During the opening credits, we see the Bride's bloodied face again and hear her say "Bill, it's your baby". In the first scene, we see her driving an open car and saying that there is only one left to kill (which answers the question whether she believed that Elle died). She is on her way to Bill.
Chapter 6: The Massacre at Two Pines
Back at the beginning, at the Two Pines Wedding Chapel in El Paso, TX, a dress rehearsal for a wedding is taking place. Reverend Harmony (
Bo Svenson) and his wife (
Jeannie Epper) decide that, since the bride will have no relatives present at the wedding, the groom's relatives and friends can sit on both sides of the aisle. The Bride (
Uma Thurman) leaves the chapel to get some fresh air; on the way out, she is disturbed to hear flute music. On the front porch she finds Bill (
David Carradine) sitting on a bench playing his bamboo flute. She asks him to be nice and he replies that he does not know how to be nice but will do his best to be sweet. They enter the hall and she introduces him to her fiancé as her father but rejects the fiancé's idea that, as her father, he should give her away at the ceremony. As the bride and groom are called to the front by the Reverend Harmony, no attempt is made to introduce 'father' to the rest of the fiancé's family. Bill stays at the back of the chapel.
Outside the chapel, four armed assassins appear, all dressed in black. In one line they move to the door, they enter, and the shooting starts, killing everybody inside, except for the Bride and Bill.
Back in the present, Bill visits his brother Budd (
Michael Madsen), a.k.a. Sidewinder, at his trailer in the middle of nowhere and warns him about the Bride. She will kill Budd if Budd does not allow Bill to protect him. They had differences in the past but they should move on. Budd, drinking as they talk, replies that maybe they should get killed. He then infuriates Bill by saying that he pawned his priceless samurai sword (a gift from Bill) for $250.
Chapter 7: The Lonely Grave of Paula Schulz
Budd goes to work. He is 20 minutes late, argues in the office that there is nobody in the bar thus there was no need for him to be there as a bouncer. His boss takes away all Budd's scheduled hours and tells him not to come back until he hears from the boss. In the bar, Budd agrees to clean up after a broken toilet.
He returns to his trailer but standing in front of it suddenly freezes. He enters the trailer but looks out the window. The Bride, who was hiding under the trailer, sticks to the wall so he does not see her. She opens the door and gets shot in the chest with rock salt by Budd who was sitting waiting opposite the door. While she is lying on the ground, Budd is very pleased with himself and knocks her out by injecting her. He phones Elle Driver (
Daryl Hannah) and offers to sell her the Bride's Hattori Hanzo sword for a million dollars. Elle agrees to bring the money in the morning. Her condition is that the Bride must suffer to her last breath.
When the grave has been dug, the Bride is given a choice: if she does not resist, she'll be given a flashlight; if she does, Budd will burn out her eyes with Mace. She chooses the flashlight, is put in a coffin and the lid is nailed down. She is placed in the grave and covered with soil.
Chapter 8: The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei
In a flashback, Bill and the Bride (very much in love with him) sit by a campfire and Bill, who calls her "kiddo," plays his flute. He tells her about his kung-fu teacher Pai Mei (
Chia Hui Liu, credited as Gordon Liu) and his 'five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique.' The technique involves five blows administered to particular pressure points on the body. Thereafter, the victim's heart explodes after he or she takes five steps. Pai Mei did not teach Bill the technique because he does not show it to anyone.
At the foot of the steps leading to Pai Mei's place, Bill informs the Bride that Pai Mei will take her as his pupil because he is lonely. Bill's face shows that he was hurt but he refuses to say what happened. Bill warns her not to show any disrespect or disobedience to Pai Mei because Pai Mei will kill her -- he hates Caucasians, despises Americans, and has nothing but contempt for women. She climbs the steps and is humiliated by Pai Mei. She works hard (practicing martial arts forms and bringing buckets of water up the steps) and learns hard. She finds striking a blow with her fist to break a hole through a plank at close range the most difficult skill.
Back to the present. Still inside the coffin, buried six feet under, the Bride manages to remove her boots and the belt tying her feet together. She takes out a razor hidden in her boot and uses it to cut her hands free. She hits the coffin lid with her fist repeatedly. The lid becomes smeared with her blood but it finally cracks. She appears to swim up through the earth, and an arm emerges from the grave. The Bride crawls out. Covered in dirt, she walks into a diner, sits down and asks for a glass of water.
Chapter 9: Elle and I
The Bride walks a great distance across the desert and through the mountains. She reaches Budd's trailer in time to see Elle arrive.
Elle enters the trailer and gives Budd a red suitcase full of money. He makes drinks in a grubby blender and serves them in jelly-jar glasses while she examines the sword. He opens the suitcase, gloats over the money, and is struck by a black mamba that was hidden among the bundles of cash. Before he dies, Elle tells him that she is sorry that such a "piece of shit" as himself was the one who managed to kill the Bride -- she deserved better. She phones Bill and tells him that the Bride has killed his brother but that she, Elle, has killed the Bride. Elle also reveals the whereabouts of the final resting place of the Bride and mentions the Bride's real name for the first time: Beatrix Kiddo.
Beatrix walks in and attacks Elle. In a lull in the fight, Beatrix asks Elle how she lost her eye and Elle tells her that Pai Mei ripped it out because she offended him. Later she poisoned Pai Mei and he died. They continue to fight and Elle gets hold of the Bride's sword. In a golf bag, the Bride finds another katana, inscribed "To my brother Budd, the only man I ever loved, Bill" -- Budd did not sell it after all. As they face off, Elle relishes the irony of killing the Bride with her own sword. However, at close range, the Bride rips out Elle's remaining eye and steps on it. She leaves the trailer, the black mamba hissing behind her as Elle shrieks and curses and flails.
Last Chapter: Face to Face
In Mexico, the Bride visits the courtly retired pimp Esteban Vihaio (
Michael Parks), Bill's old mentor, and asks him to tell her where Bill is. He finally agrees because he thinks Bill would surely like to see her.
She enters Bill's hacienda carefully, a gun in her hand, but is shocked to the point of tears when Bill and their small daughter B.B. (
Perla Haney-Jardine), alive, both play-shoot at her with toy guns. She spends good time with her daughter, who falls asleep. The Bride goes to speak to Bill.
Bill's warning shot pins Beatrix down in her seat, then he shoots her with a truth-serum dart. She explains why she left him: because she wanted to keep her child safe.
Flashback to hotel room: the Bride, who's been sent on an assassination assignment, discovers that she is pregnant. Enter Karen Kim (
Helen Kim) shooting a hole in the door with a shotgun. The Bride, pointing her gun at Karen, convinces her that she is pregnant and persuades her to walk away, promising that she will do the same. As she leaves, Karen congratulates the Bride.
Back in the present, Bill is puzzled because he believes that Beatrix is a natural born killer and could not change. He asks if she enjoyed killing the other people on her revenge list, and the truth serum forces her to admit that she did. They agree to fight with swords on the beach -- then Bill attacks her as they sit on his patio. At the climax of a brief skirmish during which both remain seated, she strikes him with the five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique. She tells Bill that she did not mention that Pai Mei taught her the technique because she is a bad person. Bill disputes that. They share an affectionate farewell before he takes five steps and dies.
Beatrix takes her daughter away to start a new life: "The lioness has rejoined her cub, and all is right in the jungle."