Hedda Ending Decoded: The Lake Scene Clue Everyone Missed
Nia DaCosta reinvents Ibsen with Hedda, as Tessa Thompson leads a nerve-twisting modern psychodrama that spirals from a glittering party into a cold-blooded power play: Eileen is rushed to the hospital after an accidental shooting, the police close in, and Judge Roland Brack corners Hedda. Here’s how that ending detonates—and what it really means.
Hedda, Nia DaCosta and Tessa Thompson’s modern spin on Ibsen, ends on a note that’s both bold and deliberately maddening. It takes the bones of Hedda Gabler and twists them into something slick, psychological, and way more ambiguous. If you finished the film wondering what exactly happened and why, here’s the clean version.
The endgame, step by step
- We’re after George Tesman’s party, and after Eileen accidentally shoots herself and gets rushed to the hospital.
- Post police questioning, Hedda is cornered by Judge Roland Brack — a former lover — who threatens to expose that she was the one who gave Eileen the gun. He uses that leverage to try to force her into being intimate with him.
- Hedda fights back and tries to shoot Brack, but the gun fails her.
- She bolts into the fields; Brack gives chase. Meanwhile inside, Tesman and Thea are obsessively piecing Eileen’s book back together from scratch.
- Brack catches Hedda, hurts her, and tells her she’ll always belong to him. When voices carry from the house, he peels off.
- Hedda heads straight for the lake, stuffing her coat pockets with heavy stones.
- Her husband, George Tesman, calls after her, shouting that Eileen has woken up. Hedda keeps wading in.
- Right before the cut to black, water is up to her chin. She pauses… and smiles. It’s unnerving.
Does Hedda die?
Ibsen’s original setup is clear about the stakes: Judge Brack exerts control over Hedda, blackmailing her with her role in Eileen Lovborg’s death and threatening scandal if she doesn’t become his mistress. Hedda, unwilling to live under that leash, chooses death. In the play’s telling here, that means drowning in a lake.
DaCosta’s film doesn’t give you that certainty. It stops on Thompson’s face, half-submerged, as George calls out that Eileen is awake. Hedda pauses, and that’s the whole point — the movie refuses to say if she lets herself sink or turns back.
"(Hedda) is between life and death potentially, and then she hears this name. It makes her pause, and that pause is long enough for that smile."
— Nia DaCosta, speaking to Today
Why that lake, and why that smile
The film (and the play) make Eileen’s self-inflicted shooting a shattering moment for Hedda — but not because she can’t believe someone she loves would go that far. It’s the setting. In Ibsen’s version, Eileen dies in a brothel; here, Eileen shoots herself on the grounds of Hedda’s pristine new home. Hedda even notes she expected Eileen to pick somewhere more beautiful.
So Hedda chooses the lake — beautiful, quiet, composed. The exact aesthetic she chases. It’s also a trap. Calm on the surface, deadly if you keep going. The water reads both ways at once: rebirth and oblivion. Which lines up with the film’s two possible outcomes:
She either turns around, decides not to die, and faces Brack’s blackmail head-on. Or she lets go and takes the only freedom she thinks is left to her. That last smile? That’s the hinge. The movie ends exactly where her choice begins.
How did the ending land for you? Drop your read in the comments.
Hedda is now streaming on Prime Video.