Brand New Cherry Flavor is Netflix’s newest addition to its American horror drama list that explores the desire for vengeance through witchcraft, black magic, and dark rituals, opening the world to the ‘other realm’.
Created by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion, the limited series follows Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar), an amateur director, who makes a black and white horror short film that catches the eye of Oscar-winning director Lou Burke (Eric Lange).
She comes to Los Angeles with dreams of making a feature film out of her short story. Her meeting with Lou goes well, and she signs an agreement making her the director of the movie.
However, things didn’t go as planned. Lou stabs her in the back and takes her movie, giving it away to a music director, Jules Brandenberg (Jayson Blair). She is devastated at the betrayal.
Meanwhile, a mysterious woman, Boro (Catherine Keener), has been following Lisa for a while. She gives Lisa a taste of her dark magic and tells her to contact her when in need.
After the betrayal and the disrespectful scuffle with Lou, Lisa goes to Boro seeking revenge. With rituals and black magic involved in the midst, prices are high, and Lisa has to pay for it all.
Will Lisa get her revenge, or will she lose herself in the darkness of black magic?
Brand New Cherry Flavor ending explained in detail:
Lucy’s Eye, the short film
The series opens up with Lisa arriving in Los Angeles with her short film ‘Lucy’s Eye,’ and an offer to meet up with the big shot, Lou Burke.
The film’s raw and intriguing direction has captured the attention of Lou, who wishes to bring it to the big screen.
Throughout most of the series, people were seen exclaiming at the horrifying end of the film and wondering how she managed to make it happen
As the story progresses, the ending is revealed. The actress onscreen is captured plucking out her right eyeball and eating it, giving it a gory conclusion.
The real twist comes with the behind-the-scenes of the movie. Lou goes out in search of the actress to stop the mayhem Lisa has brought upon him. The actress, Mary Gray (Siena Werber), turns out to be one-eyed, a former lover of Lisa.
The backstory goes to the shooting of the movie where Lisa is passionate about bringing out every inch of realism she can gather from Mary. Mary is hell-bent on giving the best shot in return.
Mary and Lisa are shown to be in love, or Lisa pretending to be so. They decide to shoot the final solo scene of the action together with no other crew. To make it more realistic, Mary suggests ingesting an intoxicating drug, and they get high.
In the heat of the moment, right in the middle of the shoot, Mary sees the energy trapped within Lisa – a horrifying beast inside her beautiful persona.
In the rawness of the action, Mary gouges her eye out and proceeds to eat it, all the while captured on camera. Mary later narrates how she remembers waking up at the side of the road with one eye missing and having no recollection of the previous day.
On the other hand, Lisa waits for Mary to return for two days and then makes her way to LA, trying to forget everything that happened.
Lisa’s revenge
After Lou betrays Lisa and takes away the one thing she cared most about – the right to direct her movie, she goes to the witch Boro and takes her up on the offer.
Boro informs her of the dangers involved, and yet Lisa agrees to go for it. They then perform a ritual that binds Lisa to Lou, making a channel for Boro to hurt the latter.
Revenge on Lou and burning his life becomes her goal. She is ready to go to any length to make it happen. Very soon, the process gets intense, and Lou sees his life falling apart.
In return, Lisa continues to make her payment in the form of tiny kittens that she vomits out now and then. Lisa witnesses as Lou suffers loss one after another, starting with his director, Jules, going up in flames in his backyard in front of onlookers at a party.
His son Jonathan’s life is also claimed by Boro, and she makes him her undead puppet to do her bidding.
Meanwhile, Lou starts losing control over himself, and his plans to master over Lisa go into the dump. He tries to get Lisa killed, but she survives her death with Boro’s help.
The once-acclaimed director starts losing his sanity and his eyesight. When Lisa comes to him at the end, he begs her to kill him and end his suffering. However, Lisa has no such plans.
She simply asks him why she was removed from her movie all of a sudden, and he reveals that her rejection of his sexual advances made him feel small. Lisa gets her answer while understanding he has no significance in her life anymore.
Lou’s life goes up in flames, as she desired. As an impact of the black magic, he has lost his eyesight, and Lisa gets her film back but doesn’t take it up.
Lisa tries to one-up on Boro, whose reality turns out to be a lot different than what it initially was. She realises that her end goal is different from just a movie.
Having lost everyone she cared about in his city, she returns to her roots to find her answers.
Boro’s truth
The truth behind Boro’s power and her seeking out Lisa is slowly revealed as the series advances. Boro happens to be an old soul who had acquired her power from a magical jaguar.
The story goes, a long, long time ago, Boro, then a young man, had met a Jaguar, who had magical powers. The jaguar takes a liking to Boro and makes love to him while also giving a bit of her magic.
In return, he has to keep paying her a little something, as Lisa pays with kittens. Things soon change when Boro, who is now a King with a prosperous kingdom, is attacked by enemies. He approaches the jaguar for help.
This time the magical creature asks for his wife in return. Boro tries to trick her and offers another woman in exchange. But the jaguar sees through it and, in anger, eats his wife one night and attacks Boro.
In the nick of time, when his death is nearing, Boro comes across a young girl. With the last bit of strength left in him, he jumps from his body to hers. Since then, he has been jumping bodies.
Lisa, ever since the ritual, has been seeing strange creatures near her – trying to reach her. Boro tells her to ignore them since they can’t hurt her.
However, that turns out to be half the truth. The dark entity was not trying to hurt Lisa but to warn her about Boro. Lisa then finds out that the entity is the jaguar and might probably be her mother, whom she has never seen.
The entity may have been connected to the energy within Lisa. The protagonist realises that Boro had betrayed the jaguar, and it exists in the other realm. Its mortal remains turned into a mere sofa.
Lisa goes to Boro and calls off the deal foiling Boro’s ultimate plan to inhabit Lisa’s body. Boro tries to stop her with the help of her minions, but Lisa manages to escape.
On the other hand, Boro finds no other option and takes over Mary’s body, who teams up with her to take revenge on Lisa.
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