Baby Reindeer Ending Explained: Why MARTHA Gave Donny that Nickname and What the Last Scene Means?

The series Baby Reindeer is one of the pleasant surprises in the Netflix catalog, as it has been acclaimed by critics thanks to its creative proposal and the tone of its narration… avoiding falling into the typical clichés of other similar stories. Thus, if you have already enjoyed the 7 episodes of the production, perhaps you were left with some doubts about its outcome. Therefore, in the following lines, I present to you its ending explained. Pay attention! Baby Reindeer tells the slow but inexorable descent into the underworld of its protagonist Donny, a bartender and aspiring comedian who, after having reserved a gesture of kindness for a stranger in difficulty, becomes a victim of the morbid attentions of the woman, who begins to make her way in every corner of his life. But Martha, this is the name of the stalker (serial, as we learn during the episodes of the show), in addition to obsessing with the boy, is also the only one capable of giving him what everyone else seems to stubbornly refuse him: a little consideration.

Thus, a co-dependent relationship ends up being established between the two, from which Donny no longer seems able to escape. As the narrative continues, we observe the protagonist busy trying to build a life for himself while trying to keep Martha at a distance without ever pushing her away completely and, at the same time, dealing with past trauma that the woman’s morbidity seems to have awakened. It concerns the rape that occurred years earlier by Darrien, a screenwriter who was supposed to help him with his career but who, on the contrary, had taken advantage of him, generating great sexual confusion in Donny.

Having reached the sixth episode, the penultimate of the show, Donny’s existence now seems to have reached rock bottom: after reporting Martha – a character known to the police for having stalked an agent -, the boy makes a misstep that makes his complaint useless. The woman thus begins to persecute him again, which also causes Donny to lose the only healthy relationship he had managed to establish in recent years, the one with Teri, a trans girl. So, let’s see how the story narrated in the TV series ends – and inspired by real events in the life of its author, the stand-up comedian Richard Gadd – in our explanation of the ending of Baby Reindeer (of which you can also find our review).

Baby Reindeer: Plot Summary

Donny (Richard Gadd) is a struggling comedian who moved to London to make his dreams come true but finds himself, on the threshold of thirty, working in a pub without the slightest prospect of a career and living off the hook at his girlfriend’s mother’s house. ex-girlfriend. When Martha (Jessica Gunning) enters Donny’s club one day, in tears, he regrets it and offers her a cup of tea. A decision she will end up bitterly regretting. Yes because, if initially the man feels sympathy and a sort of attraction for the captivating confidence and the strange way of expressing herself of the woman – who boasts of a prestigious job and important knowledge but does not have the money to pay for a Diet Coke -, As the days pass, Martha becomes more and more intrusive, pushing her way into every corner of his life and sending Donny hundreds of emails.

Richard Gadd has chosen to be the protagonist of his own story: the one told in Baby Reindeer is nothing other than the transposition onto the small screen of his theater show of the same name, in which the writer and performer talks about his relationship with his stalker and the impact this had on his life, so much so that it forced him to once again deal with a past trauma that he thought was now buried. The series starkly and uncompromisingly portrays the way Martha’s obsession becomes increasingly intertwined with every aspect of Donny’s life, becoming a devastating force that affects his relationships, career, and mental health. Jessica Gunning’s performance as Martha is particularly outstanding, managing to convey a magnetic and changing presence, oscillating between pity and constant threat.

Baby Reindeer Ending Explained: What Happens to Martha?

ATTENTION SPOILERS. Towards the end of the seventh episode of the Netflix series, Donny orders a Coca-Cola with vodka at a bar, where he listens to one of the audios that Martha left him on his voicemail. The truth is that, after visiting Darrien, the boy needs the woman’s comfort and hearing her compliments to calm down: despite everything, it seems that that voice represents a relief from his loneliness. In the audio, she explains that – when she was young – she had a small stuffed Baby Reindeer that she carried with her everywhere, defining it as “the only good thing” about her childhood.

In that sense, she tells him that he reminds her a lot of this object: “The same nose. The same eyes. Same cute little tramp. It means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me”. That’s the reason she gave him that nickname!

After this, Donny bursts into tears, to the surprise of the waiter. Then, our protagonist realizes that he has forgotten his wallet, but the bar employee takes pity on him and buys him a drink. This scene has a clear parallel with the first chapter of Baby Reindeer when Donny offers Martha a drink in the house, beginning the obsessive relationship that ends with her in jail after being found guilty of harassment and stalking.

What Happens in the Last Episode?

Unexpectedly, his emotional breakdown immediately goes viral online, turning into a springboard for the boy for a successful career, opening the doors to podcasts, radio shows, and important evenings. The moment of enthusiasm, however, does not last long: Martha has managed to track down his telephone number (after months spent only sending emails) and, offended by what the boy said in his monologue, begins to threaten him with revealing the story of the rape to his father and mother.

Donny thus meets his parents to warn them about the video that went viral on the web and to warn them that, in the now famous performance, he expresses his confusion regarding sexuality and tells how he was raped by a man who had promised him the opportunity of a television career. This is an emotional moment for the boy, who expects his parents to disapprove of his life choices but instead comes up against his father’s admission that he was raised within the Catholic Church: an admission (not even too much) veiled by the parent who, in that way, tried to tell the child that he too had been molested by a priest. Donny and his father thus realize that they have many tragic things in common.

