Relay Ending Explained: What Happens to Optimo’s Documents?

Directed by David Mackenzie, ‘Relay’ is a thriller film that keeps the audience on edge till the end of the film. It follows the story of Ash, who works as a broker for the whistleblowers. While he sticks to rigorous rules, things take a turn when he takes on a new client called Sarah. She is all nervous and jittery, particularly because she thinks her former bosses are going to kill her. Ash promises to help her if she follows all his rules, but by the end of the film, a completely different picture of the situation emerges, leading Ash to rewrite everything about himself and the way he conducts his business. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Relay Plot Synopsis

At the beginning of the film, Ash helps a man named Hoffman, who almost blew the whistle on his company, Optimo. As part of the deal, Hoffman returns the documents in exchange for a fixed amount of money and decides to walk away for good. For their part, Optimo is supposed to allow him to leave without a fuss. Sometime later, a woman named Sarah seeks out a lawyer to represent her as she tries to strike a deal with her former employers, who are now hounding her because she almost blew the whistle on them. The lawyer tells her to go through unofficial channels and forwards her Ash’s contact. After Ash reviews her information, he decides to take the case. He communicates with her through the relay service, so that they never actually talk to each other.

He emphasizes again and again that she must follow the rules or he will break out. Over time, Sarah and Ash develop an unexpected bond over their calls, where they are not even directly talking to each other. Meanwhile, he keeps getting voicemail messages from Hoffman. Initially, it was supposed to be a daily check-in, but in his voice, Ash can hear the sound of a man who is breaking down. Still, he has more pressing concerns, so he turns his attention towards Sarah. He tries to maintain a distance while she tries to reach out to him through their phone conversations. By the end, a shocking revelation shakes the entire structure created by Ash.

Why does Sarah Betray Ash?

Throughout the film, we see Ash trying his best to help Sarah survive the storm that is stirred after she steals documents from her company and almost becomes a whistleblower. Despite his rule not to make things personal and to walk away from the case and the client if all the rules are not followed, he forms a personal connection with Sarah and shows up to help her even when he knows that it could expose him. The hitch in the plan arrives when Ash discovers that Sarah has kept a document to herself rather than giving it back to the company, as was agreed to. This means that she must deliver the document herself to them. She is supposed to follow his lead; he sets the time and place, but later, she leaves him a message, saying that she has agreed to go to a different venue. She says she is doing it to protect Ash, who is supposedly identified by Cybo Sementis’ people through facial recognition.

Ash immediately realises that this is a trap, so he breaks his own protocol and shows up at the rendezvous point to save Sarah. He pulls the fire alarm, which causes the chaos and distraction that allows him to slip away with her. He leaves her at the train station after they say their goodbyes, and she even invites him to leave with her. As she takes the train, he watches her walk away, and for a minute, it seems that the case is wrapped up. Soon after, he gets a message from Cybo Sementis’ Dawson, who has been leading the charge against Sarah and Ash, who reveals that Sarah is in their custody, and to save her, Ash must agree to meet with them. This was the point where Ash should have walked away, but his feelings got the better of him, and he agreed to meet with the enemy. As expected, he is captured and beaten up, but he fights back. Just when it seems he has physically overpowered the enemies, he is stunned into unconsciousness by none other than Sarah.

It turns out that Sarah was never the whistleblower. In fact, she is Dawson’s boss and has been running the operation from the start. The whole part about her being Cybo Sementis’ whistleblower was connected to lure out Ash, who was the real target of their investigation. The issue has never been about what Cybo Sementis did and hid from the public. In fact, Sarah and her team were hired to retrieve the set of documents pertaining to Optimo, which were stolen by Hoffman. While the company agreed to honor the deal and let Hoffman go, they knew that Ash had a copy of the documents as an insurance policy. According to the deal, the documents would never see the light of day, but the company didn’t want to live in the fear of Ash changing his mind someday and destroying everything they’d worked for. They needed to get to Ash, but because they had no idea who he was, they decided to lay a trap to lure him out, which is where Sarah came into the picture.

What Happens to Ash, Sarah, and Dawson?

When the truth about Sarah comes to light, Ash is shocked and heartbroken. This confirms that he should have adhered to his policy of never getting entangled in impossible situations and refraining from forming personal connections with his clients. However, there is no time for self-chiding now, so he focuses on the things that he can do. Because Dawson already knows the location of his safe, where he keeps all the documents, Ash has no option but to see his secret place compromised. On reaching there, they ask him to punch in the code and open the door. This is where he sees his opportunity and enters a wrong code, which activates an alarm that causes a distraction long enough for him to escape the grasp of his captors. Knowing the area well allows Ash to hide, duck, and move around so that it becomes impossible for him to be caught. After dodging Dawson and his team for a good while, he is finally confronted by Sarah, who has a gun in her hand.

She tells him to give up the passcode, but he has no intention of doing so. He tells Sarah to shoot her, but he expression in her eyes shows that she is not happy about putting him in a situation where she might have to kill him. Fortunately for Ash, she doesn’t have to ponder this question for long because, at the same time, several police vans arrive on the scene. Now, Sarah, Dawson, and their team are surrounded, and they cannot make the excuse that they were trying to get a set of sensitive documents from Ash. They are arrested, and so is Ash, though it is also revealed that one of the cops on the scene is Wash, who is Ash’s sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous. Ash immediately turns to Wash to fill her in on the situation. He had already hinted at the dangerous nature of his work to her when they last met. He’d also shared his story about being a former whistleblower at the AA meeting.

So, Wash isn’t surprised when Ash tells her everything about Optimo’s documents. Later, we see that his innocence has been proven, so he is allowed to move on to a different place. He takes a train, but he is paranoid enough to trust anyone. Sarah’s betrayal has taught him to be on guard at all times and trust no one. Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether Sarah and Dawson will continue to stay in prison, but one can assume that they may use their powers and connection to get out of prison. After all, they, too, must have an insurance policy that they can keep aside for emergencies like this. We don’t see Sarah and Dawson in the end, which shows they will have found a way to escape their ordeal. Meanwhile, Ash has left everything behind because he knows that now that his cover has been blown, it would be impossible to operate in New York.

What Happens to Optimo’s Documents? Why Does Ash Give Them to Wash?

When Ash brokers the deals between the whistleblowers and the companies, a major agreed-upon point is that both will leave each other alone. The whistleblower can move on with their life in another place, while the companies can focus on improving their ways. The same should have happened with Optimo, but they decided to circumvent the agreed-upon terms and sent a team after Ash to retrieve their documents. While he told them that hiding the documents was a part of his job and the papers were just an insurance policy, they didn’t honor the terms. Because they were the ones who broke the terms, he decides to take it a step further and give them a taste of their medicine. Now that his own life has been threatened, he doesn’t want to make any changes.

So, he reaches out to Wash, who, at this point, is the only person he can completely trust. When Sarah and Dawson are arrested, Ash tells Wash his password, directing her to Optimo’s files. He tells her exactly what the situation is and asks her to take the documents and give them to someone trustworthy. In the last scene, when Ash is on the train, he gets a peek into the phone of another person, where he looks at the highlights revealing that Wash’s connection worked out. All the documents pertaining to Optimo were handed over to the relevant authorities. Now all of the company’s wrongdoings are out in the open, and they must face the consequences of their actions. And to think that all of this could have been avoided if they had simply stuck by the deal and left Hoffman and Ash alone.

Read More: Is Relay Based on a True Story?