Man on Fire Ending Explained: Are Tappen and Soares Dead?

In Netflix’s ‘Man on Fire,’ Yahya Abdul-Mateen plays John Creasy, a former CIA mercenary who is pulled back into the world he thought he had left behind when a dead friend is killed. The seven-episode season charts a violent journey, as Creasy tries to get to the bottom of a bombing that brings down an entire building, killing hundreds of innocent people, including his friend Paul Rayburn. The only survivor is Rayburn’s daughter, Poe, who also becomes a target of the bad guys since she is the only witness to the tragedy and holds an important piece of information that could expose some very important people. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Man on Fire Plot Synopsis

John Creasy is in the middle of a mission in Mexico City. Everything is on point, and his team is doing exactly what they were supposed to. Just when Creasy is about to step in and finish the job, some mysterious elements pick off his team members one by one, eventually getting to him. It ends with all the team members getting killed and Creasy emerging as the sole survivor. Four years later, he is gripped by paralyzing PTSD. He sleeps with a hood over his head, reminding him of the hood that the attackers pulled over him right as they were about to kill him. He has retired from the CIA and works at a meager job. One day, he loses his remaining drive for life and crashes his car into a wall, with the hopes of dying, once and for all.

The universe has different plans for Creasy. Not only does he survive the crash, but he is also visited by an old friend, Paul Rayburn. He is a private contractor working in Rio de Janeiro, hired by the sitting President to provide security for the upcoming elections. He asks Creasy to join him, even though the man is entirely uninterested. In Rio, Creasy meets Paul’s family, including his daughter, Poe. The next day, Paul takes Creasy to the building, which is still under construction and is possibly one of the targets of a terrorist organization, FRP, led by Ferraz, who is currently in prison. Paul’s job is to make sure nothing happens to the building. The next day, Poe sneaks out to party with her friends while Creasy goes out and gets drunk.

He is picked up by a driver named Valeria and lands himself in a fight with some thugs, hoping to get killed. Later, when Poe hastily makes her way home, knowing that her father will be up soon, she almost crashes into two vans, accompanied by a mysterious man riding a bike. When she reaches her building, a massive explosion takes place, killing her father in front of her eyes, and bringing the whole building down, killing the rest of her family and hundreds of other people in the process. As the investigation begins into the explosion, Poe remains the sole witness, putting a target on her back. Fortunately, she has Creasy, who is ready to do whatever it takes to keep her safe and find the people behind the explosion and bring them to justice.

Are Tappen and Soares Dead?

As John Creasy continues his investigation into the bombing, he concludes that the mysterious biker is the key to unraveling the whole mystery. When he eventually comes face to face with Ferraz, he is shocked to discover that the man riding the bike was none other than his former colleague, Henry Tappen. This fact is confirmed by Poe, who remembered seeing his face. It also turns out that Ferraz was just a fall guy. The real perpetrators were President Carmo and his assistant, Soares, who planned the whole thing with Tappen. One thing that Creasy knows, having worked with Tappen, is that the man likes to keep a dead man’s switch. Given his line of work and the kind of people he deals with, Tappen cannot risk his allies becoming potential enemies.

The surest way that he keeps everyone, including his friends, in check is by gathering incriminating evidence on them, as he does with President Carmo and Soares. In case his friends ever start seeing him as a liability and consider getting him out of the way, he makes sure all the info goes out to the world’s major publications. As long as he is alive, everyone’s secret is safe, but if he goes down, so do all of his friends. This is why, when Creasy starts targeting Carmo and Soares, they first ensure Tappen’s safety. Sure enough, Creasy concocts a plan to get Tappen out in the open. The only thing he needs to do is kill the CIA agent. Once that happens, the rest will unravel on its own. And he comes up with a brilliant plan to do that.

He makes Tappen and Soares think there is a tape incriminating them in a safety deposit box belonging to Ivan’s father. In the tape, he leaves a foul-smelling chemical, and claims in the tape that it is poison that will kill anyone exposed to it in half an hour. Since Tappen and Soares are the ones who play the tape, they are gripped by paranoia that they are going to die. They are taken to the hospital, where Poe makes sure Tappen sees her. When he runs after her, she hides, giving Creasy the chance to jump on him. The fight to get to Tappen is more difficult than initially expected, and at one point, Tappen almost strangles Creasy to death. But then, he gets a hold of a scalpel and stabs Tappen in the thigh, and the man dies of blood loss. Soon, he has another duel with Soares, who becomes yet another victim of Creasy’s dedication to getting justice for Poe and her family.

