son Heinrich (Sam Nivola) monitors the smoke—which the media is calling “the feathery plume”— with binoculars. Jack assures his family the smoke won’t come their way, and that there is nothing to worry about.

But things escalate quickly. The media updates the “feathery plume” to a “billowing cloud,” and, eventually, to “the airborne toxic event.” A police vehicle drives down the street, announcing that everyone should evacuate their homes. The Gladneys get stuck in an endless traffic jam on the freeway. On the radio, they are told that anyone who is indoors should stay indoors, and anyone outdoors should find shelter ASAP—a direct contradiction to the previous order to evacuate. Jack is forced to go outside in order to gas up the car, and while he is out there, the billowing cloud encroaches.

Eventually, the family makes it to an emergency refuge center. Jack learns that he may be in danger of an early death, thanks to his two-and-a-half-minute exposure while getting gas. We also see Babette sneaking one of those pills she insists she’s not taking. In the morning, the cloud is once again encroaching, and the family has to drive off in a hurry. In perhaps the movie’s most exciting scene, Jack drives the family car straight into a river. But it’s fine! They find their way to a new refuge center, and, nine days later, the airborne toxic event is over, and everyone is able to go home.

In Part 3, titled “Dylarama,” Jack and his family more or less return to normal life. However, Jack is increasingly worried about his health. Babette’s behavior is increasingly odd. Denise finds a Dylar pill container taped under the radiator and gives it to Jack. Jack has one of his colleagues in the neuroscience department analyze a pill, and she tells him it’s like nothing she’s seen before. Jack confronts Babette, and Babette finally confesses.

What is the Dylar drug?

Dylar is a fictional experimental drug invented for the White Noise novel, that supposedly treats the fear of death. Babette tells Jack that one year ago, she was feeling depressed, and so agreed to volunteer for an experimental drug trial. She took a top-secret, experimental drug called Dylar, which she said made her forgetful. The trial was called off as too risky, but Babette insisted she be able to use the drug. She agreed to sleep with the man running the drug trial, “Mr. Gray,” in exchange for receiving the Dylar.

Babette recalls going to a hotel room for the affair, where there was a TV near the ceiling. Babette, who is terrified to die, tells Jack that the Dylar pill was supposed to cure her fear of death, but was not successful. Jack in turn tells Babette he is “tentatively scheduled to die,” via his exposure to the toxic substance.

Jack searches the house for more Dylar, hoping to take some himself. He doesn’t find it, but he does find an ad in the paper advertising the drug trial study. He calls the number and meets Mr. Gray in the same hotel room that Babette described. He takes with him a gun given to him by Murray during the airborne toxic event. Remembering something Babette said about the possible side effects of the drug—that you can get words mixed up, and hear “speeding bullet” or “falling plane” and drop to the ground in fear—Jack puts fear into Mr. Gray by saying “falling plane,” and other words. Then he shoots Mr. Gray while the man is on the toilet.

Jack attempts to make it look like Mr. Gray shot himself by putting the gun in his hand. What Jack doesn’t realize is that Mr. Gray is still alive. Mr. Gray fires a shot just as Babette enters the hotel room, hitting Jack in the wrist, and Babette in the leg. Jack and Babette decide to help Mr. Gray. They tell a delirious Mr. Gray that he shot himself and that they are just helpful passerbys.

White Noise ending explained:

Jack and Babette drive Mr. Gray to an emergency medical center run by German nuns at a Catholic hospital. While they are being tended to for their bullet wounds, one of the nuns tells Jack and Babette she doesn’t believe in Heaven. Jack and Babette, who still fear death, are upset when faced with the prospect that there might not be anything after death. The nun tells them it is her job to be in the small minority of people who pretend to believe in the things that no one else does, otherwise, the human race would die out. The nun warns Jack and Babette that they will soon “lose their believers, so maybe you should try to believe in each other.” Jack and Babette hold hands in the hospital, and a heavenly light is cast over their faces.

In the movie’s final scene, Jack and his family go to the supermarket. In a voiceover, Jack says, “I feel sad for us and the queer part we play in our own disasters. But out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we keep inventing hope. And this is where we wait, together.”

As the credits begin to role, Baumbach treats viewers to a choreographed supermarket dance scene, set to a new song by LCD Soundsystem written for the movie, “New Body Rhumba.”

White Noise ending meaning:

What does it mean, what does it all mean? There are plenty of ways to interpret White Noise, which is a fairly faithful adaptation of DeLillo’s novel. I don’t claim to be an expert, but here’s my two cents: Death is perhaps the most prominent theme in White Noise. Jack and Babette spent the entire movie terrified of dying, and are forced to confront this fear in the hospital run by German nuns. They seek comfort in religion, hoping they will be told that death is not the end.

They are disappointed to learn that religion is not a magic cure-all for the fear of death, in the same way that Dylar was not a magic cure for the fear of death. (Maybe the Dylar pill was a metaphor for religion all along? Or anti-anxiety pills?) Instead, as the nun tells them, they have to do the hard work themselves. Religion won’t do it for them. A pill won’t do it for them. Death is scary, and it never won’t be scary. But somehow, you have to find a way to be hopeful all the same. The light that shines on Jack and Babette in that hospital room represents this hope—this realization that we create our own optimism, faith, God, religion, etc.

Earlier in the movie, Murray, while waxing poetic about the comforting familiarity of the supermarket, said, “Maybe once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die. We simply walk toward the sliding doors.” It makes sense, then, that Jack and his family go to the supermarket in the final scene. They walk through those sliding doors together. If the sliding doors of the supermarket represent death, then Jack, surrounded by people who love him, has finally found a way to face his fear of death head-on. And what better way to combat existential dread than by dancing in the grocery store?

Maybe it’s cliché, but the point is, it’s up to each of us to believe in hope—to believe in optimism, God, life after death, or whatever you need to keep surviving. And it’s not easy. What other choice do we have? There is no magic Dylar pill. But we do have each other.