The Body Ending Explained: What's Really Causing The Dance Team's Visions

Published Nov 11, 2026, 8:45 AM EST

Dani Kessel Odom (they/them) is an autistic lead writer and TV critic who covers sci-fi shows like Doctor Who and Pluribus, fantasy shows like The Magicians and Percy Jackson, and horror of all kinds. They also cover Marvel and DC TV shows and movies, with a robust knowledge of comic books. Their TV reviews can be found on Rotten Tomatoes.

Dani is also part of ScreenRant's books team, using their fiction writing and literature studies as the backbone for their book analyses.

They have covered events, such as the Denver Fan Expo. Professionals in the field, such as Damien Leone and Lucy Hale, have shared their articles. Their review of Ponies was quoted in the show's TV trailer.

In university, they majored in English Writing with a minor in psychology. They have always had a passion for analyzing TV and movies, even taking filmography and scriptwriting classes in university. They also studied and participated in onstage and onscreen acting extensively from the ages of 7 to 18.

Aside from working at Screen Rant, Dani has worked as a freelance editor and writer over the past decade, often in a ghostwriting capacity.

Warning: This article includes MAJOR SPOILERS for Netflix's The Body!

Quinn Shephard's campy, sapphic horror show, The Body, builds toward a dramatic ending that explains the cause of the visions while also opening up questions for season 2. The Netflix original show centers on a dance team at a Catholic church that starts experiencing strange visions and convulsions after a ritual initiation sacrifice goes wrong. As a result, the whole community devolves into hysteria.

Netflix had the perfect formula going into its new religious horror teen psychodrama. A dance team? Check. A stellar 2000s soundtrack? Checkity check. A ritual sacrifice gone wrong? Add a third check. Sapphic raunchiness? Quadruple check. Luckily, these great components push the admittedly messy story along. Lisbeth becomes unbearably creepy with her manipulative, charismatic preacher behavior, leaving us to wonder about her background. Elise and Anya try to figure out how to be together without outing themselves. The audience learns more about what’s really happening with the supernatural visions.

Rather than wrapping things up in a reasonable way and leaving only a few threads open, The Body offers very few conclusions and opens up about a dozen questions. Ultimately, as I said in my review of The Body for ScreenRant, the show’s wonderful vulgarity and unbelievable camp more than make up for its weaknesses. It’s so unbelievably fun to watch. However, Netflix will need to give The Body a second season if they want any of it to make sense.

The Visions & Supernatural Phenomena In The Body Are Mostly Fake

Courtesy of Netflix

A supernatural force seems to be at play in The Body after the dance team jokingly sacrifices Grace to the devil to win regionals. By the midpoint, everyone on the team except Maddie Delaney, who feels distraught that Grace hasn’t revealed herself to her. However, the visions and supernatural phenomena are rooted more in mass hysteria and the power of suggestion. Only three people know from the start that the visions are fake: Elise, Anya, and Lisbeth. The others fell into three possible categories.

Firstly, they believed that Anya and Elise saw Grace and wanted to be a part of the in-group. As such, they faked the visions, only admitting the truth when they realized it didn’t bring them social value. Some of the dance team members didn’t admit to lying. They could’ve been lying but were too embarrassed to admit it. It’s also possible that they could be experiencing mass hysteria. This typically occurs in insular groups with pre-existing fears that match the visions or delusions which fit with the Grace visions. Lastly, they could actually be seeing something supernatural.

While most of the visions seem completely fake, a few moments stand out as different. I’m not sure what on Earth was causing Leo Anderson to see visions of Grace as Jesus Christ and the Lamb of God, but that started before the fake visions. He saw he in multiple places, and those visions continued even after he faced negative social ramifications. On top of that, we see Anya looking at a phantom of Grace on at least two occasions. Unless The Body is showing the audience Anya’s hallucination, there’s reason to believe something supernatural is happening. Plus, Grace showing up in Anya's nightmares is real.

Elise & Anya Don’t Get Together At The End Of The Body Season 1

Courtesy of Netflix

Elise and Anya have a hot and steamy relationship throughout The Body season 1. It’s clear that Elise wants something more, instead of having to share Anya with a fake boyfriend. She wants the sex to mean something more. However, Anya denies that she’s gay, finding excuses for her sexual attraction to Elise. Sadly, the two don’t get together by the end of The Body season 1 because Anya is heavily entrenched in the attitudes and culture of the Catholic Church when it comes to being LGBTQ+.

“It’s satirizing some of the trauma of growing up queer and repressed and the confusion around that.” —Quinn Shephard to Autostraddle about The Body.

