The Wolf Hour Ending Explained: Is Freddy Dead?

Starring Naomi Watts, ‘The Wolf Hour’ is a slow-burning psychological thriller that delves into the loneliness of an author who has confined herself to her apartment. The story focuses on June, a successful author who is stuck on both personal and professional fronts. She cannot seem to write, and even the thought of stepping foot out of the house gives her a panic attack. Despite this, she is able to meet people and make meaningful connections, which eventually help her break the barriers placed around her. At the same time, the ending maintains the sense of paranoia and foreboding that plagues the entirety of the film. SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Wolf Hour Plot Synopsis

It is the 1970s, and the location is the Bronx, New York. Author June Leigh has confined herself to her grandmother’s house. When she came there, it was supposed to be a temporary thing, or at least, that’s what June’s sister, Margot, believed. What was supposed to be a short trip has blown up into something entirely different. June has not left the apartment for months, but even in staying inside, she hasn’t really accomplished anything. The novel that should have been completed a while ago is still an unfinished manuscript, and the advance that she received from her publisher has also run dry. She calls her sister for help, hoping that she will send her the money, but Margot decides to visit her, despite June’s refusal.

Meanwhile, June relies on a delivery service to get groceries, and this is how she meets Freddy, with whom she unintentionally and slowly develops a bond. He does the chores for her, while she tips him handsomely and even allows him to use her sink to wash himself sometimes. When Margot arrives, she tries to help June clean up her apartment and even urges her to come out with her for a little bit. However, heated words are exchanged between the sisters, revealing a greater wedge between June and her family. But that’s not even the worst part. All while June tries to pull herself together, someone seems to be playing with her by repeatedly pressing the buzzer at her door but never answering. If she wasn’t paranoid before, this makes her so.

Does June Get Out of Her Apartment? Does She Finish Her Novel?

‘The Wolf Hour’ stands out due to the fact that the entirety of it is spent inside June’s apartment. By the end, it becomes clear that she has been hiding away there ever since the release of her first novel, which may have led to her father’s death and most certainly led her to be banished from the family. This further pushes her to punish herself with the self-imposed exile, and for a while, she tries to cut the world out of her life and live in the confines of what used to be her grandmother’s apartment. However, with the growing unrest in the city, the chaos starts to spill into June’s place, and she is forced to confront her demons. And it isn’t just the personal problems that start to show.

Because June is a writer, she is supposed to deliver her work on time to get the advance. She has already run out of the money that her publisher had given her, but she hasn’t produced any work to warrant receiving more money. The problem is that she is running out of cash, and since she has also succeeded in cutting out her sister, who had tried to help her despite her icy nature, no one can pull her out of this financial hell. The break in her behaviour arrives when Billy, the sex worker, tells her that the buzzing she has been hearing is not a prank but a call to action. Perhaps the person buzzing her means her to come out of the house and break the bonds she has placed on herself. While June doesn’t immediately act on this advice, she does pull herself up by the bootstraps and gets working on her novel.

It takes a while, but she finally finishes her work. The problem is that her editor is not around, which means June will have to deliver her manuscript in person. Still, she doesn’t have the courage to step out of her door yet, which shows that she is not ready yet. So, she calls Freddy for help. As usual, he asks her for money for the job, and despite running low on funds, she decides to do it. She tells him exactly where and to whom he needs to deliver the manuscript, while repeatedly emphasising how important it is. If the manuscript is lost, June will lose not only her hard-earned work, but it will also discredit her with her editor and publisher, and she will be in deep, deep trouble. Freddy assures her he will deliver it to the right place and person, so all she can do is watch him leave and wait for him to come back. By the end of the night, however, she is forced to cross the threshold of her apartment, and finally steps out on the streets for good.

What Happens to Freddy? Is He Dead?

Throughout the film, June keeps an eye out on the neighbourhood, which is clearly facing an upheaval. Due to the Son of Sam murders, the city is already on edge, and the fear and paranoia have started to give way to random acts of violence. Freddy experiences this first-hand because he is bullied by a group of men, and there is nothing he can do about it. Because June sees all of it from her window, it may be one of the reasons why she sympathises with him, even though he charges her for his services more than he should. Still, he doesn’t let her down. He is always there when she needs him, so he is the one she entrusts her manuscript to. He is supposed to come back to her and confirm that he has delivered it to the right person, but that never happens.

The whole day passes by, and as night falls, June starts to wonder what happened to Freddy. Later, she watches a man getting beaten to a pulp by the local bullies. She believes that the victim is Freddy, and because she knows no one will come to his rescue, she is forced to step out of her apartment. This is a huge step for her because this is the first time in god knows how long that she is breaking her exile and moving back into the world. She is stepping out into chaos and violence, but that’s real life, and she cannot hide from it any longer. Somehow, she makes her way down the building and out of the street, but when she reaches the victim, it turns out to be someone else.

She still has no idea what happened to Freddy, but she doesn’t seem to see him again. While the film leaves Freddy’s fate unresolved, we know that he did deliver June’s manuscript, since we later see her giving an interview about it. This shows that he made it to the publishing house, and it was most likely during the return journey that he got caught up in the city’s growing unrest and the subsequent violence. Because we know that he was already being bullied by the thugs on his street, he would have made for an easier target for more violent elements that would have come out during the blackout. There is still a chance that he survived the ordeal, but the possibility of him not surviving the events of that dark night remains pretty high.

Who is the Character in June’s Novel?

Writing is a very personal act, and for June, it digs into her soul and shines a light on the deepest, darkest corners of her soul. Her first book, which turned her into a critically acclaimed, bestselling novelist, was a reflection of her family, particularly her father. In fact, it was her novel that led to her father’s downfall and had her ousted from the family. Thus, we know that June relies on self-reflection and borrows from her own life to pour words onto the paper. During her self-imposed exile in her grandmother’s apartment, we are made aware of the fact that she is working on a novel. It has been quite a while since she started it because it is still not finished, and her editor and publisher are getting impatient. The content of her new novel is kept a secret, but at one point, we find her listening to her old recordings and transcribing them. This shows that her new work is also deeply personal and perhaps, to some extent, autobiographical.

In the end, she walks out of the apartment and into the city, showing that she has finally started to heal. The next time we see her, she is on a TV show discussing her new book. She looks healthier, which shows that she has received the help she needed all along. In the end, the interviewer asks her if the new novel is about her self-imposed exile, and the film ends with her giving a small smile, which suggests that it is true. In her second novel, June has touched upon the idea of loneliness and her struggle to get out of it. Interestingly, this also raises the question of whether the self-imposed exile was because she was hiding from her family and the world, or because she wanted to tap into something new and confined herself to the apartment in an effort to reflect on herself with greater vigour.

This would also explain why it was only after she’d written the novel that she stepped out of the house. This was the task that she’d set out for herself, but with the paranoia of the outside world and the lines she drew for herself, things got out of hand, and June became trapped in a prison of her own making. It is by letting these feelings out into her novel that she starts to process her situation, and perhaps, this is what gives her the courage to leave the house in the end. At the same time, it also seems that she may be used to putting herself through difficult things that push her to her limit to be able to write properly. Her last novel reflected her conflicted relationship with her father, and this time, she turns the spotlight towards herself, making herself the protagonist of her second novel.

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