Babygirl Ending Explained: What Does the Scene With Samuel and the Dog Mean?

Halina Reijn’s ‘Babygirl’ stars Nicole Kidman as Romy Mathis, who has an extramarital affair with an intern at her company. The film begins with Romy and her husband, Jacob, having sex, and while, at first, it seems that Romy is enjoying it just as much, it eventually turns out that she has been faking it. When they are done, she leaves the room and watches porn to get a semblance of sexual satisfaction that she hasn’t been able to receive from her husband so far. One day, on her way to her office, Romy watches a dog attack a man and then run towards her. For a moment, it looks like the dog will bite her, but then, out of nowhere, a man calls out to him, and the dog, who seemed to have gone rabid, finally listens.

This mysterious man turns out to be Samuel, a young new intern in Romy’s company, who doesn’t think twice before speaking his mind. In their interactions, he exhibits nonchalance that makes him an even more compelling person, and she finds herself attracted to him. He, too, makes his moves, first by choosing her to be his mentor and then by initiating a kiss. At first, she is horrified at the idea of not only cheating on her husband but also having an affair with the intern. The revelation could destroy her personal as well as professional life. It would cost her everything she has worked for. But then, therein lies the danger and the fun.

Sure enough, the affair takes off as Romy finds her fantasy of being a submissive come to life. While she and Samuel agree that the affair is nothing serious, things start to get serious soon enough, and eventually, the worst happens. The question that remains for her at the end is whether or not she is ready to face the consequences of her actions and actually lose the things she risked while having an affair. The answer is not simple. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Do Romy and Jacob Stay Together? Do They Get Divorced?

Romy had always had sexual fantasies that she herself classified as dark and weird. While she was turned on by them, she also felt ashamed of even thinking of them in the first place. She was so embarrassed by her sexual desires that she never truly embraced them in her marriage. Even though she and Jacob had been together for around two decades, they never explored Romy’s fantasies as she worried that if she told her husband about it, he might see her as a bad person. Of course, she tries to spice things up with little things that feel good to her but don’t appear to be the demands of an abnormal person, but her husband never takes to them, which further represses her desires.

It is when she meets Samuel that all of her wildest fantasies and basest desires come alive. With him, she doesn’t have to worry about looking like a bad person. She can be whatever she wants to be. They can play out any fantasy, and it wouldn’t change the way he sees her. At the end of the day, it is this acceptance that Romy desires in her sex life. She wants a partner who will understand what she wants and use that to make her feel good rather than make her feel ashamed and bad. Because she doesn’t get this with her husband, she seeks it elsewhere. Eventually, her husband understands this, and that’s what brings them back together.

While Romy feels guilty about the affair, she also uses this guilt to feed her sense of danger, and that’s what makes sex with Samuel even more exciting. But then, Esme reveals that she knows about the affair, and things get disconcertingly real for Romy. So far, she has only been playing with the prospect of putting everything at risk, but when the risk starts to turn into reality, she has to take a step back. With Esme knowing the truth and using it to leverage her own promotion, Romy realizes that it would only be a matter of time before the news of the affair comes around to her husband. Before anyone else can get to him, she decides to tell him herself.

Romy talks about her dark fantasies and how they were the ones that drew her to Samuel to make Jacob understand that it was never about their marriage. Of course, he is shocked at the revelation of his wife’s affair, and he tells her to leave their house. Later that evening, he finds Romy at their other house with Samuel, and this is when he really gets angry. The fact that he came looking for her shows that Jacob had already planned to forgive his wife and had given some thought to reconciliation. However, at this point, he wouldn’t have thought about the fact that he had sexually dissatisfied his wife for all these years and that perhaps he should change things on that front. In fact, had he not met Samuel, that realization may never have dawned on him.

In the end, after staying away from each other for a while, Romy and Jacob reconcile. The last scene shows the two of them having sex, mirroring Romy and Samuel’s first sexual encounter in the hotel room. As she closes her eyes, she thinks about Samuel and the dog he so easily controlled the first time she saw him. At the same time, as Jacob plays along with his wife’s fantasy, he finally does something he hadn’t done for so many years of their marriage: he makes her orgasm. Romy finally finds sexual satisfaction in her marriage, and that bodes really well for the couple.

