The Ending Of Lou Explained

Where a lot of action movies just kind of hand wave at vague, shadowy government work to explain why the main character is so deadly, "Lou" gets specific. She was a CIA operative for 26 years, and was directly involved the 1953 coup in Iran. In a role that the CIA admitted to officially by declassifying documents 60 years later, the CIA worked in concert with British intelligence forces, Iranian mobsters, and the clergy that supported the monarchal rule of Shah Mohammad Rez Pahlavi in order to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossaddegh. 

As a field agent, Lou's role involved "getting very close to a very dangerous man," as she explains to Hannah, which eventually resulted in a pregnancy. She kept the baby to avoid blowing her cover, and her son Philip (played by Logan Marshal-Green as an adult) was at least briefly taken from her by his father's men at some point. "Lou" is set sometime in the mid-'80s, when the government is still actively denying its role in Iran, and this secrecy defines much of Lou's life. The documents she burns as the film opens are proof of U.S. involvement in the coup, and the lasting psychological damage to Philip will haunt her much more directly.

The brief clip of Ronald Reagan on television in "Lou" allows us to place "Lou" specifically in time as taking place the night of November 14, 1985. The local news is reporting on a national address that Reagan gave the night before addressing a shipment of arms to Iran and the subsequent perception that the arms were in exchange for hostages released as part of the then-ongoing Iran-Contra scandal. "Lou" plays with history a little bit by having the local anchor claim that Reagan is "addressing heightened tensions with Iran in the wake of rumors about the CIA's involvement with the 1953 coup..." 

In reality, those rumors had persisted for decades and were nothing new. Lou does claim that she blackmailed the CIA into investigating Philip's actions in El Salvador, and it's very possible that leaking the existence of the documents to the press had something to do with it. Whatever the specifics, the glimpse of Reagan on the news is a grim reminder for Lou that the biggest operation of her career led to decades of instability in Iran, whatever its intentions were, and in 1985, the country had a more fractured relationship with the U.S. than ever. As she contemplates her legacy, Lou has many reasons to believe that she left the world a more dangerous place than she found it.

Like mother, like son. Just as Lou was part of U.S. intervention in Iran, her son Philip grows up to become a Green Beret in the United States Army Special Forces, and is presumably among the first soldiers sent to El Salvador in the early '80s to train the El Salvadorian military in "counterinsurgency techniques." Much like the United States' motivations in Iran and later Vietnam, U.S. intelligence feared that leftist insurgencies would lead to the spread of communism. Philip was born into the traumatic context of his mother's undercover operation in Iran and carried her legacy of interventionism on in a big way.

Philip apparently got a little too hands on in his time in El Salvador, and he is eventually court martialed at some point: Hannah claims to have seen the transcripts that indicate "he was torturing hostages for fun." As haunted as Lou is by her experiences, Philip has fully shed his humanity and embraced the sociopathic side required for the job. In a literal way, Lou has to confront her own past and fight the monster than she created.

"Lou" does a relatively incredible job of foregrounding the big twist that Lou is Philip's mother, without entirely giving it away. Bit by bit, the clues pile up, like the postcards that he leaves along the way with references to Iran. At first, it seems illogical that he kidnaps Vee during a huge rainstorm, making it more or less impossible to get away, but when the truth comes out you realize: He wanted it this way. With outside help cut off, he knows his mother will pursue him to the lighthouse, where they can have a final confrontation.

This explains why he blew up Lou's car as well, although he nearly blew up Lou and Hannah as well when they tried to start it right as the timer was about to run out. The remote island that Lou presumably chose as a form of defense was turned into a prison, by a combination of Philip and bad weather. 

Although it doesn't have a lot of downtime to devote to exploring the psychology of it, "Lou" gives the character of Hannah agency and empathy not normally seen in stories of domestic abuse. When Lou "discovers" the story of her marriage to Philip, she initially scolds Hannah for staying with him so long: a comment made even more callous when you realize that Lou didn't just learn about it, and is partially responsible for Philip's detachment and cruelty.

But even under duress, Hannah rightly reprimands Lou for judging a situation from the outside, and gets her to admit that the reality is more complicated. Despite being married to a monster, Hannah did manage to get herself and her daughter out — even though Philip threatened to murder the three of them — and was even moving on with her life romantically before Philip reappeared to try and make good on that promise. And at the lighthouse, Hannah's method of telling Vee "game on" to get her out of harm's way pays off, and she summons the courage to badly wound Philip, putting him and Lou on more or less even ground for the showdown on the beach. 

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

After the chaos and bloodshed, "Lou" fades to a happy ending. But the first shot of the denouement is a potent reminder of the geopolitical forces that Lou was part of in the '50s: Vee innocently stacks some Shell brand motor oil cans as she plays in the yard. In addition to fears about communism spreading to Iran if left to its own devices, the desire to "keep the oil flowing" was a prime motivator for the U.S. and Britain taking part in the coup d'état. 

In Vee, "Lou" reminds us that the large and shadowy forces that topple governments have personal and intergenerational consequences. Vee has a dead father, a traumatized mother, a grandmother presumed dead (and at the very least a fugitive from the government), and a lifetime of dealing with the harrowing events of her kidnapping to look forward. You wouldn't know it from the smile on her face, but "Lou" sneaks in a visual reminder that day to day life in America is the indirect result of a long history of international strife.

What's most stunning about Lou's survival, even beyond the general unlikeness of it, is that she's chosen life after all. She begins the movie ready to end things, and seems to accept her death in a more benevolent way when the helicopter is approaching on the beach. But somewhere along the way, she's renewed her commitment to Hannah and Vee and continues to watch over them. As Hannah told her, everything she had was right there in front of her.

It's unclear what kind of future Lou will faces: In reality, the CIA wouldn't declassify documents relating to the Iran coup until 2013, so Lou has another three decades of being a top priority for them. Based on how long she's evaded capture so far, she might be able to assume another identity in Seattle and make her family aware she survived, but they might be under surveillance for a long time based on the events of the movie. With any luck, Lou can blackmail the CIA into leaving her alone with the threat of exposing the documents: As the audience, we're the only ones aware that she actually burned them.