Warning: This article contains spoilers for Adolescence.
Netflix‘s Adolescence is one of the year’s most powerful new series. It’s a wrenching tale of a 13-year-old who murders a classmate, touching on timely topics like bullying, loneliness, masculinity, and online radicalization.
In addition to serving as a co-creator and co-writer of Adolescence, Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire, The Irishman) leads a cast that also includes Ashley Walters (Top Boy, Bulletproof), Erin Doherty (The Crown, A Thousand Blows), Christine Tremarco (Wolfe, Clink), and Owen Cooper, whose devastating turn as Jamie marks his onscreen debut.
Adolescence‘s ending is emotional and open-ended, leaving many viewers with lingering questions about Jamie and his family’s fate. Read on for Adolescence‘s ending explained, including major takeaways for parents everywhere.
Owen Cooper as Jamie in ‘Adolescence’. Courtesy of Netflix
After 13-year-old Jamie (Cooper) is arrested for the murder of Katie, a female classmate, his parents, Eddie (Graham) and Manda (Tremarco), are forced to reckon with the severity of their son’s alleged crime and what role they may have played in his behavior.
The limited series unfolds in real time over four hour-long episodes, with a single camera shot chronicling Jamie’s arrest, police investigating at his school, his tense interview with a court-appointed psychologist, and his family coping with the fallout.
Owen Cooper as Jamie in ‘Adolescence’. Courtesy of Netflix
Though he asserts his innocence throughout the majority of the series, evidence strongly suggests that, yes, Jamie did kill Katie.
For one, there is a damning CCTV video of the stabbing that Eddie watches with Jamie in episode 1. In episode 3, meanwhile, Jamie seems to accidentally admit to the attack in conversation with psychologist Briony (Doherty). After the slip, he jumps up from his chair in agitation. “I didn’t f––ing say that! You’re f––ing putting words in my mouth! It’s a f––ing trap in here!”
‘Adolescence’. Courtesy of Ben Blackall/Netflix
Though Jamie never straightforwardly admits to the murder, he does change his plea to “guilty” in episode 4. It’s unclear what exactly prompted the change, though he mentions the trial date was looming closer.
“In episode 4, he’s much further along on his journey than before,” co-creator and co-writer Jack Thorne told Tudum. “Jamie now knows what he’s done and what his future might be. That allows him to put his feelings in a box and close the lid on himself in some way.”
Director Philip Barantini also weighed in on Jamie’s decision and how it impacts the family, speaking about how he coached Graham and Tremarco when directing their conversation following the call with Jamie. “I told them, ‘Imagine that someone you love has been on a life support machine,” he said. “You’ve been hoping and praying that they stay alive. Then, in this moment, the doctor finally tells you, ‘There’s nothing else we can do, and we’re going to switch the machine off.’ That’s what Jamie pleading guilty is for the Millers.”
When Jamie calls Eddie with the news, he repeatedly says he’s sorry. Ostensibly, he’s apologizing for changing his plea, but the emotion in his voice can be interpreted as him admitting his guilt. The apology, then, could also be for the many times he lied to his dad’s face about his innocence, and moreover for murdering Katie and the harm he’s caused to his family.
Mark Stanley as Paulie Hunter, Owen Cooper as Jamie Miller and Stephen Graham as Eddie Miller in ‘Adolescence’. Courtesy of Netflix© 2024
We get a great deal of insight into Jamie’s mindset and the motives for his alleged crime when he speaks with Briony in episode 3. Many revelations align with rhetoric perpetuated by the “manosphere,” a host of websites, influencers, and blogs that promote misogyny and male supremacy, per the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Jamie, especially, uses language that aligns with the “incel” community, an online hub of men who describe themselves as “involuntary celibate” and blame women for their struggles to establish romantic bonds. According to the Anti-Defamation League, a common point of grievance among incels is that 80% of women are attracted to just 20% of men, a sentiment that arises on several occasions in the series. Subscribing to this ideology, Jamie is convinced that he’s “ugly” and therefore has to trick girls into liking him.
For example, Jamie asked Katie out only after nude photos of her circulated around the school, as he surmised that she’d feel weak and insecure in the aftermath. (As a sign of his misogyny, Jamie also suggests to Briony that the boy who shared the photos should have kept his mouth shut so he could collect more nudes to show his friends.) Katie, however, dismisses Jamie, saying, “I’m not that desperate.”
Following the rejection, Katie began to cyberbully Jamie on Instagram, using emojis to imply he’s an incel and will die a virgin. (The police initially interpreted the emojis and comments to mean the two were friendly — a sign of how out of touch many adults are with adolescent forms of communication.) The bullying, coupled with his toxic view of women and self-loathing, is what ultimately triggers the attack.