What Happens to Samuel?

With Romy being Samuel’s boss, the power equation between them had always been a bit off. In some ways, Samuel thought he had the power in the relationship not only because he was the dominant one during sex but also because he was the one who could inflict more damage if he chose to speak out about it. He was an intern in a sexual relationship with his boss. It could be considered sexual abuse, which is also pointed out by Jacob. While he would be fired, she would lose everything in her personal and professional life. He tells as much to Romy and even exerts this power when he threatens to have himself reassigned to some other department to get away from her. At the end of the day, however, he doesn’t really have as much power as he thought he did.

When the affair comes out, it becomes clear to Samuel that he cannot stay with Romy’s company anymore. Despite not wanting her as his girlfriend, he did develop some feelings for her, which were hurt when she continued to choose her husband and her family over him. When the couple reunited, Samuel knew that he had no place next to Romy, so he left. The fact that he chose not to use the affair against her was seen as a huge plus point by her, so instead of having him fired and sabotaging his career, she worked things such that he eventually got a job with another company. In the end, it is revealed that he has moved to Tokyo to work this new job, and that’s as far as Romy needs him to be. This shows that, at the end of the day, the real power resided with her. And there is another interaction that proves her power.

Romy was scared that if her affair came out, she would be fired and lose everything she had worked so hard to build. In the end, the affair does seem to have come out, though, with Samuel gone, no action is taken against her. Still, this doesn’t mean that she is completely rid of this blot on her reputation. When a senior member of the firm discovers that Romy had an affair with the intern, he blatantly proposes sex to her, and she puts him down just as crudely. In this scene, we don’t see Romy terrified of losing her job because her secret is out. Instead, she refuses to be ashamed of it or dominated because of it. This shows that she had never really been submissive and was the one in control all along.

What Does the Scene With the Dog Signify?

One of the recurring things in ‘Babygirl’ is the black dog that appears in Samuel’s introduction scene. Romy first sees the dog in real life on the street outside her office. It is feral with other people but is instantly submissive to Samuel because he has a cookie to offer. The next time she sees the dog in her dream, where she sees herself attacked by the dog, which, in a way, reflects what could have happened to her had Samuel not been there that day. The third time we see the dog is in the last scene when Romy is having sex with Jacob, the way she first had sex with Samuel. As she closes her eyes, the image of Samuel and the black dog in the hotel room where she and her lover had their first tryst plays in front of her eyes.

To Romy, the dog signifies several things. It is a reminder of their first meeting, at least for her. It also represents her own inner animal that has been raging inside, just like the feral dog on the street. Seeing Samuel dominate the dog gave her a sense that he could also control her the same way. In some ways, it justified her fantasies in her mind. What seemed to be an out-of-control dog to others was simply an animal that didn’t have someone who understood what it wanted. Samuel offering him the cookie to calm him down is later reflected in him offering that understanding to Romy where she can be as not-normal as she wants to be and not be judged or outcasted for it. The dog represents the freedom that she could have with Samuel while having sex, and that’s what she truly desired.

In the end, even as she has uninhibited sex with her husband for the first time, her mind goes back to Samuel and the dog. She sees the dog doing the same things she did for Samuel, being on all fours, accepting a treat from his hand, and being caressed and cared for by him. Does this mean she misses Samuel? Perhaps. Even though she didn’t love him like she does her husband, she did feel a sense of belonging with him. Despite him clearly stating that he doesn’t want her to be his girlfriend, she gets possessive of him when she discovers that he has been dating Esme. So, of course, even when he is gone, she does think about him.

To think about him during sex is, for her, just another way to spice things up, to experience the same danger in her mind that she had while their affair was a secret. Then, she has an orgasm, which is the first time she has had it with her husband. The ending sees a reversal in Romy’s life. It starts with her faking an orgasm to please her husband, but it ends with her husband actually pleasing her to the point of having an orgasm, bringing her story full circle and giving her the acceptance and sexual satisfaction she’d been vying for from her husband.

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