Spoilers ahead for Sweet Tooth. With the epic finale on Netflix, many viewers might be wondering what happened to Big Man in Sweet Tooth after that ambiguous ending.
The show follows a post-pandemic life where humans are affected by The Sick and human-animal hybrids emerge. A sheltered hybrid deer-boy named Gus, nicknamed Sweet Tooth (Christian Convery) unexpectedly befriends a wandering loner named Jepperd (Nonso Anozie). Together they set out on an extraordinary adventure across what’s left of America. “In Season 3, everybody is dealing with some kind of wound or emotional loss, whether that was somebody in their life or a part of themselves,” Mickle told Netflix’s Tudum. “Everybody is looking inward and looking to move on and ultimately learning that life doesn’t stop. You have to keep putting one foot in front of another.”
Tommy Jepperd, or Big Man, is stabbed by Zhang in the Cave after she killed Birdie. Big Man asks Sweet Tooth to tell him a story while wounded, and we find out that Gus is actually the narrator of the show as he grows old. While telling the story, he recounts Big Man’s fate.
What happened to Big Man in the Sweet Tooth finale?
Many fans presumed that Big Man died in the finale. During the final moments of the show, the scene shifts to the present day where Big Man asks Gus, “What about the Big Man? Did he make it back with him?” It cuts back to the scene where Big Man joins Gus overlooking the Hybrids working and laughing. Big Man hands Gus maple syrup while they look in the distance.
Executive producer Amanda Burrell told People that the final scene could be interpreted “a number of different ways” adding that they did it “intentionally.” One interpretation can be that Jepp would be with Gus forever in his mind even if he did die, or that he’s in fact alive.
Some fans are content with how the ending was portrayed. One fan posted on Reddit, “There’s a lot of people here sad that the show is over, but I think the ending was perfect and to continue it would be a mistake. Leaving it open for us to discuss if the big man survived or just survived through Gus was heartbreaking and yet so comforting.”
“For us, it was always about these journeys for both of them and the interesting notion [that] Jepp learned as much from Gus as Gus learned from Jepp,” Burrell recounted to the publication. “That was really important to us is that they really are complementary. We couldn’t have imagined that they’d find each other and impact each other’s lives so deeply. It’s a love story in a lot of ways.”
“We knew that we wanted it to feel like that Jepp was finding an end at the end of this episode but we also wanted to say, a little bit ET-inspired, ‘He’s always with him. He’ll be right here,’” Burrell continued. “If the audience wants to engage and believe that he sat there with him on the porch, then they can. But at least for me, I think it was an ending.”
Sweet Tooth is now streaming on Netflix.
