Adolescence Ending, Explained: Why Did Jamie Kill Katie?

The Netflix psychological drama show ‘Adolescence’ presents a gripping narrative about a young boy and his family whose lives are turned upside down in light of a serious criminal accusation. Jamie Miller, a thirteen-year-old boy, is dragged away from his home by the authorities, facing murder accusations for the death of his classmate, Katie Leonard. In the nerve-wracking process that commences, his family—notably his father, Eddie—stay by the teenager’s side, steadfast in their belief over his innocence.

Nonetheless, the investigation, evidence, and psychological evaluations that follow reveal a dark reality about the world and Jamie’s place in it. The show remains ripe with unnerving tension as it tackles the hard-hitting truths about contemporary culture, explored through a unique lens. As a result, Jamie’s predicament and the reality of his experiences easily captivate the audience’s attention and interest. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Adolescence Recap

Jamie and the Miller family’s downward spiral begins on a weekday morning when an armed task force led by Detective Bascombe knocks down their front door. They arrest the teenage boy on suspicion of murder and escort him down to the station while his family follows close behind. The events terribly traumatize the boy, who maintains that he hasn’t done anything wrong. Despite being his arresting officer, Bascombe attempts to be gentle toward Jamie and even advises him to get a solicitor during the initial questioning and tests. Once his processing begins, the young boy elects his father, Eddie, as his appropriate adult to accompany him on each step of the process. Still, when it comes time for him to be locked in detention, he’s left all alone in a jail cell.

In turn, Jamie’s family remains entirely lost about the turn of events—frustrated and confused in equal measures when they learn that the boy has been accused of murdering someone with a kitchen knife. However, when he has a chance to speak to Eddie, his son insists that he’s entirely innocent. Eventually, accompanied by his father and his solicitor, Paul Barlow, Jamie undergoes a series of preliminary tests, which include mouth swabs, blood tests, fingerprints, and a strip search. A questioning stage follows with Detectives Bascombe and Frank, who interrogate Jamie about his friends, particularly two kids named Tommy and Ryan. They also bring up Katie Leonard, the murder victim.

Even though Jamie skirts any comments on his whereabouts the night before, the Detectives are armed with a series of CCTV pictures that place him in the same locations as Katie near the time of the murder. In fact, a timeline can be established that paints Jamie as clearly following the girl. Yet, the boy denies all allegations. However, Bascombe has one final piece of evidence: video footage showcasing a confrontation between Jamie and Katie, in which the former stabs her with a knife and leaves her to bleed to her death. In the aftermath, Eddie is stunned to horror, unable to reconcile the truth about Jamie in the face of his consistent denial.

Soon enough, word spreads about Jamie’s arrest, resulting in a bustling day when Bascombe and Frank arrive at his school for a round of questioning. While the boy’s friends, Ryan and Tommy, remain evasive, Katie’s best friend, Jade, faces the detectives with unadulterated anger. She seems to patently hate Jamie and his friends. Eventually, with his son Adam’s help, Bascombe learns certain truths about the social bubble at the school. Additionally, the cops also find what they were looking for after Ryan confesses crucial information about the yet-missing murder weapon. As such, Jamie is charged with the crime and put in a training center to await his court case. In the meantime, several psychologists, including Dr. Briony Ariston, come in to evaluate him and figure out the root of his homicidal motivation.

Adolescence Ending: Why Did Jamie Kill Katie?

Even though there is some initial mystery about Jamie’s possible innocence in the case of Katie’s murder, it quickly dissolves with the reveal of the CCTV footage. The video evidently showcases the boy stabbing the girl in a car park before fleeing from the scene. Inevitably, the only real mystery that remains is about his motives. Bascombe’s trip to the kid’s school reveals that Jamie and Katie weren’t friends, despite the latter’s frequent presence on his Instagram account.

