‘Mea Culpa’ Ending Explained: Breaking Down Tyler Perry’s Confusing Netflix Movie

With Mea Culpa, Tyler Perry is back at it again with yet another low-brow thriller for Netflix. The new erotic legal drama, which began streaming today, stars Kelly Rowland as Mea Harper, a criminal defense attorney who must defend her new client, Zyair Malloy (Moonlight star Trevante Rhodes) against murder charges. Zyair is an artist who’s been accused of murdering his girlfriend. But he totally didn’t do it! …Right? Rowland—who also produced the movie—is about to find out.

This isn’t the first time Perry has veered from his comedy roots to helm a drama for Netflix. He also wrote and directed the 2020 thriller A Fall From Grace, starring Bresha Webb, and the 2022 romance, A Jazzman’s Blues. But Mea Culpa is perhaps his most non-sensical serious film to date. While it’s a pleasure to see Rowland and Rhodes on screen together, the script leaves a lot to be desired. It’s hard to call this film a legal drama when most of the details of the legal case don’t make any sense!

If you got lost along the way while watching Mea Culpa, I don’t blame you. Lucky for you, Decider is here to help. Read on for a breakdown of the Mea Culpa movie plot and the Mea Culpa movie ending explained.

What does “mea culpa” mean in law?

The phrase “mea culpa” literally means “through my fault” in Latin, and it’s a fancy way of saying “My bad!” or “That’s on me!” In legal terms, “mea culpa” can mean a confession of guilt; you’re saying that you’re the one to blame.

Mea Culpa plot summary:

Mea (Kelly Rowland) is a big-time criminal defense attorney in Chicago who decides to take on a high-profile case: A successful artist, Zyair (Trevante Rhodes), accused of murdering his girlfriend. Why does Mea take on the case? Well, in part, it’s to spite her husband, her brother-in-law, and her mother-in-law. Mea and her husband Kal (Sean Sagar) are having marital problems. Kal’s mother Azalia (Kerry O’Malley) has cancer, which means she’s dominating Kal’s time and treating Mea terribly, and Mea can’t say a word about it. And Kal’s brother, Ray (Nick Sagar), is working on the prosecution case. He’s also running for mayor. He’s a busy guy!

Kal, Azalia, and Ray all forbid Mea from taking on Zyair’s case. So, of course, she decides to take it. But things don’t look good for Zyair. His girlfriend, a Mexican girl named Hydie, disappeared. Her DNA, a lot of blood, and skull fragments were found in Zyair’s apartment. There’s even a video of Hydie, distressed, claiming that Zyair is trying to kill her. It doesn’t look good! Zyair insists he doesn’t know how those things got there. He says he dated Hydie for six months, and then suddenly one day, she mysteriously vanished.

Mea recruits her friend Jimmy (RonReaco Lee), a private investigator, to help dig up more evidence for the case. It’s revealed that Zyair is a womanizer who loves sex and has been into some kinky stuff. He has a few ex-girlfriends who have it out for him. Maybe they are the ones who framed him for murder?

Meanwhile, it’s clear there’s a spark between Zyair and Mea. He insists on meeting at his apartment and eventually starts hitting on her. Mea resists Zyair’s advances… until her friend Jimmy the P.I. sends her a photo of her husband going into a hotel room with another woman. That’s the excuse Mea needs to have hot, paint-covered sex with Zyair.

Mea spends the night with Zyair, and comes home to a frantic husband. As it turns out, he wasn’t having an affair. He was at a hotel with his mother, who wasn’t feeling well, to be closer to the hospital. Oopsie! Mea freaks, and tries to quit the case. She also meets with a gallery owner, who reveals that Zyair pulled the same moves on her that he did on Mea. Mea storms into Mea’s apartment, and peels the painting that Zyair did of her off of the frame. She finds paintings of dozens of other beautiful women beneath that—including a painting of Hydie, with the words “Die bitch!” painted over it.

Zyair insists he painted that after Hydie recorded the video implicating Zyair, but Mea has seen enough. Back at home, she confesses she cheated on Kal to him and his family. They shun her. She drops the case, and takes a vacation in the Dominican Republic… where she runs into Hydie! She’s not dead after all!

Mea Culpa ending explained:

Mea calls her brother-in-law Ray to tell him that Zyair is innocent. Ray says he’ll take care of everything, and that Mea should come to his house. She shows up, and the vibes are off. Azalia breaks Mea’s phone, and Ray really seems to want her to drink a glass of wine that is certainly drugged. Jimmy calls again with more bombshell news: Azalia doesn’t have cancer.

Azalia and Ray reveal that the cancer was invented to earn Ray sympathy votes for his mayoral campaign. They also reveal that Ray’s wife, Charlise (Shannon Thornton), also cheated on her husband with Zyair. So, Azalia and Ray framed Zyair for murdering his girlfriend, both as a way to get back him for the affair and as a way to give Ray a tough-on-crime platform for his political campaign. But now Mea knows too much. They try to kill her—except Charlise, who helps Mea fight back. Mea manages to flee, and flags down a car on the road. It’s her husband, Kal! Mea still trusts him, because Azalia said he wasn’t in on the plot.

But it turns out that Kal is in on the plot. Instead of calling 911, he calls his brother Ray. Mea hears the phone call, realizes what’s going on, and unbuckles Kal’s seatbelt before swerving the car into an oncoming semi-truck. As Kal lies bleeding on the road, we cut a news report saying that Ray has been arrested for “covering up evidence” for Zyair’s case. Apparently, all of the evidence against Ray was given to the police by an “anonymous email.” (Because that’s definitely the kind of concrete evidence that police use to make arrests. Also, wouldn’t Ray be in trouble for falsifying evidence for a fake crime, not covering up evidence?)

The movie ends with Zyair telling reporters that he is grateful to Mea for revealing the truth. Then we see Mea, in sunglasses and a head scarf, reading a text from Zyair asking to see her again. She doesn’t respond, and instead tosses the phone in a trash can and walks away. She’s a strong, independent woman, and she’s not going to start dating this womanizer, no matter how bulging his arm muscles may be.

The movie does not explain how, exactly, they managed to get Hydie’s blood, DNA, and skull fractures into Zyair’s apartment. Nor does it explain how they convinced Hydie to go along with this plot. (Probably money?) The audience is left to fill in those sizeable gaps on their own. Maybe Perry is correctly assuming that viewers are not watching this movie for the plot. Still, it would have been nice if the plot made a teensy bit more sense. Oh well!