Warning: Contains SPOILERS for A Quiet Place Part II.
A Quiet Place Part II ends with a sudden cut to black, a somewhat surprising move that serves to mirror the first movie and help setup the third. A Quiet Place 2 brings back the cast from the first movie, including John Krasinski's Lee thanks to flashbacks, as well as adding in some key new faces such as Cillian Murphy's Emmett. It builds a new survival story, which largely separates the family: Evelyn (Emily Blunt), Marcus (Noah Jupe), and the baby stay in Emmett's bunker, while Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Emmett go searching for the source of a radio transmission.
These twin strands are linked by the ending thanks to some nice cross-cutting, connecting them both thematically and in terms of story. As Regan uses her implant to transmit the high-pitched frequency across the radio, Marcus picks up the signal, using it against a monster in the bunker. Both siblings kill the monsters facing them, before the screen cuts to black and then the credits start to roll.
It's a slightly jarring moment, as even though it makes sense as an ending in hindsight, the movie rolls by so quickly that it feels particularly shocking to see it end at this point. Similarly, given the separation, then there was some expectation that the family would be reunited by the close, allowing for some, well, quieter moments before the credits. A Quiet Place 2's sudden ending works brilliantly though, and is all the more impactful for that cut to black. It not only helps keep the movie at a lean 97 minutes (slightly longer than the first, but still impressively tight), but it allows the full weight of what's happened to sink in, with the lingering memory being that of Marcus and Regan's triumph, going out with a bang and on a real high note.
In that sense, the climax here very much mirrors the ending to A Quiet Place. In a similarly abrupt moment, as Evelyn cocks the shotgun, ready to fightback, serving as the tease for the sequel. A Quiet Place 2 takes that moment and both expands it and flips it. There, it was dealing with one monster and figuring out how to kill them; here, it's learning how to defeat the monsters completely. Regan played a key role in A Quiet Place's ending, but the scene itself very much belonged to Evelyn. In A Quiet Place 2's ending (and the movie overall), Blunt's character takes more of a backseat, allowing her kids to rise up to the challenge. While there's plenty of loss along the way, it's yet another conclusion that offers a necessary shot of hope, and not just for the Abbotts.
The ending of A Quiet Place 2 cements the series as Regan's story, and confirms just how much she takes after her father. It's her ingenuity that not only saves the day, but could end up saving humanity as a whole, and by ending so suddenly on her victory, the sequel really hammers that home. It also serves as effective setup for the sequel, because things go out in the midst of the action. They might've killed a couple of monsters, but there's a lot left to do before being able to truly defeat them, and so A Quiet Place Part II's ending promises that there's much more to come in A Quiet Place 3, which can pick up just where this leaves off.