‘The mother’ (Netflix) ending explained: does Jennifer Lopez get her daughter back?

‘The mother’ is a tremendously silly movie, something that is neither good nor bad, it just is. The new Netflix movie starring Jennifer Lopez is one of those stories that any professional screenwriter could write in an afternoon, and any teenager could come up with her colleague in a drunken night. It’s all so basic and obvious and predictable that it doesn’t even try to innovate or care about anything in the whole story. ‘The mother’ is pure evasion, it is a cocktail of things that work in other action movies put together that goes beyond coherence or meaning because it doesn’t want you to think, just hang out.

The film tells the story of a nameless assassin who turns from the military to arms trafficking but tries to sell out her partners (and lovers) after becoming pregnant. Twelve years after giving her up for adoption to keep her safe, the girl is in danger and her mother sets out to rescue her by confronting her former associates. We cannot say that ‘The Mother’ is a complicated film, nor that it leaves room for doubt in its plot twists, but it is a film that wants us to ask so few questions that, to be sure, it leaves us with a few accounts.

‘The mother’: end explained Who is Zoe’s father?

If the film does not tell us the name of its protagonist, it flatly refuses to reveal the identity of the father. Although in none of the flashbacks we see any of this, we know from different dialogues that the protagonist was sleeping with both Álvarez and Lovell. They both believe that they may be Zoe’s father, but as the protagonist is in charge of saying, she is not the daughter of any of them, only hers. However, not even Jennifer Lopez can have a child on her own. It is, of course, a metaphorical, emotional statement.

Gael García Bernal’s character is the first to die, and the protagonist reminds him that his sexual performance, related to BDSM, was not exactly optimal. The character is dismissed quickly, too quickly for the film to encourage us to think that he is the father. If we have to put our money on someone, it’s the character of Joseph Fiennes. He is the bad guy in the film, but also the closest to the protagonist. He was the one who discovered her in the army and brought her to the dark side of her. He is also the one who starts the film stabbing her belly, and also the one who ends it as her great final enemy. While Álvarez asks if it’s his, Lovell has it assumed.

‘The mother’: end explained What happens to Agent Cruise?

The fate of Agent Cruise is the only moment in which ‘The mother’ insists on being less easy and predictable than we would like. Since we are watching a movie like this, what less than to hope that the attractive policeman who helps the protagonist and takes care of the daughter as his own, the muscle man whose back wound JLo heals at hotel nights in Cuba, ends eating partridges (hunted by her) with JLo. But no, Agent Cruise is the great emotional sacrifice of the film and it is that, just as the two great villains appear rather little, no one could steal weight from JLo in the film, and the policeman played by Omari Hardwick is about to do it.

In case we had any doubts about that frustrated romantic relationship, Zoe directly asks her mother if she loved him, and she responds with a “maybe” which, she clarifies, for her “maybe it’s a lot.”

‘The mother’: end explained Do mother and daughter end up together?

If something is clear in the coexistence between Zoe and her biological mother, it is that this ex-military, assassin and retired arms dealer is not very good in personal treatment. Beyond protecting her daughter with a sniper rifle, she has little to contribute to the adolescent’s growth. What’s more, it seems that her adoptive family is absolutely ideal. However, the biological mother deserves to be present, even in the background, in Zoe’s life now that everything is safe.

If the film does not explain to us why the mother never goes to jail or where she gets money from, or why the FBI trusts her with an entire international operation against an army of thugs, much less are we going to ask how that loft is bought with views of the park in the game its small. ‘The mother’ is not that kind of film, and it is not one that will clarify whether Zoe has a new visitation regime, or if she will bring him a cake on the next birthday. What we know is that she continues to watch her from afar, this time without her finger on the trigger of her rifle. Therefore, more than a weekend mother, we understand that she continues to fulfill her role as a protective angel, making sure that Zoe has the most normal and boring life in the world.

‘The Mother’ is now available on Netflix.