Adolescence director breaks down the ending’s secret meaning and it’s utterly heartbreaking

Netflix’s Adolescence has been an instant hit and now director Philip Barantini has broken down the traumatic final few moments of the show and the hidden easter eggs we might have missed in the ending.

Quit your job, break up with your boyfriend, and rehome your dog because Adolescence might just be the best thing on TV right now and you need to be watching it. In case you weren’t aware, it follows Stephen Graham’s Eddie Miller who discovered that his 13-year-old son Jamie had murdered a school friend called Katie. Despite being just four episodes, the miniseries has earned 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Spoilers for the ending from this point on, you have been warned.

The ending of Netflix’s Adolescence could have looked much different

Adolescence ends exactly where it started, in Jamie’s bedroom, and it was initially supposed to see Ellie Miller get into the bed and pull the covers over him. However, the director chose to include Jamie’s teddy bear as an emotional stand-in and it worked like a treat.

To really nail down that raw emotion, director Philip Barantini threw a huge curveball in Stephen Graham’s way by having production print out pictures of Stephen’s real-life family and stick them inside the wardrobe.

“If you watch the scene closely, he looks over to the right-hand side, and he spots the pictures and the notes. It broke him open,” the director explained to Tudum. “The other takes before that were very different. They were all still incredibly emotional. But that last take, which we used, was real, raw, and unexpected from him as well.”

Stephen admitted that the sneaky curveball had the desired effect, explaining: “They got me to the core. So the taps just opened up.”

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Did you notice the song at the end of Adolescence?

In the final few moments of the miniseries, Philip Barantini included Aurora’s Through the Eyes of a Child after hearing it for the first time during pre-production.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” he said. “It’s just absolutely incredible.”

Though the song is emotional enough, the director had the girl who played Katie, Emilia Holliday, sing her rendition of the song to really double down on the raw emotion of the four-episode series.

“The voice in the score is Katie’s voice,” he added. “Katie is a part of the whole series. Her presence is always there.”

Adolescence is on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

Featured image credit: Netflix