‘The Fallout’ Ending Explained: HBO Max’s School Shooting Drama Ends on a Gut Punch

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Fallout on HBO Max. Hopefully, you knew that when you clicked on it, but just in case.

Sadly, school shootings have become a regular occurrence in the U.S. over the past few decades. Far too many teenagers live in fear of a gunman murdering them and their classmates every time they go to school. But while the world watches in the week or so following each horrific shooting, eventually the news crews go home and the students and their families are left to deal with the emotional aftermath.

It’s that aftermath that writer/director Megan Park reckons with in her new movie The Fallout, which began streaming on HBO Max today. The drama stars Jenna Ortega as a high school student named Vada Cavell who, though she is not physically harmed, navigates the emotional trauma of a shooting at her school. Despite the sobering subject, the film is filled with a surprising amount of levity. But when it comes to The Fallout ending, the movie delivers an emotional gut-punch that will leave viewers reeling.

If you just watched The Fallout on HBO Max and need to process that ending, read on for The Fallout plot summary and The Fallout ending explained.

WHAT IS THE FALLOUT ABOUT? THE FALLOUT PLOT SUMMARY:

High schooler Vada Cavell (Jenna Ortega) is a chill girl with a good life. She gets Starbucks with her best friend Nick (Will Ropp) before school, she talks her younger sister Amelia (Lumi Pollack) through getting her first period, and she pokes fun at her school’s resident Instagram influencer Mia (Maddie Ziegler) for contouring on picture day.

Then comes a horrific event that makes it hard for Vada to be quite so chill: a shooting at her school that kills an unspecified number of her classmates. Vada is trapped in the school bathroom when it happens, huddling in a stall with Mia the influencer, and, eventually, a blood-soaked student named Quinton (Niles Fitch). They try not to cry too loudly, as they overhear the unbearable sounds of gunshots and screams, wondering if this moment is to be their last.

Everyone in the bathroom survives, but to say Vada is traumatized is an understatement. In the wake of the shooting, she has nightmares and feels numb. While her BFF Nick becomes an overnight activist, Vada doesn’t feel driven to march or lobby her representatives. Instead, she gravitates toward Mia the influencer, and the two of them forge an unlikely friendship after having been bonded by something so horrible. Mia’s parents are filthy rich and always out of town, so the girls spend their days drinking wine and smoking weed in Mia’s huge, empty house.

Vada has no desire to go back to school, but eventually, with pressure from her mom, she does. Even then, she can’t bring herself to enter the bathroom where she hid from the shooter at school, so she forces herself to hold it. She makes it to the end of the day, until, on her walk home, she steps on a can and wets herself. The next day, she takes Ecstasy at school to self-medicate and ends up with ink all over her face, falling down the school stairs. It’s clear that she is coming apart at the seams, even though she tries her best to hold on to those cool-girl vibes. She tells her parents she’s fine, and she tells her therapist (Shailene Woodley) that she’s just “a very low-key person.”

But she pulls away from her family, snaps at her sister, and spends more and more time with Mia—eventually sleeping with her. She’s gone all night, and her mom is beside herself. (Her usual alibi, that she is spending the night at Nick’s, falls through when Nick calls her mom looking for her.) She tries to kiss Quinton, and he rejects her. She feels like everyone in her life has turned against her.

WHAT IS THE FALLOUT ENDING EXPLAINED?

Vada’s sister Amelia confronts her in the middle of the night and tearfully apologizes. Amelia thinks Vada is mad at her because Amelia had called Vada right before the shooting, causing her to leave the classroom and putting her in more danger. Vada realizes how much she has hurt her sister by pulling away, and it’s a breakthrough moment.

After a somewhat cheesy, cathartic screaming-into-the-wilderness session with her dad, Vada goes to visit Mia. She’s been avoiding her since they had sex, and Mia thinks she’s mad at her. Vada finds Mia passed out in her sauna, surrounded by empty wine bottles. Mia confesses she is afraid to leave her house, but that she plans to start going back to dance class because she knows it will be good for her.

Vada goes on to make things right with her mom and have a breakthrough session with her therapist. In the film’s final scene, Vada waits for Mia outside of her dance class, and the two have an easy, somewhat flirty text exchange. Vada seems happy. Then she gets a news push notification on her phone: A school shooting in another state has killed 12 students. Vada stares at her phone disbelieving, and then she starts to hyperventilate. The screen goes to white as we listen to the sounds of Vada’s panic attack.

Phew. It’s a gut-punch of an ending that suggests that while Vada is beginning to heal from her trauma, she’s still very much suffering, and perhaps will always carry the trauma with her. Likely she’ll have to be treated for PTSD—this is not the kind of thing you heal from in a matter of months. But, she has her family to support her and her friends, and hopefully, Vada will be OK. Someday.

Watch The Fallout on HBO Max