What's Up With the Ending?
As if Maggie's death doesn't pack enough of a dramatic punch, the final minutes of Million Dollar Baby have two more revelations in store.
(1) If Million Dollar Baby is to be believed, then Scrap is one heck of a letter writer. In the penultimate scene, after Frankie ends Maggie's life and disappears into the night, it's revealed that all of Scrap's narration throughout the entire movie has been the text of a letter he's writing to Katy, Frankie's estranged daughter. "No matter where he is," Scrap writes of his vanished pal, "I thought you should know what kind of man your father was." Oh, snap. Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris: a solid BFF right until the end.
(2) In the final scene, we glimpse what appears to be Frankie at the counter of Ira's Roadside Diner. After Father Horvak told Frankie that if he helped Maggie he'd be lost forever, seeing Frankie at the restaurant where he and Maggie had dinner in happier times—and that Frankie had even expressed an interest in buying—is a relief. It suggests that his soul isn't permanently broken or adrift in the Negative Zone after all; in fact, if he's eating a slice of that scrumptious homemade lemon pie, it may even be stronger than ever.