Elise’s frustration at being a “dirty little secret,” for all intents and purposes, is completely understandable. She’s allowed to want something more. Unfortunately, I can understand Anya’s perspective too, having been a Sapphic Catholic struggling to reconcile faith, expectations, and religious principles. In the finale, Anya seems to realize she’ll completely lose Elise if she doesn’t tell the truth. Her confession to Father Franklin doesn’t necessarily mean that she will come out. However, it does mean that there could be a chance for Elise and Anya.

Why The Church Leadership Decides To Hide The Truth Of Grace’s Situation

Courtesy of Netflix

Father Franklin is the most grounded character in The Body, and he symbolizes people who apply critical thinking to their faith. He and Elise are the most logical characters in the show. Father Franklin may fall into the trap of belief after a while, but the minute he has evidence that contradicts the “miracle” sainthood narrative, he takes steps to fix the damage he has done.

Unfortunately, the Bishop and other members of the diocese don’t have the same kind of integrity. They don’t care that Father Franklin has evidence to explain the coma and testimony from all the dance team members confirms that they lied. They don’t care that they’re overtly lying to the people they’re supposed to guide and protect. For the record, Proverbs 6:16-17 and other passages in the Bible describe a “lying tongue” as an offense to God. They are knowingly committing sin, and they’re perfectly happy to do so.

The reason they give is that people need the faith that Grace’s “miracles” bring. They act like they are doing their parishioners some kind of favor by deceiving them. In actuality, the way they talk at the end of The Body season 1’s finale makes it seem more likely they’re trying to achieve two goals.

The folks in charge want to stop a scandal that would give the Catholic Church a bad reputation, which was particularly important in 2004, at the height of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. More importantly, they want to maintain institutional control, which seems to be the goal of every religious institution ever.

Lisbeth’s Secret Past & Motivations, Explained

Image via Netflix

Throughout The Body, Lisbeth acts like the leader of a charismatic church. She engages in practices like laying hands on the sick and speaking in tongues. Rather than allowing people to follow her naturally, she finds their weaknesses and uses them as weapons. Lisbeth engages in emotional manipulation tactics, like creating isolation and a sense of shame, leading to the disturbing scene where all the dance girls are shouting out their extremely mundane sins that aren’t actually sins. Last I checked, being Canadian is not a sin, and a parent committing adultery isn’t the sin of a child.

Question 1 of 3

All of these tactics are finally explained towards the end of The Body season 1, when Lisbeth reveals her family history. Her father was the pastor at Signs Following, an extremely fundamentalist charismatic church. In home videos, her father supposedly drinks poison, and Lisbeth holds snakes. They are supposed to represent the true believers, as they have such faith that they can defeat deadly situations.

Her dad was bitten by a rattlesnake during worship, but he didn’t get any medical care. The fact that Lisbeth lost her father, her moral and emotional anchor, makes her actions in The Body so much more understandable, even if they aren’t excusable. She’s searching for a new connection in the same vein.

What’s Up With The Nosebleeds In The Body?

I wish there was a satisfying answer to, “What’s causing the nosebleeds?” However, this is one of the big mysteries they leave open-ended. Other symptoms, like visions and nightmares, fit with the mass hysteria. That doesn’t really work with the nosebleeds, though, especially since they started before Grace, Lizeth, and the dance girls went to the Halloween party. If Netflix picks the show up for season 2, The Body will need to provide a clear answer.

My educated guess is that some supernatural shenanigans are really going on, even though the dance team thinks they made everything up. The nosebleeds only seem to occur when Lisbeth is nearby. Lisbeth’s pale skin and shaved eyebrows make her seem snake-like. She actually owns pet snakes, which are frequently associated with the devil in the Garden of Eden. She constantly manipulates the folks around her to an almost unnatural degree. This could be building towards a "Lisbeth is the reincarnation of the Devil, and Grace is the reincarnation of Jesus" thing. That’s just my inference, though.

How The Body Season 1’s Ending Sets Up Season 2

Courtesy of Netflix

The end of The Body Season 1 leaves too many questions and too few answers. The Church has decided to keep the facade of Grace’s sainthood, and her waking in the final moments declaring, “I am God,” is certainly not going to help anything. The second season will need to show the fallout of the Church’s decision.

Meanwhile, Grace’s declaration raises the question, “Why?” “What is going through her head?” “Does she really believe she’s god?” “Is something supernatural going on?” Considering they billed The Body as a supernatural Catholic horror and there are very few genuine supernatural elements, it could be the center of a second season.

On top of that, the second season of the streaming teen drama will need to follow the dance team now that Lisbeth has convinced them that she’s a miracle worker on behalf of God. Anya finally admitted that she experiences same gender attraction, though it was to her priest. As such, she could still stay closeted after confessing. Ultimately, The Body season 2 has so much ground to cover that it will ruin the show if the streamer doesn’t pick up the horror for another season.

Cast

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  Kristina Bogic

  Anya Butler

• Geena Carling Meszaros

  Lisbeth Anderson