What Happens to Martha?

The confrontation with his parents seems to make Donny regain his lost serenity until Martha starts tormenting him with voice messages on his phone, a true retrospective of their entire relationship. Initially reluctant to report the woman because he unconsciously wishes to keep her in his life – out of attraction, empathy or guilt – he finally makes the decision to go to the police when Martha begins to threaten his family, declaring that she intends to stab him and his parents. The stalker was then arrested and charged with three counts of stalking and harassment and subsequently sentenced to nine months in prison and given a five-year restraining order. We then see Donny begin to write what will become Richard Gadd’s stage show.

Concerned about his state of health – mental and all – his ex-Kaylee asks the boy to return to live with his mother, who had hosted him for several years even when the two had broken up; here Donny finds his old script, the one written during the period in which he was raped by Darrien. She, therefore, decides that the time has come to settle accounts with her rapist too but, after showing up at his house, she ends up accepting a job he proposed without having the courage to tell him what she really thought.

How does Baby Reindeer End?

In the finale of Baby Reindeer, Donny walks around town listening back to Martha’s voicemails and finding reassurance in them. In the last vowel, we also discover the reason for the nickname “little reindeer” that the woman had given him: when she was a child, she had a reindeer-shaped stuffed animal which she was very fond of because it represented the only beautiful thing about her. her childhood. According to the woman, Donny was identical to that reindeer, “same nose, same eyes, same nice ass”.

Donny then orders a drink in a pub but, when he realizes he has lost his wallet, the bartender feels sorry for the boy and offers him a drink. The scene has clear parallels with the first episode of the show, in which Donny offered Martha tea because she, the woman, couldn’t seem to afford it. The show certainly doesn’t want to suggest that Donny is about to unleash a wave of harassment on the man but it does indicate that, perhaps, Donny and Martha really do have a lot in common. It’s the perfect final scene for this complex drama about empathy, co-dependency, and all the things we do to try to escape pain.

The Monologue?

Martha shows up at the bar and, after being rejected by Donny, mocks him in front of a customer, calling him a failed comedian. The boy, now at the limit of frustration, unmasks his identity as a serial stalker, making those present aware of the fact that, years earlier, he had persecuted the deaf daughter of a lawyer. In anger, Martha physically attacks him but, this time too, Donny finds himself with his hands tied: he cannot file a complaint against him because it would get the managers of the place in trouble, who should not have left him alone during his shift of work. At the end of the penultimate episode, Donny performs in the final of a competition for rookie comedians but, when he realizes that no one laughs at his (bad) jokes, he has a nervous breakdown: so he begins to tell the public his story of abuse – on the part of Darrien and Martha – and an internal struggle, laying himself completely bare and confessing to everyone that the only thing he has always truly loved in life was hating himself.

What Does the End of Baby Reindeer Mean?

Much to the sadness of viewers eager for definitive answers, creator Richard Gadd doesn’t want to give meaning to the show’s ambiguous ending, preferring to leave it to the audience’s free interpretation.

“I think it can be interpreted in many ways. In my head I know what it is: that ending is what I like most about the whole series, the way it ends”, he told RadioTimes.

“From the moment I plug in the headphones to the moment I get to the end, I hear the voicemail and I look up, that’s my favorite part of the whole series. I think it can be interpreted in many ways and I like it that way. I’m looking forward to seeing what people think,” he added to the aforementioned medium.

Actress Jessica Gunning, for her part, told the portal that she does not believe there are winners in a story like the one told in “Baby Reindeer”, but considers the conclusion of the story as a sign of kindness for both characters.

“It is not a success story, there is no victory. That’s why the stage direction [in the finale] is so amazing: there are no ‘ha ha, gotcha’ scares. They are two lost people and that is captured very well”, she said.

“When I read [the final scene], I got goosebumps, because I thought, ‘What a clever way to end this.’ He’s a broken guy, really, as she was in a sense, who is offered this act of kindness, and I think he just realized what that meant in that moment. That’s just such a clever final blow to everything. “I think it’s incredible and it translated so well to the screen”, she said.

ACTORS AND CHARACTERS OF “BABY REINDEER”

• Richard Gadd as Donny
• Jessica Gunning as Martha
• Nava Mau as Teri
• Tom Goodman-Hill as Darrien
• Danny Kirrane as Gino
• Hugh Coles as Francis
• Michael Wildman as Greggsy
• Thomas Coombes as Danie as Keeley
• Nina Sosanya as Liz

TECHNICAL SHEET OF “BABY REINDEER”

• Original title: Baby Reindeer
• Year: 2024
• Average episode length: 30 min.
• Country: United Kingdom
• Creator: Richard Gadd
• Director: Weronika Tofilska
• Screenplay: Richard Gadd
• Photography: Krzysztof Trojnar, Annika Summerson
• Executive producers: Richard Gadd, Petra Fried, Ed Macdonald and Matt Jarvis
• Production company: Clerkenwell Films
• Distributor: Netflix
• Number of episodes: 7