Red Sparrow, the 2018 movie from Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence and starring Jennifer Lawrence, is a convoluted spy thriller with many twists and turns – and an especially shocking ending. A claustrophobic tale of double agents, double-crosses, secret idenтιтies, and hidden agendas, Red Sparrow is an uncomfortable and harrowing ride through the world of clandestine spies in the tense political climate of Russia-USA relations.
By the time the credits roll, specific details of the Red Sparrow ending can be a little tough to discern. The film has many layers and moving parts, even for a spy thriller, and it can leave the viewer feeling a little confused after the first viewing. However, while the end of Red Sparrow has multiple layers, it’s not as complicated as it first seems at first blush. With the major moments of Red Sparrow‘s ending explained, the underrated Jennifer Lawrence movie can be appreciated for the intricate tale it truly is.
The Mole’s Idenтιтy In Red Sparrow
General Korchnoi Was Playing Both Sides
There are two main characters in Red Sparrow: Dominika (Jennifer Lawrence) and Nash (Joel Edgerton). Dominika is a Sparrow, an elite Russian saboteur/provocateur/agent. Nash is a CIA field agent charged with protecting his contact, a mole within the Russian government. The film begins with Nash nearly starting an international incident while scrambling to protect the mole’s idenтιтy, and essentially getting kicked out of Russia as a result. The idenтιтy of this double agent is a closely guarded secret for most of the film, until his idenтιтy is revealed near the end.
The whole time, General Vladimir Andreievich Korchnoi, played by Jeremy Irons, was spying for the Americans. He reveals his true allegiance to Dominika and laments that his time is almost up. His loyalty to Russia was tested by the end of the Cold War, and he was captivated by the allure of individualism offered by the West.
Russia had turned into something of a prison for a man like Korchnoi, and he was tired of being nothing more than an anonymous cog in a supposedly great machine, so he decided to work with the CIA to advance the Western agenda, rather than that of this neo-Soviet Russia. He’ll be discovered, but he has a plan: have Dominika, who is currently under suspicion for being a double agent herself, turn him in and become a national hero.
He’s willing to sacrifice himself if his legacy lives on through Dominika.
From this place of impunity, she can continue his work, undermining Russia’s plans while feeding information to the West. He’s willing to sacrifice himself if his legacy lives on through Dominika. The only problem for Dominika is that she doesn’t necessarily have an allegiance to either the USA or Russia. She only signed on to be a spy because the alternative was death. As far as the audience truly knows, the only person in her life she actually cares about is her mother.
Dominika Plays Everyone
Revenge Was Her True Motivation
Throughout Red Sparrow, Dominika is wrestling with her forced allegiance to Russia and her apparent desire to defect to the United States. Through it all, however, she has a more singular goal in mind: revenge. Dominika’s uncle, Ivan, is a key catalyst for Dominika’s drive for justice. He recruits his own niece for a mission which ends in her rape and a violent killing, and then ships her off to a clandestine spy school where she’s taught to be an unfeeling agent of the State.
Dominika is dehumanized through rape, murder, and the systematic removal of her idenтιтy – and that’s before he displays incestuous feelings for his niece and even kisses her. Everything that happens is his fault, and Dominika knows it from the start, or at least very early on. During her missions, both for Russia and the United States, she’s collecting and planting evidence against her uncle, and it all comes to a head in the finale, a hostage trade.
When the mask is removed, the face revealed isn’t that of Korchnoi, but of Ivan, who has been successfully framed by Dominika.
The Russians are returning the mole to the custody of the Americans, while the Americans are giving Dominika back to the Russians. When the opaque bag is removed from the mole’s head, the movie flashes back to crucial moments between Dominika and her uncle Ivan, including swiping a glᴀss (with his fingerprints) from his office and making fake copies of the data acquired from Senator Boucher (Mary-Louise Parker). When the mask is removed, the face revealed isn’t that of Korchnoi, but of Ivan, who has been successfully framed by Dominika.
She used the glᴀss to place him where he never was, and the floppy disk to suggest he was giving fake data to the Russians. It’s capped off in a bloody way. Beforehand, there was concern among the Americans that the Russians would never be willing to allow an exposed mole to live and share secrets with the West, and their suspicion is proven correct when a sniper ends Ivan’s life with a well-placed headsH๏τ.
There Are Two Moles At The End Of Red Sparrow
Double-Crosses Upon Double-Crosses
As the ending of Red Sparrow arrives, the Russian government is undermined by two moles: Korchnoi maintains his role in the military while funneling information to the CIA, and now Dominika is embedded within Russia’s intelligence community. Above suspicion for her role in exposing her own uncle as a traitor to the State, Dominika is well-positioned to aid the CIA while undermining Russia’s own interests, though her true allegiance is unknown.
Does she have any concern over the political intrigue and clandestine squabbles between Russia and America? Now that her personal mission is completed, how will she use her skills to influence the greater geopolitical landscape of East-West relations? The future is wide open for Dominika, and the new Cold War of the 21st century is where she will make her mark.
The final sH๏τ of the ending of Red Sparrow shows Dominika answering a phone call. Presumably, it’s the CIA, possibly Nash himself, prompting underlying questions. Does Dominika truly have romantic feelings for Agent Nash? Or were her affections just a ruse to use him and his resources to carry out her revenge on evil Uncle Ivan? But what if it’s not the CIA calling?
As the movie fades out in the final moments of the Red Sparrow ending, music can be heard on the other end of the line. Russian ballet music. Is that her contact, or does it represent something more personal? Whatever the case may be, Dominika is not out of danger yet. Her secrets are her own, but she must now live in constant fear of being discovered by people who won’t think twice before executing her as a spy.
