Locke & Key Season 2 Ending Explained

This article contains major Locke & Key Season 2 spoilers.

Netflix‘s fantasy-horror series Locke & Key returned for its second season this month, and managed to genuinely take a big step up in terms of its storytelling and overall quality. There was a lot to love about Season 2, but with a Season 3 already greenlit at the streaming giant and filming underway pretty much back-to-back, things came to a rather strange end during the show’s sophomore finale.

Having dealt with the murderous Dodge and having finally pulled their tormented Uncle Duncan into the fold – with mother Nina soon to follow – Season 2 set about wrapping up all the dangling threads of the series to date, leaving the audience wondering what could possibly come next for the Locke siblings of Keyhouse.

Until that ending!

Gabe/Dodge

Devastated by the loss of his girlfriend after the Alpha Key failed to save her, Tyler Locke decides that Gabe/Dodge must be killed. It’s a good call, because Gabe is planning to send his hoard of demons over to Keyhouse to kill Nina Locke (and any other Lockes they can get their hands on) in the process, with the exception of Kinsey, who the Gabe version of Dodge has become obsessed with. Gabe wants her to join his ranks voluntarily.

In the finale face-off, the Locke siblings and Uncle Duncan aren’t about to sit around and wait to be attacked again, so they go on the offensive at Gabe’s cliff-edge villa and Kinsey pretends to throw herself off the cliff using the Angel Key as a distraction while Duncan, Tyler and Scot try to break into the vault and snatch the Demon Key. Unfortunately, Gabe/Dodge and the hoard are too powerful, but Duncan has an unexpected trick up his sleeve: his blood is tied to the Demon Key, and he can therefore command the hoard.

The hoard turns and attacks Dodge on Duncan’s order, and he grabs the Demon Key. To save Kinsey, Tyler uses the Alpha Key on Dodge, seemingly killing her and restoring the still-teenaged Lucas in his original state, who gives all Dodge’s collected keys back to Kinsey and explains that he had no control over Dodge’s actions.

Meanwhile, Ellie arrives back at home disorientated after being freed, but she still looks like Dodge and is searching for Rufus, who is long gone. She goes to Keyhouse, where she encounters Bode alone and manages to convince him that she is indeed Ellie and not Dodge. Later, Duncan, Lucas and the Locke siblings return home and restore Ellie to her true appearance using the Identity Key, and she and Lucas have a chance to properly reconcile after so many decades apart. Even later, Ellie is reunited with Rufus, too.

Is Dodge Really Dead?

It sure looks like it! With the Echo demon yanked from Lucas’ body, it stands to reason that it would either disintegrate or immediately turn into Whispering Iron, but with Gabe’s villa collapsing into the sea, it would be hard to speculate if anything remained of the demon. Something tells us that the evil Dodge isn’t really gone for good, but with a new villain set to terrorize the Lockes in Season 3, perhaps that chapter has now fully come to a close.

Tyler

With most of their larger troubles seemingly resolved, the Lockes start to move on as summer break approaches. Tyler decides to go travelling over winter break, and deletes the memorable video he made with his dead girlfriend, knowing that his 18th birthday is coming and he will soon forget the magic of Keyhouse. It seems that in his grief, Tyler has decided that he doesn’t want to remember the horrors he’s been through, and he gives his keys to Kinsey before he leaves. Bode and Kinsey aren’t convinced it’s the right move, so we may see an about-turn from Tyler early on in Season 3 when danger comes knocking.

Kinsey, Nina and Bode

As Kinsey and Scot prepare to bid each other farewell for a while, Bode uses the Head Key on Nina, who is lost and struggling to relate to her children because she is very much still grieving for her husband and keeps forgetting the magic of the keys. The two go into Nina’s mind, and she looks through her past memories of Rendell, one of which is the day she told Rendell she had fallen pregnant with Bode.

After she and Bode finish with the Head Key, Nina remarks that she doesn’t want to forget it, so Bode produces the Memory Key, telling Nina that he won’t let her forget. It looks like Nina will be able to keep up with all the madness at Keyhouse in Season 3. Finally!

Season 3’s Big Villain

The award-winning Locke & Key comic book series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez that this series is based on partially set up our new Season 3 villain before Season 2 did.

At one stage, the books lightly explored the plight of a group of rebel soldiers during the War of Independence in 1775 who came across the Black Door, which as we know by now is a dangerous portal to a demon dimension that is opened with the Omega Key in the TV series. Demons who attempt to escape from this dimension simply transform into Whispering Iron in our world when they don’t find a target, and when a Locke family ancestor first discovered this in the comics, he was blessed with a vision of the many possibilities of the iron, should it be shaped into various keys.

However, the Netflix series tells a slightly different version of the tale, introducing our Season 3 Big Bad, Captain Frederick Gideon (The Strain and Swamp Thing’s Kevin Durand).

In episode 8, ‘Irons in the Fire’, Locke & Key took us back to Keyhouse, Massachusetts circa 1775, just as the comics did. We met the Locke family ancestors of the era, who were making and stockpiling weapons with local Minutemen to use against the British. After being rumbled by a gang of Redcoats, led by Durand’s Gideon, a terrible fight ensued and patriarch Peter Locke was savagely killed by the insidious Gideon.

Following this incident the Redcoats were chased to the sea cave, where they tried to hide from Peter’s formerly timid son Benjamin Locke and the Minutemen. Gideon and the Redcoats opened the portal deep in the cave, which at this stage wasn’t protected by the Black Door. Gideon was fascinated when one of his soldiers was hit and possessed by a demon, and willingly succumbed to his own possession as Benjamin watched.

Captured in his demonic state, Gideon was hung by the townsfolk, but promised them that more demons would follow and rip the world apart. Meanwhile, Benjamin fashioned the Black Door, and the Omega Key from Whispering Iron in an attempt to turn the evil against itself, and discovered that he had to use his blood to create the alchemy needed to complete the magic. He then used Whispering Iron to create more of the keys we’re already familiar with in the present day.

Learning about much of this history from Nina’s teacher boyfriend Josh Bennett, and unable to convince him that he should help her, the demonic Eden (now without a master in Dodge) creeps into the Wellhouse and conjures a new Echo in Gideon, who is apparently possessed by a demon she recognizes from her past in the dimension behind the Black Door. Eden wants him to open the door and so agrees to free him, but he immediately betrays her and throws her down the well. He then absconds into the world using the Anywhere Key.

The Lockes now have a new, vicious Echo to deal with, and Gideon will no doubt cause them plenty of the kind of trouble they thought they’d left behind when Season 3 arrives.

Locke & Key Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.