In reality, Katie’s comments were subtle but obvious digs at Jamie for being an incel—an individual belonging to an online community of men with hostile perceptions of women who believe they can’t attract the latter’s sexual attention. Therefore, an element of retaliation is added to the boy’s fatal actions toward the girl. Nonetheless, it isn’t as if Jamie was an innocent victim of bullying—something made evident through Jade’s reaction toward him and his friends. The intricacies of his complicated mindset reveal themselves—with much effort—under Briony Ariston, who has regular conversations with the accused to understand his perception of the events.

The dynamic between Briony and Jamie seems friendly initially. Nevertheless, the latter is prone to violent and angry lashouts—small but concerning things like slamming the table, throwing stuff, and yelling. As such, the boy inadvertently reveals his short temper and reliance on intimidation to make his point. Furthermore, the 13-year-old seems to harbor a deeply internalized belief that he should be at least somewhat sexually active while simultaneously believing he isn’t attractive enough to garner such opportunities. He seems stuck on the idea that the foundation of the dynamic between men and women relies on sex. Moreover, he believes boys like him have to rely on trickery to get girls to be interested in them.

These horrifying yet essential building blocks of Jamie’s worldview are directly related to his involvement in Katie’s murder. As it turns out, a while before her tragic death, the latter’s nudes were leaked all over the school, cementing her in a socially vulnerable place. Her classmates were insulting her and commenting about her body. However, Jamie tried to benefit from the situation by attempting to extend fake empathy to the girl in the hopes that it would make her see him as a viable option for a boyfriend. In short, he was trying to exploit her vulnerability to further his own sexual intentions with her. In fact, he acknowledges retroactively that he didn’t even like Katie as a person.

Nevertheless, the social messaging Jamie had absorbed from incel circles has made him believe that cornering girls in unguarded moments is the only way he can get close to them sexually. The same, paired with the mounting—yet completely fabricated—obligation he feels to engage in sexual acts propels his actions. In turn, Katie easily saw through his ruse that night and asserted that she wasn’t desperate enough to go out with him. As a result, she directly bruised his ego and continued antagonizing it with her social media comments. Here, things circle back to Jamie’s reliance on violent outbursts—which urged him to follow after Katie and intimidate her with his knife. The girl died of several stab wounds—an indication that the attack was carried out in anger and with homicidal intent. Ultimately, in the grand scheme of Jamie’s life, his actions were built brick-by-brick by the toxic and vile misogyny that radicalized him. Still, his actions—fueled by rage toward Katie for denying him something he felt he was entitled to—are his own to blame.

Does Eddie Blame Himself For Jamie’s Actions?

Months after Jamie’s rather disturbing last session with Briony, the boy remains in the training center in the build-up to his court date. So far, he has prepared to plead innocent for his trial—something that his family entirely supports. Nonetheless, it’s evident that despite their best efforts at standing up for Jamie’s presumed innocence, the large public opinion doesn’t agree with him. As such, on his birthday, Eddie wakes to the sight of a slur spray painted on the side of his van. He tries to maintain his aggressively positive attitude by driving his family to a supermarket to buy cover-up paint. Nonetheless, reality inevitably catches up to him again.

A significant part of Eddie’s turmoil comes from his inability to reconcile his son with his criminal actions. All this time, Jamie had told him that he was innocent—something the father had blindly believed. Yet, the truth of the CCTV footage speaks for itself. Therefore, Eddie is torn about the entire thing since his son is still insisting upon his innocent tag with his planned court case plea. For the same reason, a moment of catharsis dooms upon him when, on the drive back home from the market, Jamie gives his dad a call and reveals a crucial decision he has made. The boy has decided to plead guilty during his trial. The revelation almost comes as permission for Eddie and his wife, Manda, to mourn the reality that they were desperate to believe about their son.

Eddie would like to believe that he did the best he could as a father. Unlike his own upbringing, he ensured to keep abuse out of his children’s lives. Yet, rather than working on his issues, he simply geared his short temper toward other outlets. Therefore, one way or another, Jamie ended up inheriting or mirroring his tendency to exert violence on objects—which then led to violence against women. Furthermore, he missed out on the signs of his son’s online radicalization into the incel movement. No matter which way he spins, the truth remains that a certain disconnect between Jamie and his family allowed them to overlook his aggressive and concerning thoughts and beliefs.

