Netflix’s Creature Ending, Explained: Does Ziya Die?

Following medical student Ziya’s hubristic search for a cure to death’s ultimate ailment, Netflix’s Turkish drama show, ‘Creature,’ depicts a captivating tale with love and grief at its center. With a physician for a father, Ziya grows up surrounded by an endless string of pain and death, quickly developing resentment toward the same. As such, his life is bound to take a turn when he travels to Istanbul for his studies and runs into the eccentric professor, Ihsan, who has the same thirst for knowledge as him.

However, as the duo embarks on a journey searching for glory and meaning, their experiment, defying the natural order, imparts little more than a dark future to them. Given the thrilling nature of their morally reckless journey, viewers must be eager to learn how their story ends. Here’s everything you need to know! SPOILER AHEAD!

Creature Recap

Captain Ömer and his men are braving the snow-covered mountains rumored to hold chestfuls of fortune when a ghoulish man deposits his sick companion to Ömer’s campgrounds before disappearing again. When the man, Ziya, wakes, he tells the treasure hunters that he brought his ghoulish companion back to life. Thus, Ömer, more than intrigued by the strange duo, urges Ziya to share his story with them.

From a young age, Ziya sports a curious, intelligent mind and remains fascinated by his father, Muzaffer’s work as the local physician. While the child learns the miracle of medicine, he also becomes familiar with its many shortcomings. As a result, once the boy discovers the fable of the Book of Resurrection, he becomes obsessed with the idea of preserving life even from death.

Upon coming of age, Ziya leaves his home, Bursa, for the Academy of Medicine, hoping to broaden the horizons of his knowledge in more ways than one. Fresh in town, the young man meets a stranger who promises to deliver the Book of Resurrection to him at an inn. However, the other man turns out to be a crook who simply knocks Ziya out and robs him. With no money left and too much pride to reach out to his father, the man wanders about until he finds a prospect from Hamdi, a kind restaurant owner.

As Ziya works for Hamdi and crashes in the backroom of his establishment, he notices Ihsan, the peculiar professor he had seen in the academy late one night. As it would turn out, Ihsan was a professor but was fired from the Academy long ago due to his unconventional intellect and anger. Ziya can only maintain his distance from the man for so long until he approaches him after getting kicked out of school for questioning his teacher’s ideas.

Ihsan, who’s friends with Ziya’s father, helps the kid. Nevertheless, he remains secretive about himself, which invites the younger man’s curiosity. Eventually, Ziya tricks Ihsan into thinking he’s contracted the Bubonic plague. As such, the professor finally ushers him into his house.

Ziya uses this opportunity to sedate Ihsan and uncover the secrets within his house. He realizes that Ihsan has the Book of Ressurection, and he’s seeking the same knowledge that Ziya wants. Therefore, when Ihsan becomes conscious, Ziya threatens to expose him to the townsfolk unless he allows the student to help with his experiment. Furthermore, Ziya also hides the book after memorizing it, rendering himself the only resource for Ihsan.

Consequently, Ziya and Ihsan pair up together, with the former man filling in the missing blanks in the experiment with his willingness to play fast and loose with his morals. After deciphering the book’s puzzles, the professor and the student go through with their first experiment on a stolen human corpse. The experiment goes south, burning the corpse and killing Ihsan. Nonetheless, a distraught Ziya refuses to give up and straps Ihsan to his machine, bringing his friend back to life.

Yet, Ziya soon realizes Ihsan, who has returned, is only a shell of his former self and barely even human. Thus, tormented by the creature of his own creation, Ziya abandons Ihsan and flees from Istanbul back to Bursa. Meanwhile, Ihsan roams around, newborn and just as helpless for it. Therefore, his life changes for the better once he gets recruited by Vasili’s circus, where the societal misfits love and care for him like their own.

Nevertheless, Ihsan’s time with them ends soon, and he has to return to solitude until his roaming brings him to Seher’s cottage. At the cottage, Ihsan finds an unlikely shot at love and a family with Seher’s pregnant granddaughter, Esma. Eventually, even that is stolen from him when men arrive to kill Esma for her “impurity.” In the end, Ihsan realizes his only beacon of hope is the man who put him through hell only to return him to a hellish life: Ziya.

Creature Ending: Does Ziya Die?

After Ihsan’s transformation, Ziya realizes the horror of his actions once he sees that the creature he has brought back is far from his former friend. He finally understands the lessons his father and Hamdi tried to teach him about his arrogance and ambitions driving him too close to the sun. Although Ziya believed he would have revolutionized medicine by bringing Ihsan back to life, he has only defied fate and condemned Ihsan to a hellish second chance at life.

