What happens at the end of I Am Legend depends on which of its two endings you saw
Nearly two decades on, I Am Legend — Francis Lawrence's 2007 blockbuster starring Will Smith as virologist Robert Neville, the last man in New York — still causes arguments, because people genuinely watched two different films.
One ending played in cinemas. The other shipped on the 2008 two-disc DVD, and it changes everything, including who the title is about. Here's both — and which one now officially counts.
The theatrical ending
The Darkseekers breach Neville's lab just as his cure finally works on an infected test subject. He draws a vial of her blood, hands it to fellow survivor Anna (Alice Braga), and seals her and the boy Ethan inside a coal chute. Then he pulls the pin on a grenade and charges the alpha male, killing himself and the attackers. Anna delivers the cure to a walled survivors' colony in Bethel, Vermont, and her closing narration declares Neville a legend — the man whose sacrifice saved humanity.
Heroic. Clean. And almost the opposite of the book.
The alternate ending
Same siege, completely different resolution. As the alpha male hurls himself at the glass, he smears a butterfly shape onto it — and Neville suddenly notices the butterfly tattoo on the infected woman strapped to his table. The Darkseekers aren't mindless. The alpha came for his mate. Neville wheels her out and returns her, the attack stops, and he stares at his wall of photographs of every "subject" he's experimented on — realising that to them, he's been the monster all along. He, Anna, and Ethan then simply drive out of New York towards Vermont. Alive.
Which one is "right"?
The alternate ending is far closer to Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, in which Neville grasps that he has become the terrifying legend of the new society replacing his own — that's what the title means. Screenwriter and producer Akiva Goldsman has been open about the fact that the theatrical version traded that idea away for a conventional hero's exit.
And the sequel has settled the debate. I Am Legend 2 — announced in March 2022, with Michael B. Jordan joining Smith — will treat the DVD ending as canon. Goldsman confirmed as much at San Diego Comic-Con in 2024:
"We're sequelizing the alternative cut," he said — the one where Neville lives and, in his words, things don't go well for humanity.
He'd earlier told Deadline in 2023 that "this will start a few decades later than the first," with an earth being reclaimed by nature. As of 2026, the sequel remains in development without a release date.