The Running Man ending explained: A missile (or the mystery Hunter) wasn't enough to kill Ben

Edgar Wright's adaptation of The Running Man has a slender Ben Richards in comparison to the story's 1987 adaptation. At that time, Arnold Schwarzenegger played the lead character. Now, it's Glen Powell. "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is your savior speaking!" Powell's character says that in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), he is one here too. The savior of his family, running to save and secure their future in the film.

The film is about a TV show in a dystopian America where the contestants need to survive assassins called Hunters for 30 days to win a grand prize of $1 billion. Ben Richards, who has managed to stay alive for the longest in the game, presumably dies on a plane until we see him outside a grocery store.

When we meet him and his family, they are simply living in poverty, but things have changed by the end of this scene. More importantly, he lets his family know that he is alive when he pays for groceries Sheila (Jayme Lawson), his wife, has purchased.

What happens at the end of The Running Man?

Richards, at the end of the film, has hijacked a car with a civilian hostage in it named Amelia (Emilia Jones). He is trying to cut a deal with the Network, a government-run TV network in the country. While The Running Man is a deadly show, literally, it is one of the several life-threatening ones this network has.

So, Ben wants a plane to escape, which he gets. However, he is surprised when he gets a video call from the film's antagonist, the producer of the show, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), who offers him a job because he was impressed by what he pulled off and can be entertaining to the public. Because it is all there is for entertainment in this fallen nation.

Another surprise comes to him when Ben is told that his wife and kid are dead now. The assassins killed them. Now the running man has no reason to run and begins a fight on the plane between him and the Hunters. He is a skilled contestant and kills all the Hunters present on the flight.

However, there's always one big boss left with a major lifeline, if you have played video games. In The Running Man, it's this masked Hunter named McCone, played by Lee Pace (yes, that's the Elvenking from The Hobbit trilogy).

McCone tries to tell Ben that Killian is just playing mind games with him and his family is still alive. However, this information still isn't helpful for McCone. Ben isn't in a mood to spare a life, it seems. or, maybe he just thought that this Hunter too is trying to save his life by saying whatever he can.

After this sequence in The Running Man, the plane is blown up by a missile, and Ben is presumed dead by everyone until his wife sees him.

Sheila has gone grocery shopping, and when she is about to pay for her items, she is told that they are already paid. And there he is, as she sees outside the store, her husband, alive and well.