Kubo and the Two Strings - Ending Explained

The film is built on several heartbreaking and emotional twists. The first major reveal is that Monkey is actually the reincarnated spirit of Kubo's mother, Sariatu. She used the last of her magic before dying to transfer her soul into the wooden monkey charm to protect Kubo. Later, it is revealed that the amnesiac Beetle is actually Hanzo, Kubo's father, who had been cursed and transformed by the Moon King.

The ultimate tragedy of the film is that both parents are genuinely dead and cannot stay with Kubo; they sacrifice their reincarnated forms to ensure his survival. Furthermore, the film subverts the traditional 'hero's journey' trope: the magical armor Kubo spends the entire film collecting is ultimately useless against the Moon King's raw power. Instead, Kubo's true weapon is his shamisen, which he strings with the hair of his mother, the bowstring of his father, and a strand of his own hair. This symbolizes that love, memory, and family are the true armor against darkness. He defeats his grandfather not by killing him, but by stripping away his divine, hateful power, leaving him as a mortal with no memories, allowing the village to rewrite his story with compassion.

One of the most discussed alternative interpretations surrounds the film's ending, where the defeated Moon King is stripped of his memory and the villagers collectively lie to him, telling him he was a kind and generous man. Some viewers interpret this act not as a beautiful redemption, but as a morally ambiguous or even hypocritical manipulation. From this perspective, the villagers are forcing a false identity onto him, erasing his true self—an act uncomfortably similar to the Moon King's own attempt to erase Kubo's humanity. Proponents of this view argue that the 'lies' are actually forgotten truths of human potential, but the debate remains.

Another popular interpretation is a psychological or metaphysical reading of the entire quest. Some audiences posit that both of Kubo's parents actually died in the film's opening sequence or shortly after, and that the entire journey with Monkey and Beetle is a manifestation of Kubo's grief. In this reading, Kubo uses his storytelling magic to cope with his profound trauma, projecting the spirits of his parents into his wooden monkey charm and a samurai beetle to safely guide himself through the psychological process of accepting their deaths.