The Lost Daughter was a big hit on Netflix over the festive period in 2021, and its ending has had people talking ever since.
Maggie Gyllenhaal's adaptation of the novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante largely keeps faithful to the original text, although the movie's ending has a slight change on what was on the page.
The movie takes place across two timelines as we follow college professor Leda (Olivia Colman) on holiday as she meets young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson), while also learning Leda's story through extended flashbacks where she is played by Jessie Buckley.
YANNIS DRAKOULIDIS/NETFLIX
Whether you've read the book or just watched the movie, you'll still be left with questions at the end of The Lost Daughter though, so we're here to help.
Fortunately, since the movie's release, both Gyllenhaal and lead star Olivia Colman have delved into the ambiguous ending (and that orange) to try and clear up any confusion you might have had over the ending.
In order to do so, we're going to untangle the dual timelines and go chronologically into what befell Leda on that fateful holiday. Needless to say, major spoilers follow so look away now if you haven't seen The Lost Daughter yet.
Netflix
As a young mother of two in New York City, Leda studies translation and comparative literature, and her husband Joe (Jack Farthing) is equally involved in academia but as a scientist, and the two live in a small apartment with their two daughters. The lion's share of childcare falls to Leda, despite her attempts to break through in her career.
We watch as they struggle to find a balance within their relationship, which comes to a poignant head while they are staying in Joe's professor's house for a vacation and they take in a European backpacking couple.
The couple reveals that the man left behind his own children and former partner to embrace a new life, one that made him fulfilled and the conversation clearly strikes a note with Leda. When the couple leaves, the woman asks Leda to give her some of her work to read, and Leda is obviously moved.
Eventually, she is invited to attend a conference in London and she makes the difficult choice to go, leaving her kids not only with their father but also with a babysitter.
While in London, her translation work is lauded by another, very popular academic, Professor Hardy (Peter Sarsgaard) and at dinner he invites her to his table and the two engage in an affair. She returns to New York City and works but continues the affair with Hardy.
YANNIS DRAKOULIDIS/NETFLIX © 2021
Leda travels more and though she eventually ends the affair, it has become clear that she is ready to leave her life. She comes home to give her daughters presents and Joe begs her not to end their marriage, threatening that if she leaves he'll take the girls back to England to stay with Leda's mother.
Indignant, Leda berates Joe for threatening to take her daughters back to England – but still doesn't stay. Her daughters ask her to make a snake, referring to when Leda peels an orange all in one go; she does it, and as they are distracted with the peel she leaves.
Present-day Leda arrives for her holiday in Greece and finds Lyle (Ed Harris) waiting to let her into the cottage he manages. She spends her first day on the beach but then a family show up, including young mother Nina and her pregnant sister-in-law Callie (Dagmara Domińczyk).
Netflix
Leda becomes obsessed with watching them, and as more of the family arrive Callie asks Leda to move chairs; Leda refuses, creating a tense standoff with the Calista family. Later in the evening, Callie apologises and offers Leda cake as a token of peace.
Leda invites Will (Paul Mescal), a young Dubliner working in Greece for the summer, to have dinner and the two strike up a bond. He warns her not to push the Calista family.
The next day on the beach Nina's young daughter Elena goes missing, and Leda is the one to find her and reunite her with her family, but Elena is upset because her doll is missing – a doll that reminds Leda of the one she had in the past. Later, Leda finds the doll but takes it home.
Netflix
After an awkward, sort-of-flirtatious encounter with Lyle, he brings her some octopus and cooks it for her. They have a tense conversation about their children and former spouses; Lyle sees the doll but says nothing.
Around the village, Nina has put up flyers for the lost doll which Leda sees as she heads to the beach. She runs into Callie there and the two have a tense conversation in which Callie accuses Leda of doing something, though she can't be sure what.
Having cleaned up the doll, Leda brings it to the house where the Calistas are staying, but as she approaches she sees Nina and Will surreptitiously kissing out of sight of Nina's husband Toni (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and has second thoughts about returning the doll. She hurries away, but Toni is leaning up against a car and they have a standoff only for Leda to realise it isn't her car he's standing by, and she flees awkwardly.
