“Unforgiven” centers on William Munny (Eastwood), an older man with two children and a failing farm to his name. In his youth, Munny was an outlaw and killer — apparently quite a ruthless one too — until he met and fell in love with a woman named Claudia. Munny tried to be a better man, one worthy of his bride, so he swore off killing and took to legitimate work. Now Claudia is dead, though, and the Munny family is in dire straits. Will, really needing the money, decides to pursue a bounty. On that journey, he learns that there’s no redemption for him in his life, only damnation once he enters the next.
Eastwood has kept making movies 30+ years after starring in and directing “Unforgiven.” (Read our review of his new courtroom drama “Juror No. 2” here.) When “Unforgiven” came out, though, it was proclaimed as a book-end to his career.
 Clint became a movie star playing gunslingers in Westerns. “Unforgiven” is about the consequences of living a violent life like that; it’s a spiritual epilogue to every Eastwood Western, from the “Dollars” trilogy to “The Outlaw Josey Wales.” Think of how Eastwood’s character in “A Fistful of Dollars” through “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” is called “the Man with No Name.” He’s a mythic figure, an embodiment of the archetypal Western hero, a phantom who drifts from one adventure to the next. “Unforgiven” brings this hero down to Earth; William Munny experiences age, failure, and the other foibles that trouble us mortals.
The film’s exact ending is this: Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), the tyrannical sheriff of Little Whiskey, kills Munny’s partner Ned (Morgan Freeman). Munny then kills the Sheriff in revenge (note how he takes a swing of booze in this scene, having failed to stay sober). Munny then rides out of Little Whiskey on a pale horse like the Angel of Death in “Revelation,” and not into the calm sunset but rather a dark storm. The film ends with a wide shot of Munny walking to Claudia’s grave at his farm, with the following scrolling text:
“Some years later, Mrs. Ansonia Feathers made the arduous journey to Hodgeman County to visit the last resting place of her only daughter. William Munny has long since disappeared with the children…. some said to San Francisco where it was rumored he prospered in dry goods. And there was nothing on the marker to explain to Mrs. Feathers why her only daughter had married a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.”
(For our more detailed dive into the ending of “Unforgiven,” click here.)
The cover of “Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker” #6 is also similar to the ending of “Unforgiven.” Butcher stands at Becca’s grave, the orange sunset turning all the subjects into silhouettes. Compare the images below:
Warner Bros.
Dynamite Entertainment