As a result, there is no world in which Eddie can possibly shuck himself off at least some blame. After all, regardless of the good or the bad, his thirteen-year-old kid’s upbringing is ultimately his and his wife’s responsibility. Still, the fact that Jamie’s sister, Lisa, turned out to be a kind and caring individual proves that Eddie and Manda were only parts of the overarching equation that resulted in their kid’s demise. Ultimately, Eddie has to blame himself for Jamie’s actions on the virtue of being someone who loves him. He’s bound to feel guilty for missing the signs and not doing enough to save him from himself. Consequently, it’s likely that the man will carry a guilty conscience forever as he blames himself for failing to protect his kid’s innocence.

Why Did Jamie Ask Eddie to be His Appropriate Adult?

With the admission of Jamie’s actions comes further questions about his motives in the murder’s aftermath, where he tried to fight the murder allegations. No matter the trauma of the night’s events when he stabbed a poor girl to death, it isn’t as if he can completely erase the truth from his memory. Despite his desire to believe he hasn’t hurt anyone, Jamie knows what he has done, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before someone can prove it. Therefore, for the bulk of the narrative, the kid is in a self-preservation mindset. On some menacing level, he knows that he can bank on his perceived childlike innocence.

Jamie knows he can rely on his family, particularly his dad, Eddie, to be his protector. Still, since he’s anticipating certain evidence to come out against him, he knows he needs someone by his side who would blindly believe him. Since the boy idolizes his father, he knows Eddie will fight tooth and nail for him. In comparison, his mom—another alternative to fulfill the role of an Appropriate Adult might be swayed in her faith in him with enough convincing. For the same reason, the boy picks his father to stay by his side during the legal proceedings. Simultaneously, Jamie knows admitting guilt even to Eddie will have a negative impact on the latter’s perception of his guilt. Thus, he continuously lies to the man, knowing that if he says it enough times, his dad is bound to believe in his false innocence.

Why Does Jamie Change His Plea? What Will Happen to Him?

In the end, Jamie’s decision to change his plea arrives as a fitting conclusion for the narrative. Yet, one can’t help but wonder what exactly drove him to the change of heart. Even months after his initial arrest, during his sessions with Briony, it remains clear that Jamie is still insisting upon the fact that he didn’t kill Katie. He insists the video was fake and that he never truly hurt her. Nonetheless, the conversation that follows reveals a much darker part of his psyche that says otherwise. Despite Katie’s death, the boy continues talking about her with increasingly worrying disregard.

Jamies uses offensive language to describe Katie’s character and makes demeaning comments about her body. He insists that she’s a horrible person and sees nothing wrong with attempting to manipulate her for his own sexual benefit. While maintaining his innocence on the matter, he makes it clear that he thinks she deserved to be murdered because of her unpleasant personality. In his mind, Katie’s refusal to date him and then brandishing him an incel makes her a bad person deserving of death. Simultaneously, he thinks himself a good person for the sheer fact that he didn’t sexually assault her at knifepoint even though he had the chance.

This drastic disconnect between Jamie’s perception of personhood and morality between men and women is a big part of why he initially plans to plead for his innocence. He’s hardwired to believe his actions will never be as bad as Katie’s because he has trapped himself in a victim mentality. Therefore, even when he knows he’s to blame for Katie’s murder, he doesn’t actually think he’s hurt anyone or that he’s a bad—or guilty—person. While it is unlikely that he would have self-reflected on his own, it’s possible he took Briony’s advice and helped himself to some mental health resources during his detention. This would’ve helped him either see the error of his ways or just the simple fact that the judicial system’s beliefs wouldn’t correlate with his own. Ultimately, it’s better for him to plead guilty and at least recognize the irreparable damage he has caused. This decision also ensures that Jamie will receive a murder conviction and likely a life sentence as punishment for his crime. Whether or not this will further contribute toward his incel radicalization or set him on a moral path will be entirely up to his own choices.