The Mother (2023) Netflix Movie Ending, Explained: Crafted by a collaborative team comprising Andrea Berloff, Peter Craig, and Misha Green, the latest action thriller, The Mother on Netflix is directed by Niki Caro. Leading the cast is Jennifer Lopez, who flawlessly embodies the role of The Mother, supported by the exceptional talents of Joseph Fiennes and Gael García Bernal as the “bad guys.” Amidst the stunning backdrop of Alaska’s breathtaking landscapes, The Mother is a gripping tale of a determined mother who will stop at nothing to safeguard her child from the clutches of evil.
While the film’s overarching theme of a mother’s unwavering devotion remains crystal clear, The Mother dares to exceed the boundaries of a conventional action-packed narrative. However, much of the film relies on generic action thriller tropes that are no as exciting as they could have been.
Anyway, in the following article, we look at the movie in detail.
*Spoiler Alert*
The Mother (2023) Netflix Movie Synopsis & Plot Summary:
The movie opens with a middle-aged woman, only known as “the mother” (played by Jennifer Lopez), in the middle of an FBI interrogation in one of their safe houses. She is a military-trained assassin and is being questioned about her involvement with two armed dealers: Adrian (Joseph Fiennes) and Hector (Gael García Bernal). The FBI is eager to know their whereabouts and their plans with the arms they have acquired.
The Mother is apprehensive and warns them that their safe house can be breached anytime. The two FBI agents, which include the nicer guy, William Cruise (Omari Hardwick), don’t take her seriously, but soon the safe house is under attack, and most of the agents get killed. Adrian enters the safe house pursuing The Mother and is surprised to see her heavily pregnant.
He stabs her belly without thinking much about it, leading her to labor. An amateur bomb that she just made up goes out, and the action moves to a hospital where she gives birth to a baby girl. The FBI then asks her to hand over the child’s responsibility to them because she will now threaten the child’s existence.
Without having a way out, she decides to leave before taking a promise from Cruise, who will look after her child and warn her if anything goes wrong. She is then forced to move to Tingit Bay, Alaska, to avoid all the trouble. An acquaintance named Jons (Paul Raci) helps her settle into a new life as the story moves 12 years ahead.
Her solitary existence is disturbed by a summons from Cruise, who calls her up to Cincinnati and tells her that in one of their ambushes on some of Hector’s men, they stumbled on to a photograph of her daughter, who is named Zoe (Lucy Paez). Hearing that she might be in trouble, The Mother decides to stay near to protect her.
One of these days, some of Hector’s armed men surround the park that Zoe is playing in and kidnap her. The Mother tries to intervene, killing some men but cannot stop them from taking Zoe away. Cruise suggests they wait for a ransom call, but The Mother claims there won’t be any as it is her that they are after.
Cruise and The Mother then head to Havana, Cuba, where they try to question Hector’s top lieutenant Tarantula about Zoe’s whereabouts leading to an elaborate chase where she moves from a bike to a car before hitting him right in front of an ongoing marriage ceremony on the streets.
She then interrogates him to know about Hector’s plan but only learns that Hector wishes to torture Zoe, which makes her extremely angry, leading her to kill Tarantula.
How did The Mother know Adrian and Hector?
After the interrogation, the two of them head to their hotel room, where Cruise questions her about her connection with Adrian and Hector. The Mother tells him that she met Adrian in Afghanistan during sniper training. Since she was really good, he told her about the side hustle that included gun smuggling.
Realizing that she doesn’t have much to do after her service, she decides to be a part of his plan but takes one more tour to Guatemala. There she gets acquainted with Hector, who does gun siphoning. She gets into a relationship with them, leading her to get pregnant. However, she realizes that the two of them are doing something shady behind her back, and upon digging deep, she realizes that they are also involved in child trafficking. It is where she draws a line and calls the FBI about it.
What does The Mother do at Hector’s castle?
Using her sniper skills to good use, and with little to no help from Cruise, The Mother infiltrates Hector’s heavily guarded casa and gets Zoe out. She safely hands her to Cruise and heads back to find Hector in order to finish her business.
When she reaches inside, Hector tries to threaten her at gunpoint and asks if Zoe is his child. The Mother doesn’t answer and instead slices him up using a knife and burns down the entire castle.
The Mother then says goodbye to Zoe and Cruise in Illinois, leaving them to drive back home to Zoe’s foster parents.
However, just outside Cincinnati, Adrian and his men crash into Cruise’s vehicle, taking Zoe hostage again. However, The Mother, who had been following them on a stolen motorbike, reaches there just in the nick of time and takes Zoe away. Adrian, on the other hand, shoots Cruise.
Where does The Mother take Zoe?
The Mother then drives Zoe back to her place in Alaska. The two of them don’t meet eye-to-eye at all. While the 12-year-old Zoe is empathetic and wants to talk about her feelings, The Mother has completely shut her off to emotions, making it difficult for them to connect.
Despite all that, The Mother is aware that she has permanently put Zoe’s life in danger, so she decides to teach her how to fight her battles. Zoe is not interested, but since there isn’t much to do around and The Mother makes an important case for her to learn to survive, she gets on with it.
Firstly, she teaches Zoe how to drive away in a vehicle if danger is near, and then she prepares her for sniper training and other survival skills. On one of the days, when Zoe goes out to play with the wolf pups, she gets bitten by one of them. The Mother is forced to take her to the medical facilities nearby, where Zoe accidentally gives out her real name, and it gets registered in the system.
Zoe’s mistake leads The Mother to leave her with Jons. She also leaves a moving letter expressing her love and cares for her only daughter as she prepares to face the cavalry Adrian brought to Alaska all alone.
The Mother (2023) Netflix Movie Ending, Explained:
What does Zoe do after reading the letter?
On realizing that her mother will be all alone fighting an entire army of bad guys, Zoe takes Jons’ truck and drive towards the base. Upon reaching there, she is briefly caught by Adrian’s men, but The Mother rescues her and tells her to stay at the shooting base she has created as she faces off with Adrian, who now has Zoe on a sniper’s target.
The two get into a fistfight before Zoe takes a shoot with a salt bullet, leaving The Mother unconscious. When she wakes up, she sees Adrian taking her daughter away again. Despite being injured, she takes a shot and eventually hits Adrian: killing him.
The ending of The Mother finds Zoe reuniting with her foster mother as she bids goodbye to her real one. We see The Mother keeping an eye on Zoe’s life from a distance, signifying that she is still playing her part while keeping her safe.