Does Creasy Die? Does He Join the CIA?

Since the beginning of the show, we find Creasy struggling with suicidal thoughts. Ever since losing his team in Mexico City, he has been gripped by PTSD and depression, which leads him to ram his car into a wall. Even when he picks the mission to ensure Poe’s safety and unmask the people behind the bombing, he never thinks about making it out alive. For him, it may as well be a suicide mission, and sure enough, he comes close to dying several times. During the final fight with Tappen, his PTSD kicks in, and he all but gives in. Tappen has a rope around his neck and would have strangled him to death.

But after the most devastating memories play out in Creasy’s head, he thinks about the happy times, especially the ones he spent with Poe in the past few days. These happy memories give him hope and the desire to survive, and he succeeds in killing Tappen. Later, when he finds Soares holding Poe at gunpoint, he thinks about nothing but saving her. Previously, he had taught her how to break out of someone’s stranglehold. Poe remembers her lesson and uses it on Soares, distracting him just enough for Creasy to jump on him. In the process, Soares fires a shot, and it hits Creasy in the chest, but in the end, he manages to kill the bad guy. The shot seems to have gotten him good, and he bleeds out pretty quickly.

Fortunately for him, all this goes down at a hospital, so help is not far away. In the end, we see that he has not only survived his wounds but also healed pretty well. He attends the Rayburn family’s memorial and stands by Poe, with whom he later has plans. This shows that he has not broken off contact with her, as opposed to what he had planned at the beginning of the story. In between this, he gets a call from his former boss in the CIA, Moncrief. With Creasy almost singlehandedly exposing Tappen’s corruption and the political conspiracy in Brazil, Moncrief’s superiors have been giving him flak about why he let Creasy go in the first place.

He cuts to the chase and tells Creasy that he wants him to come back. He also knows that the former mercenary will not return for just anything, so he offers him a chance to solve the biggest mystery of his life. He hands him a case in Mexico City, which may or may not be connected to what happened to his crew four years ago. In any other case, Creasy would have rejected his offer, but this is the opportunity to get justice for and avenge his team, and he is not going to give that up. This might not mean that he is going to join the CIA. He might prefer to work as a private contractor, as Rayburn did. But in any case, he is going to Mexico City, and he is going to make the bad guys pay for what they did to him and his team.

What Happens to President Carmo? What Happens to Poe, Valeria, and the Others?

In the end, it is revealed that the sitting President of Brazil, Carmo, was the one behind the bombing and other related violent activities. He had been losing popularity and feared that he might lose the next elections. To get back in the public’s good graces, he needed to create a villain. More importantly, he needed a strong reason to create a state of emergency, which would give him the excuse to suspend the regular motion of things and take absolute and complete control of the country. Once Tappen dies, his dead man’s switch goes off, and all the incriminating evidence he had, implicating Carmo, Soares, and himself, is released to the media. The country does not take well to this betrayal, and Carmo is arrested and sent to prison.

The corrupt and power-hungry President’s arrest opens the possibility for a new, hopefully better, leader. There is no knowing what the next President will be like and what impact they will have on the country’s future. But the fact that someone as powerful as a President can be brought down and made to face justice does spark hope in the common people, including Valeria and her daughter. At the beginning of the season, both of them were hopeless with the state of their country, and the whole reason Valeria agreed to help Creasy was that she wanted her daughter to be legally taken to America. However, by the end, she has a change of heart, especially as she watches people like Livro and Nico grow and change in front of her.

This makes her realize that, better than running away, she and her daughter should stay in their motherland and try to change things for the better as much as they can. Meanwhile, Livro and Nico also get out of the favela, thanks to their newfound friendship with Ivan, who is now their new employer. Poe, on the other hand, returns to America, where she is placed under the care of her grandmother. She misses her family, but she knows that they will always be with her in spirit, and she has so much more to look forward to, given the family and friends she made in the quest to get justice for her family. It is not confirmed what the future holds for her, but for now, she is safe, and that’s all that counts, especially with Creasy by her side.

Read More: Where is Netflix’s Man on Fire Filmed?