‘Miller’s Girl’ Ending Explained: What Actually Happened in This Jenna Ortega Age-Gap Affair?

When Miller’s Girl received its brief theatrical release in January, it felt distinctly like a movie that would have courted more controversy if more people actually saw it – and now it’s had another chance, appearing on Netflix and immediately jumping into the streamer’s Top 10 charts. But anyone expecting a straight-up erotic thriller with a problematic age gap between Martin Freeman (playing a high school teacher and failed author) and star of the moment Jenna Ortega (as his prodigiously gifted student) might be surprised, even confused, by the film’s ambiguities. Here’s a quick guide to what the hell happened at the end of Miller’s Girl.

First, let’s review what happens before the movie’s ending, because the ambiguity of some of those scenes helps to inform the film’s ending.

Miller’s Girl movie plot summary:

Jade Halley Bartlett’s movie takes place in a heightened world not unlike something out of a luridly overcooked novel; the improbably and wonderfully named Cairo Sweet (Ortega) lives alone in her family’s mansion, a gothic stroll through the woods away from the private high school she attends (though the one classroom we see looks much more like a college English department). Her parents perpetually away on business trips, Cairo works on her application to Yale. The unlikely essay topic: her “greatest achievement.” (Someone as smart and improbably named as Cairo Sweet should also be wondering at this point whether she’s being prompted to provide her social security number to scammers, as this doesn’t sound much like a Yale-grade prompt, nor are applications usually due so late in the school-year. Then again, if Yale doesn’t make exceptions for students named Cairo Sweet, what are we even doing here?)

Jonathan Miller (Martin Freeman) would likely stare at that greatest-achievement prompt in mortal terror, because his – publishing a book of short fiction – has been overshadowed by its mixed-to-negative reviews and his relatively low station (at least in the literary world) as a high school English teacher. But Cairo responds to Miller’s intellect, and her bestie Winnie (Gideon Adlon) suggests that she ought to seduce him. (The presence of other students at this school is marginal at best, so there doesn’t appear to be much competition for Cairo’s affections.)

Cairo initiates a closer relationship with Miller, which nonetheless appears to stay just barely, technically on the side of appropriateness; they mostly do limit their discussions to literature, though Miller is clearly flattered by Cairo’s attention. He approves Cairo’s choice of Henry Miller as an author who she will try to emulate as part of her midterm project (questionable!) and attends a poetry reading with her outside of school (more questionable!). When Miller accidentally winds up with Cairo’s cell phone in his bag, he goes to her house to return it. Cairo emerges from her home, wearing a white dress, and meets Miller just out of shelter of the rain that’s coming down. They kiss.

And then the movie cuts to black.

Miller’s Girl ending explained:

The next thing we see is Cairo sitting at her kitchen table, typing. Shortly thereafter, she sends her Henry Miller-inspired midterm story to Miller. As he reads it – it’s a sexually explicit story about a teacher-student affair – we see the portions of it acted out, by Cairo in her white dress, and by Miller, dressed as he was earlier. Is he seeing himself in the story, as Cairo doubtless intended, or is he remembering an unseen incident that Cairo’s story is recounting? (That Miller begins to touch himself while reading the manuscript doesn’t do much to answer that question.) Based purely on what we see, it’s probably the former, but the movie never answers the question with certainty, inviting our own imaginations to run wild. In a way, the movie anticipates and counts on the kind of outraged reaction that often rages on social media when audiences are faced with this kind of moral ambiguity. Did we just watch Jenna Ortega, technically an adult but known largely for her teen and teen-adjacent roles, seduce someone decades her senior? Is Bartlett pointing out the prevalence of this trope in fiction, or indulging it? Whose fantasy is this, anyway?

