Badlands ending explained

What happens

Kit surrenders on the open plain, piling stones to mark the spot and posing for the lawmen who take him in. He is sentenced to death. Holly, who is not, marries her lawyer's son, and her voiceover closes the story.

The last image

The film closes on the open prairie and sky, indifferent to the story of Kit and Holly that Holly's voiceover has just finished telling.

What it says

Kit wants to be remembered, so he stages his own capture like a scene from a movie. The film gives him that story and lets you see how thin it is, while Holly drifts on into an ordinary life, unchanged.