Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Ending Explained

The film's entire narrative hinges on the revelation that George and Martha's son does not exist. He is a fiction they created early in their marriage to cope with their infertility. The 'rules' of their marriage state that the son can never be mentioned to outsiders. When Martha mentions him to Honey, she breaks the bond. In retaliation, George decides to 'kill' the son. In the climax, he receives a fake telegram stating the son died in a car accident. Martha screams in agony, not for a real death, but for the death of their shared coping mechanism. The film ends with them sitting in silence, stripped of their fantasy, forced to face their life together without the buffer of their 'child'.

While the standard reading is that the 'son' was a mutual delusion, some critics have argued that the son might have been real and died, or that he represents a real miscarriage, and the 'game' is a twisted way of coping with that actual trauma. Another interpretation views the film as a political allegory, with George (History/Humanism) and Nick (Biology/Pragmatism) fighting for the soul of the future (Honey/The Next Generation), while the 'son' represents the impossible ideal of American perfection.