Even (or especially) if it’s Miller’s, his non-private reaction to the story colors the rest of the film. Though he obviously enjoyed the story in the moment, he attempts to re-draw the lines of appropriateness in his communication with Cairo, telling her the assignment was inappropriate and she has to re-do it using a different author as inspiration. Cairo is taken aback and downright offended, suggesting hypocrisy from Miller: “You built the fantasy. Not on the page, but in real life. You can’t blur the lines and then expect me to see a boundary when I finally cross it.”

Somewhere between heartbroken and vengeful, Cairo sends her story to the school administration. Both Cairo and Miller are questioned, and the movie intercuts their responses. From these fragments, we see what adds up to an accurate description of what we’ve seen so far: a close student-teacher relationship that borders on something less appropriate. Neither of them describes a kiss, or anything more – at least not onscreen. (“Nothing that didn’t seem okay at the time,” Cairo responds when asked if anything happened when he returned her phone.)

To some extent, this is a little bit of a cheat, cutting around their responses to avoid the question of whether Cairo actually mentioned their kiss, whether she has accused Miller of more, and whether those possible allegations were mentioned to Miller. But it’s clearly an intentional strategy, to obfuscate the situation and ultimately leave it known only to the characters, not us. Cairo decides to testify against Miller in front of the school board, admitting to Winnie that she considers this experience (including the ruining of Miller) her “greatest achievement” – indicating that she plans to use it as fodder for her admissions essay.

As she reads from her essay, the movie kicks into what turns out to be its final montage. Cairo asks, “What will become of us? Will he measure himself an unwitting participant? Or will he be brave enough to accept his complicity? In a way that is meaningful? In a way that changes him, as it has changed me?” Over this particular line, we see Miller, having presumably lost his job and wife as Cairo ha described, sitting back down on his computer and opening an empty word-processing doc, implying that he may be ready to write again, and with greater boldness and honesty than he was able to muster for his ill-received first book (which Cairo – after initially flattering him over it – has described as a cowardly work).

Cairo’s essay goes on, and we arrive at the image of her climbing steps in slow motion, presumably approaching building where the school board hearing will take place. “No excuse is to be made for your choices,” goes the voiceover, “for they are yours alone. I cannot say whether or not I’m grateful for the experience, for the knowledge. The felicity of youth has been ripped from me like skin, and exposed as I am, sore and open as I am, I can feel it shape me into something new. Hero. Villain. Writer. Grown from the human ruins of a madman’s love.”

Over these final sentences, we see that Miller is sitting on the steps, and a close-up indicates that he sees Cairo. Next there’s a corresponding close-up of Cairo, tears seemingly welling in her eyes, briefly cutting back to her reading to Winnie, before returning to her on the steps, a single tear now falling down her face. There is one more cut back to Miller, mouthing “hi.” For the final shot, the movie cuts again to Cairo, whose mouth turns upward ever so slightly before a figure passes in front of the camera, obscuring her as her essay concludes and the film cuts to the credits.

So what has happened here? We don’t see Cairo testify, or directly see Miller losing his job, but it seems likely that both of these events occur. Has Miller accepted his complicity in whatever occurred, even if it may not have gone as far as his fantasy, while Cairo admits the heartbreak she feels over her seeming attempt to seduce him?

That seems to be what Bartlett is aiming for – a strategy that courts controversy and then attempts to bring in some nuance. The implication, I think, is that Miller crossed the line far earlier than he thought, even if he may not be a straight-up predator. The movie also seems to note that it’s possible for Cairo to be both manipulative and manipulated in this scenario; her essay, written in the same overcooked, self-consciously literary style that we hear in the movie’s dialogue, is both admissions-courting grandstanding bullshit and, incidentally, more or less the truth. She was probably smart and savvy enough to avoid the situation entirely, but it has shaped her, even if she went about it in a self-conscious way. In a sense, Miller’s Girl mirrors the work of its title characters: Provocative on the surface, a little too pleased with its own ostentatious and verbose cleverness, and still worth experiencing on its own terms. Who are you to resist Cairo Sweet?

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.