The Zombie Wife Kills Her Husband, and Lightning Kills the Witch Doctor

The zombie woman’s killing of her husband and the witch doctor’s death by lightning form the moral climax of the film story Molina tells. The sequence turns on a delayed disclosure: a woman compelled to act against her own feelings becomes the instrument of a scheme for power, while the dying husband reveals who has been directing the violence. The witch doctor is then exposed to the people he has exploited, and the storm brings his rule to an abrupt end.

Causes and Deception

The crisis begins when the witch doctor orders the zombie woman to leave the old housekeeper alone. The housekeeper, once the husband’s wife and now despised by him, has tried to stop the witch doctor from using the zombie woman for his purposes. She attempts to intervene, but the witch doctor kills her with the knife she had brought. This establishes the immediate cost of resisting his control and clears the way for him to direct the zombie woman toward another victim.

The witch doctor’s next move depends on a calculated lie. He tells the zombie woman that her husband was responsible for her transformation and is now mistreating his second wife. The woman appears to understand that the account is false, but, as a zombie, she cannot act on that recognition or refuse the order. Her awareness and powerlessness remain in painful contrast: she still loves her husband, yet the witch doctor can make her carry out his command.

The group travels to the mansion near dusk. Through a window, the zombie woman sees her husband intoxicated and treating the young woman roughly. The witch doctor places the knife in her hand, and the household steward directs her inside. The husband does not see her approach. In the scene’s central reversal, the attack is not presented as a choice freely made by a woman who has ceased to love him; it is the consequence of the witch doctor’s command imposed on someone whose will has been taken from her.

The Husband’s Final Disclosure

After the husband is fatally stabbed, the young woman returns from the room where she has locked herself and finds him dying. The steward calls the servants to witness what has happened, apparently seeking to distance himself from responsibility. Before he dies, however, the husband tells the zombie woman that he has always loved her. He identifies the witch doctor as the source of the deception and says that the man has long sought to rule the island and control its properties.

The husband’s disclosure changes the meaning of the preceding events without undoing their consequences. The zombie woman had been made to believe that the husband was her enemy, but the final admission confirms that the witch doctor’s account was a lie. The husband also tells her to return to her chamber, lock herself inside, and set fire to the old house so that she will no longer serve as another person’s instrument. His dying words expose the struggle for control beneath the apparent domestic conflict: the manipulation of the zombie woman is part of the witch doctor’s larger pursuit of power.

As the servants gather, the husband further accuses the witch doctor of sacrificing many of their relatives by turning them into the living dead. The accusation converts a private killing into a collective reckoning. The servants look toward the man whose authority has rested on the harm done to their kin, and he retreats toward the garden. His attempt to escape marks the collapse of the control he has exercised over the household and islanders.

The Storm and the Witch Doctor’s Death

The confrontation moves outdoors into a violent storm. The witch doctor draws a revolver, forcing the servants to stop their pursuit while he tries to get away. Lightning strikes him, killing him before he can escape. The death arrives from outside the servants’ immediate action, but follows the revelation that has turned them against him: his power has been exposed, and the storm ends his bid to preserve it.

The sequence sets the witch doctor’s deliberate manipulation against the sudden force that stops him. He has controlled others by directing their actions and withholding the truth; the husband’s last disclosures make that control legible to the household, and the lightning ends his flight. His death does not restore the zombie woman’s life or will. The story makes clear that the defeat of the person who ordered her actions cannot reverse what has already been done to her.

Aftermath and Narrative Function

After the storm, the young woman leaves the island with only a few belongings. She reaches a departing ship, whose captain is the same man who brought her there. When he asks whether she enjoyed her stay, she answers that she did not; she also suggests that the drums associated with suffering and death may no longer be heard. The islanders gather at the docks to sing farewell, while a bonfire burns inland. The young woman understands that the zombie woman is being burned there, and the captain tries to reassure her that the danger is over.

The ending therefore gives the young woman a passage away from the island but no simple restoration. The witch doctor is dead, the islanders have spoken in farewell, and the traveler is leaving; at the same time, the zombie woman dies in the fire after having been compelled to kill the person she loved. The sequence resolves the threat by separating its survivors from the island, not by undoing its losses.

As an episode in Molina’s film narration, the event is built around disclosure and reversal: the apparent culprit is revealed as a victim of command, the husband’s death becomes the occasion for exposing the witch doctor’s ambition, and the storm delivers the final turn. The melodramatic pattern brings private suffering into public view when the husband names the victims among the servants’ kin. The closing movement from the mansion to the garden, then to the ship and the distant bonfire, widens the consequences beyond the central killing while leaving the zombie woman’s loss as the tale’s most irreversible cost.