Honey Don’t Ending Explained: Who Killed Mia and Kidnapped Corrine? Is Drew Dead?

Helmed by Ethan Coen, ‘Honey Don’t!’ envisions a world filled to the brim with B-movie aesthetics, and the star of this world is Honey O’Donahue, a private investigator and local heart-throb. When one of her potential clients, Mia Novotny, dies before their first meeting, Honey realizes that something is up and begins picking apart criminal networks. As the cases keep piling, a through line emerges in the form of a cult-like church, presided over by an even more cult-like revenant named Drew Devlin, who may or may not have had Mia prior to her passing. As she unravels the case, Honey begins a passionate relationship with a police officer named MG Falcone, unaware that she, like Drew and many others, is soon to be entrapped in a large soup of mystery. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Honey Don’t! Plot Synopsis

‘Honey Don’t!’ begins with a mysterious woman walking up to the scene of a desert car crash. After taking a brief look at the body, she pulls a ring off the victim’s finger before disappearing from the site and later heading back to the city. On the other end of town, Honey O’Donahue wakes up to news about the girl’s death and identifies her as Mia Novotny, a would-be client who wanted to alert her of something important. Feeling suspicious of the accident, Honey tries to snoop around, even asking the police for help. It is here she meets Officer MG Falcone, and immediately hits it off. Elsewhere, we are introduced to Reverend Drew Devlin, the leader of the Four-Way Temple Church and notorious for his cult-like personality. Drew runs a drug business in collaboration with a gang known as the French, which in turn communicates via Chere, the girl from the start.

Back at her office, Honey meets a new client, who wants her to confirm whether his husband is cheating on him. Before she can even take on the case, however, we see the husband, who was indeed cheating, die in a drug exchange gone wrong. That night, Honey finds MG at a bar and reinitiates their conversation, and after a steamy encounter, they spend the night making love. The next morning isn’t as pleasant, however, as Honey’s niece, Corrine, walks in with many bruises that her abusive boyfriend, Mickie, gave her. While MG wants to turn this into a police report, Corrine promises to break ties with Mickie to protect him from cops. The following day, Corrine is stalked by a suspicious-looking old man, and when he approaches her late at night, she bolts into the darkness.

By the next morning, it is confirmed that Corrine is missing, and that the old man is none other than her mother and Honey’s father, whom the sisters left behind years ago. Still, this doesn’t explain Corrine’s disappearance, and Honey tries to go through every possible scenario. Previously, she confirmed that Mia was a member of Drew’s church, but nothing came of it. Unbeknownst to her, Drew’s operation is in tatters due to the previous murder incident. Even after he tries to shut the case down by killing the associated people, the plan fails miserably. In the end, he is paid a visit by none other than Chere, who has passionate sex with him before ominously claiming that this will be the last time they’ll ever meet. Meanwhile, Honey, desperate for leads, ends up heading to MG’s house for an extra pair of hands, not knowing what awaits her.

Honey Don’t! Ending: Who Killed Mia? Does Honey Find Corrine?

At the end of ‘Honey Don’t!,’ Honey finds out that Mia’s killer and Corrine’s abductor are the same person: MG. While her day job is that of a police officer, MG’s real personality comes out at night, when she targets and then stabs her victims to death, before framing the crimes as an accident. Though Honey enters MG’s home looking for help with her niece’s disappearance, all the answers are practically handed to her by a pure turn of fate. The first odd thing about this whole sequence is MG’s absence from the station, which is attributed to her partying too hard the previous night. Even with the short time that we spent with her, that comes across as an uncharacteristic detail, likely sparking Honey’s curiosity. Still, the real seeds of doubt start coming later, when she enters MG’s house.

With the house seemingly empty, Honey makes her way in and begins browsing through MG’s belongings. While she does not have any ulterior motives in doing so, it is possible that MG interprets this as a threat when she does show up from the basement, having broken a sweat. While she claims to be involved in mechanical work downstairs, later context hints that she kept Corrine, and likely many others in the past, hidden in there. Still not suspicious, Honey asks MG for her help, as intended, but the gears begin moving when MG gets unusually flustered as a response. The turning point arrives when Honey notices not one, but two cups out in the kitchen, which suggests that MG was not alone until recently. A quick turn of the cup reveals a green lipstick shade, the same as the one Corrine wears.

The matching shade is all Honey needs to figure things out, but MG proves to be a hair faster, stabbing the detective in the abdomen before she can react. Still, it is thanks to Honey’s last-minute realization that she narrowly avoids a fatal blow and still has a fighting chance. She grabs the piping hot kettle and rams it into MG’s face, burning half of her face to a crisp. The imagery here is potent as MG’s scarred countenance ends up giving us the first glimpse into her true self.

