Lou Netflix ending explained: shock finish to show leaves fans confused

Telly fans love a good thriller, and Netflix knocked it out of the park with Lou.

Telling the story of a kidnap, it has all of the ingredients fans wanted.

However, viewers have been left reeling by the shock ending and Lou’s fate.

Warning: Lou spoilers ahead

Lou ending explained: is Lou alive?

In a shock twist, Netflix viewers see the CIA open fire on Lou and the kidnapper – but are they really dead?

The film starts when a woman called Hannah turns to her retired neighbour Lou to help her get her daughter Vee back after she is kidnapped.

It soon becomes clear that Lou has a past that nobody knows about, and she has a past with the man who abducted Hannah’s daughter.

Lou was ready to end it all before Hannah turned up, as she only had her dog Jax for company and was getting her affairs in order before sitting with a rifle to her chin.

Hannah arrives in the nick of time, and pleads for her help to find her daughter, Vee.

Hannah’s ex-husband, Phillip, is presumed dead until he turns up and kills Hannah’s boyfriend before kidnapping Vee.

The mysterious Lou turns out to have been a CIA agent in the past before relocating to the remote island, and this is why she is so good at hunting and tracking.

However, on the surface Lou appears to be frail old woman and uses her looks to confuse people into thinking she’s helpless.

On one of her jobs in the CIA, Lou went undercover in Iran and took her baby boy with her.

You guessed it… that baby boy is none other than Phillip. He was taken from her by the target she was watching.

She managed to have him rescued but never contacted him again.

However she kept track of him and found he became a war criminal and was an abusive husband to Hannah.

Lou heard Phillip had died when his apartment blew up, and she thought she no longer needed to protect Hannah and Vee (hence preparing to take her own life).

Evil Phillip takes Vee to a lighthouse he has rigged with explosives, and waits for Hannah and his mother.

However, Lou isn’t the only one trailing Phillip, as it turns out the CIA are too.

At the start of the film, Lou burned some documents that were top secret intelligence about what happened in Iran.

Phillip tries to set off the explosives, however Lou manages to defuse the bomb, allowing Hannah and Vee to escape.

Lou fights Phillip to stop him from chasing them, and the mother and son are fighting in the sea as the CIA arrive.

Phillip starts to cry and Lou apologizes about not being a better mother.

The CIA then opens fire on them both.

Lou’s body is shown falling into the sea, so it can be assumed she is dead.

Hannah finds the letter Lou had left for her, and learns that she has inherited Lou’s house and money.

Hannah and Vee are then shown on a ferry heading to Seattle, before the camera pans back to show a woman spying on them with binoculars.

It’s made clear that Lou survived the shooting and is now keeping watch of Hannah and Vee.

Is she protecting them from the CIA? Did Phillip survive too?

Lou’s death was a red herring, and fans are wondering if there will be a sequel.