Stephen Graham unpacks the secret meaning of Adolescence’s final scene, and I’m not okay

We earlier learned how Jamie was omitted from the final episode of Adolesence to allow us to understand his family better, with father Eddie, mother Manda, and sister Lisa taking center stage in episode four.

“I wanted to eliminate the possibility of thinking Eddie is a violent man,” Stephen Graham has said. “Eddie is a hardworking father who goes to work early in the morning, comes back late at night, and puts food on the table. He brings in as much love as he can. He does the best he can.”

The heart-wrenching final episode paid special attention to Manda, Eddie, and Lisa, and now Stephen Graham has opened up about those final moments and how the contrast between Lisa and Jamie highlights the core issue of the show.

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As both Jack Thorne and Stephen have explained, the final episode was about showing that the Miller family – although flawed – are not responsible for the actions of Jamie.

Towards the end of episode four, we see Eddie, Manda, and Lisa come together in the living room to discuss their next steps and how their lives will look now that Jamie has pled guilty. The parents want to move away, but Lisa insists that Jamie’s actions will follow them and she then goes to set the table.

“How did we make that [Lisa]?” Eddie questions, as Manda responds, “The same way we made him — with love, to the best of our ability.”

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Speaking to Netflix, Stephen broke down the scene: “The beauty and the poetry within that language, for me, [comes] down to Jack’s wonderful writing and how he explores the human condition.… But what I found about the beauty of that particular line and the poetry within that last bit of conversation, don’t forget, is that they’re the last words that Eddie hears before he enters [Jamie’s] room, where he realizes he should have spent a lot more time.

“[Lisa’s] trying to keep that family together. She’s a grade-A student; she’s going to go to university. She has a bright life ahead of her. But she’s the one who’s like, ‘Look, we’re not moving, because it’s going to follow us around, and it’s always going to.”

The powerful scene serves to reiterate the point that Manda and Eddie raised their kids the same way, and they couldn’t have predicted Jamie’s actions. It was an external force – the power of social media – that pushed him to kill Katie.

That’s partly why the series has been so terrifying for parents, because despite their best efforts, some things are simply out of their hands.

“What we’ve done there, we also did there. We didn’t do anything different,” Stephen echoed.

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