What Does Red Sparrow Say About US/Russian Politics?
The Movie Isn’t A Political Statement
The original Red Sparrow novel, published in 2013, was timely in its portrayal of Russia as a country working tirelessly to undermine Western interests as though the Cold War had never ended. In 2018, when Red Sparrow was released against a backdrop of mounting evidence of Russian interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election, that page-turning spy story feels even more relevant.
A core element of Red Sparrow is the chess game of installing double agents in key positions of power to undermine the enemy. Korchnoi and Dominika are American agents embedded within Russia. Would a prospective sequel to the film flip things and look at Russian spies in the U.S.? It’s important to note that the President of Russia is never explicitly named in the film, even though the original book makes repeated mention to Vladimir Putin; despite its politics, Red Sparrow isn’t trying to be political.
The Real Meaning Of The Red Sparrow Ending
The Political Thriller Is A Surprisingly Personal Story
While the ending of Red Sparrow is quite complex when it comes to the various double-crosses and moles in the intelligence agencies of both Russia and the U.S., the core themes of the final moments are much simpler. Red Sparrow is, at its core, a story about two things: revenge and how difficult it is to escape cycles of violence. For Dominika, the events of the film were driven by a need to take revenge on her Uncle Ivan and, in a wider sense, the cut-throat intelligence community that facilitated the nightmarish torment she endured.
All she truly cared about was ensuring that Ivan died.
Dominika doesn’t really seem to have an allegiance to Russia or the U.S., even though the ending implies she was possibly calling the CIA and could have been serving U.S. interests. All she truly cared about was ensuring that Ivan died. If she could create more chaos along the way while keeping herself under the radar of suspicion, then all the better. However, there is still a definite sense that, if her plan had failed, she would have resorted to simpler means of getting her revenge on Ivan, such was the depth of her incredibly justified hatred for him.
On a secondary level, the meaning behind the Red Sparrow ending was a commentary on the cyclical nature of violence and how difficult it is for people like Dominika to truly escape the dangerous and destructive lives they lead. The final phone call at the end of Red Sparrow left many questions, but it seems clear that things are far from over for Dominika.
The chances that Dominika can simply fade into the background and live a normal life are more-or-less non-existent. She may have finally got revenge on Ivan, but that hasn’t put a halt to the life his cruel decisions and the torment she suffered at the hands of the state’s intelligence apparatus led her to.
How The Red Sparrow Ending Was Received
The Ending Was A Key Factor In The Mixed Response To The 2018 Spy Thriller
2018’s Red Sparrow was an ambitious project from director Francis Lawrence and from screenwriter Justin Haythe when it came to attempting to adapt Jason Matthews’ novel of the same name. Unfortunately, the response from critics was markedly mixed, and the film didn’t fare much better when it came to audience opinions either. Red Sparrow currently sits with a 45% Tomatometer score and at 51% on the Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes, highlighting just how split down the middle the response to the spy thriller remains. The ending of Red Sparrow was a key part of this response, too.
In the simplest terms, many critics and audience members felt that Red Sparrow was simply trying to do too much, and that this led to the ending feeling convoluted and, in many ways, quite thin. Dominika’s revenge narrative with Ivan could have been a solid narrative in its own right. At the same time, the intricate weave of double-agents and international intrigue also could have been the sole focus.
Trying to cover both in the same story, however, stretched Red Sparrow too much in the eyes of many viewers, meaning the ending didn’t feel like it wrapped up either narrative well enough. What’s more, the ambiguous nature of the final moments of Red Sparrow, especially when it came to Dominika’s mysterious phone conversation, backfired somewhat. Ambiguity can work incredibly well for movie endings, but the Jennifer Lawrence spy thriller needed something a little more concrete, as far as many reviews are concerned.
Ending with more questions than answers felt jarring given the existing problems with the often-convoluted narrative, and had Red Sparrow finished on a more definitive note that provided some answers to who Dominika was talking to and what she was going to do next, the movie may have had a much less divisive response.
How The Red Sparrow Ending Compares To Other Similar Spy Movies
Red Sparrow’s Twists And Turns Are Similar To Other Spy Movies
Red Sparrow fits into the spy movie genre as a story that is more based on the intrigue of this world of deception rather than the world-saving adventures of the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises. As such, its ending comes together with a complex explanation of how all the twists and turns of the story played out and how Dominika ended up outsmarting everyone. In that sense, it is similar to a number of other spy movie endings.
One of the most recent entries into the genre, the ending of Black Bag shares some similarities to Red Sparrow‘s conclusion. The movie centers around George (Michael Fᴀssbender) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), a married couple who are also spies for MI6. After George attempts to learn whether his wife is a traitor and how he can protect her, the couple discovers that they are both being framed as traitors. However, working together, they manage to turn the tables on their enemies, come out on top, and strengthen their marriage as a result.
The ending is another crowd-pleasing victory, similar to Dominika’s outcome in Red Sparrow. However, there is also a fun charm to Black Bag with George and Kathryn doing it all for their mutual love. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is another complex spy story about the Cold War and a hunt for a Russian spy inside MI6. George Smiley (Gary Oldman) finds the mole inside the organization and is thus promoted to head of “The Circus.” However, there is a melancholy ending to the story with the idea of the price of these lies and the cyclical nature of the fight.
Perhaps the spy movie Red Sparrow most resembles is Salt. Though more of an action flick, it also deals with a female spy accused of being a mole, and the twisting ending mirrors elements of Red Sparrow‘s ending. Angelina Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, who appears to be a Russian spy working inside the US government, only for her cover to be blown, forcing her on the run. However, the ending reveals that Salt is actually an operative posing as a mole to use her cover to identify and eliminate actual moles within the government.
