What actually happens
Debt is a terrible reason to open anything
Del Toro introduces every episode, a habit borrowed from Rod Serling's Night Gallery, and each episode is one curiosity from the cabinet. In "Lot 36", set in 1991, a xenophobic veteran named Nick buys an abandoned storage lot and needs money to pay a debt. An immigrant named Amelia asks for her family's belongings, which were sold to him by mistake, and he refuses. In the lot he finds a séance table, three demon-summoning books, and a hidden chamber holding the rare fourth volume and a demon sealed inside Dottie Wolmar's dried-out body. Nick breaks the seal. The demon consumes a buyer named Roland and chases Nick around the warehouse, where Amelia lets it catch him. In "Graveyard Rats", a broke grave robber named Masson digs in Salem, steals a talisman from a corpse in an underground temple, and ends up buried alive in a coffin.
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A parasite with a taste for cancer and a lotion with a customer service line
In "The Autopsy", set in 1978, Sheriff Nate Craven asks his friend Dr. Carl Winters to do autopsies on a group of miners. Joe Allen, one of the group, set off an explosion while carrying a strange object. His body gets up again because an alien parasite is living in it, and these parasites keep their hosts awake while they feed. The parasite notices Winters's cancer and plans to move into him. Winters disables his own senses, writes a message on his chest telling Craven to listen to his recordings and burn the body, and kills himself, which traps the parasite. In "The Outside", a woman named Stacey who longs to be accepted is given a skincare lotion called Alo Glo, gets a rash, and gets a message from the lotion's creator through her TV. She kills her husband, sheds her skin to reveal a new body, and is welcomed by her coworkers.
The paintings were a poor choice of museum exhibit
In "Pickman's Model", art student Will Thurber of Arkham befriends a painter named Richard Pickman in 1909. His horrifying paintings fascinate Thurber. Seventeen years later Thurber is a museum curator and still has nightmares about them. When Pickman visits with Thurber's family, Thurber's son James has nightmares after seeing the work too, and Thurber confronts Pickman. Thurber burns the paintings and accidentally shoots Pickman, who says the paintings showed real events and scenes from the future. A demon from one of them drags Pickman's body away. The next day the museum is displaying the paintings, undamaged, and Thurber's wife Rebecca and James have seen them. Thurber orders them destroyed, then goes home promising to be a better husband. That is the scene to brace for, and it is the final one: Rebecca has gouged out her own eyes and cooked James, exactly as shown in a painting.
Two drug experiments with a body count
In "Dreams in the Witch House", Walter Gilman watches his twin sister Epperley's spirit dragged off to a strange forest when she dies in childhood. By 1933 he is renting a room in the home of an executed witch, Keziah Mason, and taking a drug called Liquid Gold to reach his sister. He brings back a scrap of her dress, then Epperley herself. Keziah and her human-faced rat, Jenkins Brown, come back too, and Walter must die before dawn. Epperley kills Keziah and dies peacefully, but Jenkins burrows into Walter, bursts out and kills him, and then possesses him. In "The Viewing", set in 1979, a recluse named Lionel Lassiter gathers four guests to look at a meteor. It cracks open and releases an entity that kills three people. Xie and Roth escape by car, while the entity merges with Lassiter and heads into the sewers.
The ending, explained
The last episode, "The Murmuring", takes place in 1951 and follows Nancy and Edgar Bradley, a married pair who study how birds flock in murmurations. After their daughter Ava dies, they move to a remote country house to keep working. Nancy sees the ghosts of a crying boy and a screaming woman, and Edgar thinks grief is causing it. She learns that the previous owner, Claudette, drowned her son and killed herself after her husband left. Edgar leaves for his research site after a fight about how Nancy never cries. Alone, Nancy comforts the boy and tells him to run into the light, and he disappears. She watches Claudette fall from a balcony and understands that the screaming was anguish. A giant murmuration carries Claudette's spirit away and surrounds Nancy, who finally cries. When Edgar returns, she tells him she is ready to talk about Ava.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities scary?
Yes, Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities is a 6 out of 10. It has monsters, ghosts and a lot of gore, and the dread lasts about a night. Each episode is a separate story, so the scary parts come in bursts.
How does Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities end?
The last episode, The Murmuring, ends with Nancy finally crying over her daughter Ava and telling her husband she is ready to talk about her. Every other episode finishes its own story, and most of those end badly for the lead.
Does the dog die in Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities?
No dog dies in Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. The first episode opens with a skinned animal being butchered, but it is meant to be a raccoon, and a duck is hunted and taxidermied in the series.
Is there a post-credits scene in Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities?
No. Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
Do you have to watch Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities in order?
No. Each of the eight episodes of Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities is its own story with its own characters, and del Toro introduces each one.