Amelie Pease as Lisa in ‘Adolescence’. Courtesy of Netflix
Jamie’s arrest and his family’s slow grasp of his mindset sends Eddie, Manda, and their daughter, Lisa (Amélie Pease), into a spiral of anger, sadness, and confusion.
The final episode, which is set on Eddie’s birthday 13 months after the arrest, demonstrates how Jamie’s crime continues to haunt the family. Local teens, for example, vandalize Eddie’s truck, spray-painting it with the word “nonce,” a slang term for sex offenders. Eddie, a plumber, is also rapidly losing business, leading to financial problems for the family. The pressure builds until Eddie has a meltdown in public, shaking and threatening the kids who defaced his car.
Making matters worse, Eddie realizes that Jamie’s case is becoming a cause célèbre for those sympathetic to the manosphere. In episode 4, he’s approached by a teenage male who tells him there’s support online for Jamie, including many who would donate to his legal defense fund. This is uncomfortable for Eddie, who still struggles to grasp the online communities his son frequented.
But of course, Eddie isn’t the only member of the Miller family affected by Jamie’s crime and their newfound local notoriety. Manda, who’s been to therapy with Eddie, tries to remain cheerful and supportive of her husband and daughter but is breaking on the inside, too. And then there’s Lisa, who is catching flak from her peers, including the kids who vandalized her dad’s car. However, she handles the fallout with grace and supports her parents as much as they support her, displaying kindness and maturity in a difficult time.
Though they endure many emotional hurdles in the final episode, it’s clear that the three are still loving and united, even if their family is irrevocably changed.
Christine Tremarco as Manda and Amelie Pease as Lisa in ‘Adolescence’. Courtesy of Ben Blackall/Netflix
After Jamie calls Eddie to let him know he’s taking a guilty plea, Eddie and Manda have a heart-to-heart about whether they’re good parents and what they could’ve done differently.
Remarking on how Jamie spent so much time isolated in his room on his computer, Eddie wonders, “What harm can he do in there?” This question, though somewhat rhetorical, again displays how well-meaning adults are nevertheless detached from the difficulties and dangers young people face in the modern internet age, where cyberbullying (and yes, even extremist ideology) runs rampant.
Parenting often entails breaking generational cycles of abuse and trauma. Reflecting on his childhood, Eddie explains that he was abused by his father and vowed to never raise a hand against his own children. But in the aftermath of the murder, he’s struggling to reconcile how his parenting could have produced someone capable of Jamie’s crimes.
“You were a good dad, a great dad, but we made him,” Manda says. Eddie replies, “So if my dad made me, how did I make that?”
Eddie is a traditionally masculine man, both in his physical attributes and difficulty expressing emotions (like Jamie, he’s prone to angry shouting). When speaking to Briony in episode 3, Jamie recounts being bad at sports and knowing his dad, who wouldn’t even look at him from the stands, was ashamed of his poor performance. Eddie, while confiding in his wife, interrogates his past behavior.
“I couldn’t look at him, Mand,” he says. “I couldn’t look at my own boy.” “He idolized you,” she replies warmly, seemingly to comfort him, but this arguably twists the knife further.
That said, Adolescence doesn’t blame Jamie’s parents for his crime, at least not fully. Rather, they’re depicted as an affectionate, flawed family who missed crucial signs that something was wrong (and windows to intervene before it was too late).
In the final scene, Eddie goes to Jamie’s room and sobs. After composing himself, he tucks the boy’s teddy bear into bed, almost as if it were Jamie. “I’m sorry, son,” he says. “I should have done better.”
Stephen Graham as Eddie in ‘Adolescence’. Courtesy of Netflix
Adolescence ends in Jamie’s room because, for Eddie, the room itself is a kind of mystery. It’s the place where Jamie was molded into a person capable of murdering one of his classmates. In many ways, Jamie is now a stranger to his family. When Eddie tucks in the teddy bear, speaking to it as if it were Jamie, he’s speaking to the innocent child he remembers — the one that disappeared without him noticing.
Speaking to the broader themes about online radicalization, bullying, and loneliness, Thorne previously told The Independent, “We were trying present a portrait of complexity of this kid that had been made by all sorts of different influences and the thing about incel culture is there’s a logic to it.”
“It’s just being mindful of the fact that not only we parent our children, and not only the school educates our children,” Graham added. “But also there’s influences that we have no idea of that are having profound effects on our young culture, profound effects, positive and extremely negative. So it’s having a look at that and seeing that we’re all accountable.”
Owen Cooper as Jamie and Erin Doherty as Briony in ‘Adolescence’. Courtesy of Ben Blackall/Netflix
All four episodes of Adolescence are currently streaming on Netflix.