However, before MG can fight back with the knife, Honey uses the same kettle to now sear her arm, forcing the knife out of her hand and also sneaking the officer’s gun out of her belt. Honey, who also turned out to be an expert fighter, ends the fight with a bullet to MG’s head, before passing out from her own injuries. The next time the detective wakes up, she’s in an ambulance, with Corrine and Heidi next to her, both safe. It turns out Heidi tracked Honey down after calling her office and, upon entering the house, found both her sister and her daughter, saving the day.

Why Does MG Kill the Girls?

Shortly before being killed, MG reveals that she has killed not just Mia, but numerous others in the same fashion, including her father, who was an abusive presence throughout her childhood. While in her frenzied state, she explains that she took a stand for herself by stabbing him to death, before burning his body to remove all evidence of foul play. It appears that she did the same thing to many of her other victims, and in Mia’s case, she framed it as a car accident. Her reason for all of this is her supposed anger towards the girls for tolerating their abusers or taking a more passive approach to the problem. In Corrine’s case, MG is infuriated by the teen trying to protect her boyfriend, even after he physically abused her.

While MG is convinced that she is merely punishing the girls for being too weak, in many ways, she still channels the violence that she herself endured at her father’s hand. Her anger is instinctively directed towards the abused instead of the abusers, and it is that particular moral failure that leads to her undoing. Unlike Honey, whose father is also dead in spirit, MG fails to grow past her trauma and ends up multiplying the violence across the many vulnerable women she identifies with. While Corrine is one of them, the most likely parallel is none other than Mia, MG’s first kill in the movie.

Honey’s glance through MG’s high school photo album unveils one crucial detail: that of her being in a church as a teen. Her yearbook quote in particular feels eerily similar to reverend Drew’s motto of believing in action over any other form of worship. While the details of MG’s past are intentionally kept vague, it is likely that she is also a past victim of a pseudo-religious institution, which explains her continued hatred towards women who seek the church for support, such as Mia. While fake leaders like Drew indeed exploit people with such vulnerabilities, MG’s idea of punishing them for their weakness merely extends the tragedy rather than countering it.

Is Reverend Drew Dead or Alive?

One of the movie’s defining mysteries, by the time the credits roll, is whether or not Drew survives. The last we see of him is when Chere points a gun at him, before the scene cuts to Honey, and a distant gunshot is heard. While it is very likely that Chere does shoot the gun, whether or not it kills Drew is intentionally kept a mystery. Still, all the evidence points to Chere pulling the trigger on the reverend, bringing an end to both him and his religious operation. The easiest explanation for this is the fact that Chere has no true emotional attachment to Drew, and on the business frontier, he has demonstrably failed on every account. The French likely have more than one means of peddling drugs into the town, and in such a scenario, keeping Drew alive makes little sense for the criminal organization.

One curious development surrounding Drew’s death is the police’s apparent disinterest in checking out his house. While Officer Marty explains that he’d rather not break into a reverend’s house for no reason, this may indicate a deeper connection between the criminal and police worlds. Still, given Marty’s subpar performance as an investigator throughout the movie, it is more likely that he is genuinely clueless about what has just unfolded. In that case, it will likely be a while before the church members notice Drew’s absence and discover his dead body. The Four-Way Temple’s crew is no stranger to surprise, seemingly pointless deaths, and with the entire drug business down, people are likely to move on sooner than later, bringing an ironic end to Drew’s legacy.

Do Honey and Chere Hook up?

The final scene of the movie shows that Honey is back in business, circling right back to how she was at the start of the story. However, things take an unpredictable turn when her car meets Chere’s scooter at an intersection. Honey earlier saw Chere leaving Drew’s house right after he was presumably killed, and likely has an inkling about what went on. This only makes her next move more surprising, though, as she begins flirting with Chere, teasing a steamy encounter mere hours before Chere’s flight back to France. To that end, the ending initiates yet another cycle, commenting on Honey’s seemingly never-ending pursuit of thrilling but dangerous sexual partners, be it consciously or subconsciously, as seen in the case of MG, and now Chere.

Honey’s invitation to Chere can also have ulterior layers, as it is likely that this is the detective’s plan to fish out the truth. It is apparent from the start that Chere is deeply involved with the criminal organization, and tailing her can potentially give Honey a good idea of how deep the rabbit hole goes. While there is a practical possibility of her actions in theory, in reality, it is more likely that she truly is looking to chase a new adventure. Throughout the movie, Honey’s cases almost magically solve themselves, not due to any of her initiatives, but due to her finding things at the right place at the right time. This meeting with Chere, as such, is likely to be no different and has an equal chance at bringing her either pleasure or troubles, or perhaps both.