What Is The Meaning Behind Baby Reindeer’s Ending?

CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault, stalking, and abuse.

Netflix’s mini-series Baby Reindeer has captivated audiences worldwide. It’s taken over Slack threads and Facebook group chats — heck, it’s even taken over a big chunk of my social media feeds. And now, Redditors are attempting to decipher the meaning behind the show’s ending.

Just a heads up, this article will contain Baby Reindeer spoilers. After all, we are (well, trying) to find the meaning of the final scene. You’ve been warned.

As mentioned previously this is spoiler town — so, if you’ve made it to this sentence I’m assuming that you’ve given Baby Reindeer a peek.

For those who need a quick TL;DR on the plot, the seven-episode series follows Donny Dunn (portrayed by Richard Gadd) and how he fell victim to convicted stalker Martha Scott (played by Jessica Gunning). It also explicitly shows how Dunn was groomed and sexually assaulted by successful TV producer Darrien O’Connor (played by Tom Goodman-Hill) and how it affected his life — such as his relationships, sexuality and self-identity.

It’s absolutely a brutal story, and what makes it even more heartbreaking is that it’s inspired by the real-life experiences of Gadd, who plays the main character on the show, but of course, a majority of the plot has been changed for artistic and legal reasons.

Although most people who talk about Baby Reindeer mostly focus on the twisted actions of Darrien and Martha, the final scene also has some viewers scratching their heads.

So here’s a mini deep dive into what people believe the final scene represents.

How does Baby Reindeer end?

Cutting right to the chase, when Donny moves back into his ex’s mum’s house, she shares that she left a couple of things he left behind in the closet.

One of the items in the box was a script that was annotated by Darrien, who groomed and sexually assaulted him in Episode Four.

After seeing the script, Donny goes back to Darrien’s house where he asks if he could be let in. After entering the TV producer’s home, Darrien reveals to Donny that he’s seen his viral video — where he opens up about Martha and the sexual assault he endured under Darrien — and says it’s “brave”.

“I saw your video, by the way, I thought it was brave. Really brave,” Darrien tells Donny who’s sitting across with him with his arms crossed.

Darrien then asks Donny to come work for him for a reboot of Cotton Mouth, stating it “won’t be like last time”.

Donny says he’s unsure as he’s not working at the moment.

“You’ll be paid,” Darrien tells Donny who replies with, “I’d love that.”

The interaction sends Donny into a panic attack as he walks away from Darrien’s home. He then sits down next to a gate in an attempt to ground himself.

To help with his panic attack, Donny opens up one of the hundreds of voice messages he has received from Martha.

In the voicemail, Martha goes on and on about her love for Donny. His jawline, how red is his colour and how she “fancies” him.

He then ends up in a pub and sits right up at the bar where he orders a vodka and coke. As he waits for his bevvie, Donny plays another Martha voicemail and this time around she reveals why she handed him the nickname Baby Reindeer.

“Basically I had this wee cuddly toy when I was young,” Martha began.

“Went with me everywhere. Earliest memory I have of it was Christmastime. This old photo of me sitting with this paper hat on my head and this baby reindeer beside me.

“Anyway, this reindeer was this cuddly fluffy thing had big lips, huge eyes and the cutest wee bum. I still have ’till this day. It was the only good thing about my childhood.

“I’d hug it when they fought and they fought a lot, you know? Well, you are the spit of that reindeer. The same nose. Same eyes. Same cute wee bum. It means so much to me. You mean so much to me.”

The voicemail reduces Donny to tears and causes him to sob into his hands.

The bartender finally arrives with his bevvie and asks him if anything is wrong. When it’s time to pay, Donny realises he left his wallet at home.

In response, the bartender tells him not to worry about it and that the drink is on the house.

After hearing that the drink was free, Donny looks towards the bartender in silence.

What does the ending of Baby Reindeer mean?

On the r/BabyReindeerTVSeries subreddit, some folks have come up with a variety of takeaways from the final scene.

Redditor u/jdbskip was worried that the ending suggested that Baby Reindeer was going to be a “cyclical story” — touching on how abuse ends up in horrific cycles. But looking further into the scene, the Redditor said they believed that Donny gained a sense of guilt about how everything ended between him and Martha.

Spoiler alert: After Donny took her to court, Martha was sent to prison.

“When he’s at the bar – he’s just listened to the reason she’s called him ‘baby reindeer’ and it makes him cry; he seems to feel genuine empathy and maybe a little guilt for how it all turned out. Maybe he’s questioning himself again. Then, right at that moment he’s offered a free drink in the exact same way he offered Martha her drink,” the Redditor wrote.

“Suddenly his demeanor changes. It’s clear this kind gesture meant a lot to him but more importantly, in that moment I think he realized/remembered how much that kind gesture probably meant to Martha in her time of need. My hope is, that realization gave him some comfort.”

Another user, who posts under u/PunkRockCapitalist, added that the free drink might’ve given him “a little bit of vindication”.

“I think it helped him realize he wasn’t wrong to give her the drink, he was just being a kind human. I like to hope that it helped him realize what she did wasn’t his fault,” they wrote.

A majority of folks in the thread also agreed that it represents how easily anyone could fall victim to abuse as well as stalking.

The last scene
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In a separate post, Redditor u/pinkvictimxxx said that the “takeaway” from the ending was that Donny “broke the cycle”, in their opinion.

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Jessica Gunning and Richard Gadd explain the ending

Following the world’s infatuation with Baby Reindeer — both Jessica Gunning and Richard Gadd have spilled some tea about the storyline.

Speaking to GQ, Gadd touched on why Donny went back to his abuser, noting that he wanted to spotlight the “psychological effects of attachment” behind of abuse.

“I think that was almost the most truthful scene of the entire show. What abuse does is it creates psychological damage as well as physical damage… Abuse leaves an imprint,” he said.

“There’s a pattern where a lot of people who have been abused feel like they need their abusers.

“I don’t think it was a cynical ending, it was showing an element of abuse that hadn’t been seen on television before, which is, unfortunately, the deeply entrenched, negative, psychological effects of attachment you can sometimes have with your abuser.”

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Gunning admitted that she “got goosebumps” reading the final scene, thinking that the pub scene was a “clever way to end this”.

“It’s a broken guy, really, like she was in a sense, being offered this act of kindness, and I think he’s just got an insight into what that meant at that moment,” she told the publication.

“That’s just such a clever final beat of everything. I think it’s amazing, and it just translated so well to the screen.”

As for Gadd, he told RadioTimes.com that it was “open to interpretation” and that he’s looking forward to the theories.

“I quite like the ambiguity of the ending, I sort of don’t want to put a meaning on it. I think it can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. I know what it is in my head – that ending’s my favourite thing in the whole series, the way it ends,” he revealed.

Although Gadd said the ending was open to interpretation, I truly hope that one day he reveals what Donny was thinking at that moment.

You could tell that the comedian’s interaction with the bartender flipped a switch inside of him, but I couldn’t tell if it was fear, realisation or obsession — but highly doubt it was a lick of obsession.

For now, I’ll get we’ll just have to let our imaginations go wild when it comes to the simple yet polarising end of this thrilling series.