House of Dynamite Star Finally Explains That Devastating Finale Death

Jared Harris broke down the rough, gut-punch ending of Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite, and his read on it is as bleak as the movie suggests. The short version: his character, Secretary Reid Baker, reaches a point where the personal losses and the national crisis collide, and he chooses the exit ramp.

Speaking with The Wrap, Harris framed Baker's last choice as a tragic math problem only he can solve. The guy has already lost his wife. Then his daughter, played by Kaitlyn Dever, dies. That second blow is the one he cannot carry.

"He didn't want to live in a world where he'd lost his wife and his daughter."

Harris said he and Bigelow spent time charting Baker's damaged relationship with his daughter. He sees Baker as a man who needs serious help, while Dever's character is drowning in her own grief and not remotely in a place to rescue him. He holds out hope that, someday, she might be able to reach him. Then she is gone, and that hope goes with her.

The film also stacks a moral catastrophe on top of the personal one. Right before Baker heads to the roof, the president calls to ask his advice on a nuclear response. Harris describes that as the moment Baker recognizes what is about to happen worldwide and what his words could set in motion. He hangs up, unable to be the man who tips the scale, and walks away.

• First loss: Baker's wife dies.
• Second loss: his daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) dies, wiping out the last thing keeping him tethered.
• The call: the president reaches out for Baker's counsel on a nuclear retaliation.
• The break: Baker hears they are moving toward a response and refuses to be part of that decision, ending the call.
• The choice: he heads to the roof and steps off, the act playing as the ultimate expression of a man crushed by impossible stakes.

Harris reads that final act as a physical expression of being morally frozen by pressure no one should have to withstand. And there is a quiet, oddly specific touch in his last scene with Dever: Baker's final words to her are "That's good," a line Harris lifted from Bruce Springsteen's The River live album. Springsteen tells a story there about his father expressing care in a clipped, understated way; Harris borrowed that emotional shorthand to give Baker one last, fragile moment of connection.

A House of Dynamite is now streaming on Netflix. It is a tough watch, but Harris's explanation makes the ending land in a way that feels sadly inevitable.