The Good Boy ending explained: Why does Tommy go back to the house?

(**WARNING: Contains spoilers for The Good Boy**)

In one of last year's most talked about TV dramas, Stephen Graham was outstanding as a dad forced to contend with the toxic masculinity of a younger generation – and his new film project, The Good Boy, tackles some pretty similar subject matter.

But that's about where the similarities between the new movie – which has been released under the title Heel in the US – and the Netflix hit Adolescence end.

In The Good Boy, Graham and Andrea Riseborough star as a married couple who abduct a 19-year-old lout named Tommy and keep him chained in their basement, putting him through a number of extreme – and often disturbing – rehabilitation rituals as they attempt to reform him.

It's a fascinating film with a blackly comic tone which may put some viewers in mind of Stanley Kubrick's classic A Clockwork Orange, with Tommy slowly but surely appearing to soften in both his violent behaviours and his attitudes towards his captors.

Seen the film and need the intriguing final moments unpacked? Read on to have The Good Boy ending explained.

The Good Boy ending explained: Why does Tommy go back to the house?

Throughout his early days living with Chris (Graham), Kathryn (Riseborough) and their young son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen), Tommy shows little signs of changing his behaviour.

His living situation in these early days is especially bleak – including having only a bucket for a toilet – and so it's perhaps no surprise that he doesn't take well to it, refusing food and showing little willingness to engage with Chris's methods, which include forcing him to watch social media videos displaying his past awful behaviour.

But over time, Tommy begins to realise that by engaging with the methods, he can unlock rewards – everything from a proper toilet to getting to join in family movie night (a viewing of Ken Loach classic Kes). Slowly but surely be makes small adjustments to his behaviours as he realises the benefits of meeting his captor's demands.

Eventually, he is allowed full access to most of the house, although escape is still not possible as he remains chained to the ceiling via an overhead system that Chris has carefully installed.

Although he is showing definite signs of reforming – including bonding with Jonathan and showing an interest in reading the novels given to him by Kathryn – Tommy is perhaps unsurprisingly still desperate to engineer an escape, and attempts to enlist housekeeper Rina (Monika Frajczy) in his plans.

Eventually Rina, who very much has her own issues to contend with, gives him a four-digit lock code that will make his attempt possible, and one night Tommy decides the time is right to make a run for it.

Despite a brief struggle with Chris and Kathyrn over a gun, the couple ultimately agree that it is best to just let him go, with Chris at one point saying: "Do you remember what happened last time?"

Tommy is eventually found and hospitalised after collapsing on a roadside, and we pick up some time later when he is being questioned by police about what happened, in the presence of his mother.

It appears that when he was first taken in, Tommy had told the truth about the kidnapping, but he's now decided to change course, explaining: "I was off my face on the hospital, on all the drugs they gave me."

He also learns that his mum had not been the one to report him missing, but it was instead his ex-girlfriend Gabbie (Savannah Steyn).

This appears to give him food for thought, and in the final scenes we see him back in a nightclub, watching Gabbie repeat a similar cycle of hard partying and destructive behaviour as he had in the beginning.

And so what course of action does he take? Asking her to trust, he chloroforms her (a practise that we'd previously seen Chris and Kathryn use on him) and drives her to the house where he had been held captive all this time, clearly with the intention that she will now receive the same extreme rehabilitation he had.

Clearly, his time in the house has had a lasting effect on him, and he's now completed a full cycle – ensuring that someone else will now experience the same inhumane practises. It's a pretty chilling note for the film to end on, suggesting that Chris's methods – horrific though they might be – have had their intended effect.

Who is Charlie in The Good Boy and what were Chris and Kathryn's motivations?

Throughout the film, we hear various references to a character named Charlie, who appears to have died at some point before the events of the film and whose absence is deeply felt by Chris, Kathryn and Jonathan.

The audience never quite learns exactly who Charlie was, but it is clear that he was either Jonathan's older brother or an earlier kidnap victim who had gone through the same process as Tommy.

In an interview with Screen Daily, Graham gave his own verdict, explaining: "Their son was an addict and they were trying to help him. The only way they felt they could do it was by keeping him and then he ran away, and they’ve never seen him since.

"But I said at the very beginning, I don’t think we should tell the audience that. We should leave it to their imaginations. So it’s ambiguous in that respect."

Chris's choice to kidnap Tommy, Graham added, was to help Kathryn overcome "the grief of the loss of their son" which "is bordering on catatonic."

He explained: "In order to try and get some glimmer of sunshine back into my wife’s eyes, I’ll kidnap another young boy who would’ve been the age of our son, to try and make her happy again. He’s done all of this to please his wife."

Of course, while that is one valid reading of the film, the ambiguity is also deliberate – and it's quite possibly your own interpretation as to Charlie's identity and Chris's motivations may be different. There's no one simple answer in this film!

The Good Boy is now showing in UK cinemas.

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