Why The End We Start From's ending feels disappointing (2024)

The End We Start From ending spoilers follow

The End We Start From's ending comes full circle for Jodie Comer's protagonist, as she finds hope after a life-changing event.

It really is everything in the title — an ending means the start of something new, which builds from all the good and bad that came to pass.

Mahalia Belo's feature debut, based on Megan Hunter's novel of the same name, follows an unnamed, pregnant Woman (Comer), whose water breaks the same day that London gets flooded (talk about metaphors) and millions of people are forced to flee the city.

With her husband R (Joel Fry) and their newborn baby Zeb, the family finds refuge in R's parents' (Mark Strong and Nina Sosanya) countryside home. However, the lack of resources and the escalating tensions destroy their safe haven.

After R's parents' tragic deaths (the mother is accidentally killed while trying to help other refugees, the father takes his own life shortly afterwards), the couple is forced to travel by road, searching for a place to stay.

They find a secure community, but only Woman and Zeb are allowed in, so they decide to separate for the sake of their baby's safety.

There, Woman meets another lonely young mother, O (Katherine Waterston), who becomes her travel companion when they are pushed, once again, to find shelter elsewhere.

Here's what happens at the end of The End We Start From, and why it might divide viewers.

The End We Start From ending explained

After travelling through the UK countryside for a while, a journey that included a fun dancing night with a stranger (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), Woman and O find their way to a commune on a peaceful island.

The commune's leader, a woman named F (Gina McKee), encourages the group to start a new life there. She insists that forgetting about their former lives will help them move forward, as well as adopting a sustainable way of life in light of the environmental disaster the country just experienced.

However, as much as she tries, Woman cannot forget about her home in London, and the possibility of her husband being alive somewhere out there. We see some flashbacks of their relationship, and those memories seem to push the protagonist towards a difficult decision.

Woman decides to abandon the commune and head to London.

After stealing a car and navigating (quite literally) their way through the still-flooded city, mother and baby arrive home. Thankfully, their house is still standing, as the neighbourhood seems to be already recovering from the disaster.

While Woman explores the damaged rooms, she hears the front door — it's R!

The family is reunited right where everything started, at their home, after going through a horrific, life-changing experience. It's a hopeful ending, which is meant to encapsulate the idea of the movie's title — their lives have been destroyed, and now they have to build upon the rubble.

It's meant to be a happy ending, and it is, but it also feels somehow disappointing.

It was obvious Woman was going to make the decision to go back to London after her conversation with Cumberbatch's stranger. He tells her during a heartfelt conversation that it's no use to forget the past, to cut off ties with what came before — it's worth keeping the memories, however bad, and building from there.

It's a beautiful reflection, and yet, as a viewer, the ending of The End We Start From seems out of place with the rest of the movie.

Besides a resolution so improbable that we can call it a deus ex machina, the story's full-circle moment makes the past tragedies lose meaning and impact. Even if focusing on hope rather than destruction is a welcome change for disaster movies, there is something unsatisfactory in this middle-class couple moving through an apocalyptic nightmare unscathed just to fall back to their original life.

After suffering the effects of a climatic disaster, witnessing other people's dire situations and flirting with the idea of a sustainable lifestyle, these characters just end up back at the beginning. It's not really the characters' fault, but rather a sense of incongruity about how the movie prioritises the poetic journey over the portrayal of a true catastrophe.

The End We Start From is now available to watch on Netflix UK.