Netflix
Leda goes to a movie theatre where a bunch of boys are being loud and disrespectful, and though she tries to get them to be quiet they make fun of her but eventually the Calista patriarch Vasili steps in to shush them. Unnerved by the encounter, Leda leaves the cinema.
The next day she runs into Nina at the market, and they have a surprisingly frank conversation in which Nina confesses to the affair with Will and Leda reveals that she left her family when her daughters were six and four. Nina, however, doesn't judge her but the conversation is cut short when Toni arrives suddenly.
Another evening, Leda is out and sees a crowd gathering to dance. Lyle is there and he asks her to dance, instructing her to leave her bag with an older Greek woman and they dance, and Leda begins to let go, really enjoying herself.
Netflix
However, Toni and the Calista family arrive and Lyle stops dancing and tells Leda to go – the environment becomes tense and hostile, so she grabs her bags and leaves but on her way out is surprised by Will, who asks if he and Nina can use her apartment to meet in secret. Leda asks to speak with Nina instead.
Nina arrives one day earlier than they agreed and she and Leda have another candid conversation about motherhood; Nina confesses to having 'depression or something' and Leda tells her the feeling will never pass. Leda then brings out the doll, and tells Nina she 'took it' before saying, "I'm an unnatural mother."
Freaked out, Nina stabs Leda with the hatpin they'd purchased together the day in the market, before calling her a crazy-ass bitch and leaving with the doll. Leda, seeing blood where the hatpin punctured her skin, eventually falls asleep on the sofa.
YANNIS DRAKOULIDIS/NETFLIX
The Lost Daughter ending explained
When she wakes she moves gingerly, filling up her suitcases and throwing them down the stairs. She gets in her car and drives, the scene we see at the very beginning of the movie, driving, crashing the car, getting out to walk the beach and passing out on the sand.
She wakes up in the morning and sits on the beach for a long while before her phone rings. It's her daughters, both of whom are frantic having not heard from their mother in too long.
It's a minor change from the novel where Leda wakes up in hospital after the car crash. She still speaks to her daughters, but tells them, "I'm dead, but I'm fine" whereas the movie sees Leda tell her daughters, "Dead? No, I'm alive, actually".
There's a further change as after this exchange in the movie's ending, Leda is shown holding a perfect orange and starts peeling it like she used to for her children when they were younger.
Netflix
Could it be a sign that she's just hallucinating and she's actually dying? Or is it just a metaphor for Leda connecting with her children after everything she's been through?
The movie's script doesn't clear it up definitively: "As she listens, Leda puts her fingers to her wound. She looks at the blood it leaves on her fingers. She opens her hand and an orange magically appears in her palm. With bloody fingers, listening to her daughters talk, she sits in the sand and peels the orange. In one long piece, like a snake."
"Our unconscious mind is magical. That's the orange," Gyllenhaal told The Los Angeles Times of the vision.
"And then Olivia improvised something on the day when she was on the phone to the daughters. She said, 'Tell me all about it'. And that is what makes her a mother, right? 'Oh, you guys don't actually care that I've just been stabbed in the belly.'
"They care, but like all children, they need their mom. They're calling to tell her something, and she's just got to be there and just listen."
So whether you think Leda is alive or dead is up to the viewer, really, but we like to be positive and say she's alive, even if the orange is a figment of her imagination.
The Lost Daughter is available to watch now on Netflix.
The Crown - Season 1 & 2 [DVD] [2018]
Sony Pictures Entertainment/Left Bank Picturesamazon.co.uk
£18.94
The Crown: The Inside History (volume 1) by Robert Lacey
Blink Publishingamazon.co.uk
£20.00
£9.99 (50% off)
The Crown - Season 03 [DVD] [2020]
Sony Pictures Entertainment/Left Bank Picturesamazon.co.uk
£14.99
£12.12 (19% off)
