Breaking Down 'Swarm' Ending

Dre lives in Atlanta as Toni. Amazon states the character is not definitively trans. Toni meets Rashida (Kiersey Clemons) when he offers her a ride home because her rideshare driver leaves her after Toni sees her roommate is wasted. They start living together. Toni falls back into old habits. Rashida pays for everything because Toni does not work.

Toni is excited to buy his girlfriend expensive Ni’jah tickets for their anniversary. Rashida dislikes Ni’jah (played by Nirine S. Brown). Like Marissa (Chloe Bailey) was angry when Dre spent money on Ni’jah tickets instead of rent, Rashida is furious. Toni spent that money on tickets while she must support him and asks her parents for money, which she hates.

Toni seems to find acceptance with Rashida. She loves him as he is. She introduces him to her family, who welcome him. Toni regresses, killing Rashida over his obsession with Ni’jah. Toni strangles Rashida because she does not want to go to the concert and badmouths Ni’jah. Toni burns the body after sleeping while hugging Rashida’s corpse. Then, Toni decides to go to the concert alone.

Toni gets to the concert. He realizes he never took the tickets from Rashida’s pocket; they burned in the fire. He finds a scalper and kills him for his ticket into the show. Inside, Toni cannot control his desire to see Ni’jah. He runs onstage. Security stops him, but Ni’jah steps in, gives Toni the microphone, and asks him to sing. Ni’jah and Toni leave the concert together; Ni’jah hugs him like a mother as the car drives away.

Toni runs onstage at the Ni’jah concert. The singer appears with Ni’jah's body, but Marissa's face. A glow surrounds Marissa’s face, suggesting a dream. Time is short. Toni gives Rashida the concert tickets after she returns home from work. They argue, leading to Rashida’s fatal death. Then, Toni sleeps, cradling her corpse for an unknown time. Toni could burn the body, go to the concert, try entry methods, kill a scalper in his car, and still get inside as the show begins. This seems unlikely.

For Toni, this is real. The penultimate episode, “Fallin’ Through the Cracks,” shows a man named Tony.Tony did. He ran onto the stage at a concert.He ran onto the stage on the Beyoncé and Jay-Z.It was on the On the Run II Tour.This happened in summer 2018. Toni never achieved his Beyoncé dreams in real life, so the final episode lets him have the ending he wants, even if only in his mind.

Janine Nabers said, “Because they’re one and the same. These two women were the catalyst for her story. It begins with Chloe [Bailey, who plays Marissa], and it ends with Ni’jah,” in an interview with the LA Times.LA Times. Nabers also told TV Line.TV Line“At the end of the day, this is about a woman going through grief in her own way. What she sees in the moment is a manifestation of a lot of the things that she’s been dealing with, especially from the pilot, that set her on this journey to begin with.”

Toni grew up in foster care. Marissa’s parents brought him home, and the two connected. Marissa first accepted and loved Toni. Marissa’s parents disliked him and tried to hide him. They eventually sent Toni back to the foster home. Toni found another place for acceptance—before Rashida—with the other members of the “Hive,” the name for Ni’jah fans, and a nod to Beyoncé on social media and internet groups. To Toni, Ni’jah and Marissa equaled acceptance.

The “real” ending happens in the penultimate episode, shown like a true crime documentary. Detective Loretta Greene (Heather Simms) investigates the murders. She thinks a toxic fan, a Black woman, commits them. Loretta notices similar items at crime scenes, like hot Cheetos and a bonnet, things not often found on older white women.

“Fallin’ Through the Cracks” is the real world; all other episodes are in Toni’s reality.Toni’sAndrea Greene shares the same name, but the photo of Dre is not Dominique Fishback.who plays the characterin the show. Also, the name is bleeped, but everyone in the documentary talks about Beyoncé, not Ni’jah. At the end of this episode, we also see Donald Glover, co-creator of Swarm.Swarm, talking about the new project he’s working on that features Dom Fishback.

Loretta finds Toni. Besides the junk food links, she finds other murders where victims died from blunt force trauma. The victims she researched also criticized Ni’jah/Beyoncé before they died. She figures out Dre became Toni, living in Atlanta (where Marissa was going with Khalid [played by Damson Idris] for her birthday).

Loretta has a mugshot of the “real” Toni. A news clip shows a man running onstage at a Beyoncé and Jay-Z concert. The episode ends with the message: “Loretta continues to push for the arrest of Andrea Greene. She suspects Andrea is linked to at least eight murders, making her one of the most prolific female serial killers.”female serial killers. Houston, Nashville, and Little Rock PD reopened the murder cases they think Toni committed.

The show gives a phone number for anyone with info on Andrea Greene. Calling it sounds like a police tip line, but Dre asks what she asked her victims: “Who is your favorite artist?”

Nabers explained where the idea came from, telling...Vulture.There is a woman Donald [Glover] follows on Twitter. She is a Black woman, a teacher. She tweeted, “I’m so tired of seeing Black women on TV play therapists and lawyers and doctors and people who just have their s**t together. We can be serial killers, too.” That formed part of the pitch. I thought, “Of course we can.” Our research confirmed this.Black female serial killers., so many of them have gone unnoticed. They exist, and people do not see or write about them. In the same interview, she stated, “I know it’s extreme, and I know our character does a lot of crazy s**t, but this is a love letter to Black women.”

Nabers said, “As Americans, we are comfortable watching white people go crazy because they have earned it in many minds.” “We wanted to shift that view and let it be this Black woman, whom we have not seen before, and give her that weight. It is fine if it makes Black people uneasy watching this Black person do this, especially to other Black people. We have seen this stuff for years with white faces.”