- From the mansion, Norma calls Betty, without telling her who she is. She tells her to ask Joe about his living situation, implying something is deeply wrong with it. But Joe grabs the phone and tells Betty to come to the address and see for herself.
- Norma tells Joe that she bought a revolver to commit suicide with, but that she couldn't do it, begging him to love her.
- Betty's roommate, Connie, drives over with her, and Betty goes in alone. Joe shows her around the mansion, explaining it belongs to the famous Norma Desmond. He pretty much overtly tells Betty that he's her kept-man, but she doesn't want to hear about it. She wants Joe to leave with her.
- Joe claims that he likes his arrangement, and shows a weeping Betty to the door, telling her to go to Artie.
- But he doesn't actually like this arrangement. Norma thinks he's chosen her, and thanks him, but he's leaving her too—he's going to head back to Dayton, Ohio, like he thought he should do at the beginning of the movie.
- Max enters and watches as they argue. Norma gets her revolver and threatens to kill herself, and Joe tells her the truth about why DeMille's assistant called. He wants her to wise up and face reality.
- As he walks out, Norma follows and shoots him three times. He falls into the pool and dies.
- The next day, we're back where we began, with Joe dead in the pool, as policemen and reporters and gossip columnists swarm the mansion.
- Upstairs, the police detectives question Norma, who won't respond but stares into her mirror.
- Joe's voiceover muses that Norma would be destroyed when the headlines about the murder hit—but when Norma hears that the "cameras" have arrived, she collapses into full madness, believing she's starring in DeMille's movie based on her Salomé script, and that the cameras are there to film her comeback—not document her arrest.
- At the bottom of the stairs, Max stands behind the news cameras and directs Norma, acting like he's DeMille, but with a look of pity and sadness on his face.
- Norma descends the stairs like she the princess in the film, but stops at the bottom saying she's too happy.
- She's extremely glad to be making movies again, and says this is just the beginning of a new resurgence—she'll make more and more movies, you can bet on that.
- At the end, she tells Max (whom she mistakes for DeMille) that she's ready for her close-up, and moves toward the camera with a look of total insanity.