As such, Ziya rushes to forget his own sins, abandoning Ihsan and seeking the life he had before he let his maddened obsession take over his soul. When his father and betrothed Asiye ask about his stay in Istanbul, the man remains elusive, assuring them they wouldn’t want to become the audience to its retelling. While everyone notices his change, they hope for his recovery and go about their lives.

Likewise, Ziya proposes to Asiye and asks her to travel to the family farmhouse, where they can start a family together. Ziya can no longer stoke his intellect and thirst for knowledge because he knows that path will only lead to self-destruction. Instead, he wants to forgo his dreams of becoming a doctor and live a quiet life with his love. Hence, a wedding follows, and Ziya rides to the farmhouse with Asiye for their honeymoon.

However, Ihsan, an invited guest due to his presumed death, sneaks into the couple’s carriage and ambushes them at the farmhouse. Finally confronting his maker, Ihsan compels Ziya to face the consequences of his actions. After threatening Asiye’s life, Ihsan takes Ziya hostage and drags him out to the snowy mountains, where he has buried Esma’s body for the time being.

On their hike up the mountain, Ihsan divulges his experiences to Ziya, recalling his time in the realm of hell, where he saw the past and future. He also shares his experiences after rebirth as he walked the Earth without knowing who he was anymore. Ultimately, Ihsan has come to the conclusion that humanity is intrinsically bad, embroiled in their web of lies. Yet, one truth remains that makes existence worthwhile: love.

Consequently, now that Ihsan has lost his love, he wants Ziya to bring Esma back to life. Nevertheless, halfway up their trek, Ziya falls ill, pushing Ihsan to drop him at Ömer’s doorstep to help him recover.

As Ziya recounts the entire tale to Ömer, he receives some clarity of his own. In facing his immoral actions and their painful consequences, Ziya has healed himself and arrived at a peaceful destination. Since he’s finally taken accountability for his sins, Ziya is no longer haunted by them. Still, the feeling doesn’t last long.

Ihsan requires Ömer and his men’s help dragging Esma’s corpse down the mountain. Therefore, he brings them the treasure they had been looking for to earn their favor. But, of course, the hunters turn on each other over the loot once Ihsan brings it. The confrontation ends in a shootout, and Ziya gets caught in the crossfire.

Ziya bleeds to his death in the snowy mountains, accompanied by the creature he had made in search of arrogant immortality. Yet, the man leaves one final letter behind for his beloved Asiye, asking her to forget him while begging for forgiveness from her.

Does Ihsan Resurect Esma?

After Esma’s death, Ihsan has little else to live for. The resurrected creature, who had become a man all on his own merit and that of his newfound friends, found a unique inkling within Esma. The young woman was raped by her cousin, who threatened to kill her should she reveal his crime. As a result, her family turned on her when she fell pregnant, deciding that she had little virtue. Since her father and other male relatives refused to believe her account, her mother helped her travel to Seher’s house to escape her family’s kill order.

Therefore, Esma lives enclosed in her grandmother’s four walls, hidden from prying eyes, until Ihsan’s arrival brings something new for the young woman. The two fall in love over their shared wall through a small window, bonding over their mistreatments due to events outside their control. Although Ihsan declines to let Esma see his scarred face for fear of gaining her hatred, the woman eventually sees him when she undergoes labor, and he rushes to help.

Thus, the couple begins to live together with Esma’s child, whom Ihsan loves as his own. Inevitably, the townsfolk discover Esma due to her baby’s cries, and Ihsan decides to marry her to quell her reclusive life. Nevertheless, the woman perishes that day, awakening a beast within Ihsan who lays waste to Esma’s killers.

As such, when Ziya finally dies on that mountain, Ihsan loses his last hope. Ever since his rebirth as someone not quite human but nothing else, Ihsan has suffered immense loss. First, his maker abandoned him, and other people’s villainy ran him out of the family he found within the circus. Similarly, Esma was also taken from him simply because of humans’ inability to make peace with people they have decided to exclude from the norm.

Since Ihsan will forever be othered by society in this second life of his, he decides to give up on life once and for all. Even though the man could’ve gone down a path similar to Ziya’s and allowed obsession to take over him, he decides to quit while he’s ahead. After instructing Ömer to share the treasure with Seher and Esma’s child, Ihsan carries Ziya further up to a mountain peak, where he rests beside him. Allowing himself to succumb to nature, he dies frozen beside the man who killed and created him. Meanwhile, Ömer goes on to transcribe Ihsan and Ziya’s story as a cautionary tale of humanity’s hubris and sinful ambitions.