Adapting the novel of the same name by Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, the plot of the film follows middle-aged professor Leda Caruso (Olivia Colman) as she heads on holiday alone to Greece.<\/p>\n
Her peaceful vacation is interrupted when her beach visit is disturbed by a rowdy Italian-American family, among whom is a beautiful but enigmatic young woman named Nina (Dakota Johnson).<\/p>\n
A subsequent disturbing incident sees Leda act out in an unpredictable fashion and we soon explore her own personal history as a young woman, played by Jessie Buckley.<\/p>\n
The psychological drama builds to a surprising conclusion that leaves viewers with a number of questions to ponder.<\/p>\n
So, naturally, RadioTimes.com has deciphered the end of The Lost Daughter to examine these quandaries with you.<\/p>\n
**Spoiler warning for The Lost Daughter**<\/strong><\/p> Throughout the plot of The Lost Daughter, Leda is drawn to and takes an interest in Nina as a young mother who is struggling with her daughter, Elena.<\/p>\n When Elena briefly went missing on the beach, Leda stole the young girl\u2019s beloved doll, causing the child to be distraught for the whole trip in Greece and for Nina\u2019s family to furiously search for the doll and even post \u201cmissing\u201d posters for it.<\/p>\n Throughout her time with the doll hidden in her apartment, Leda reminisces about her struggling not to be frustrated with her own young daughters Bianca and Martha.<\/p>\n Leda also discovers that Nina is having an affair with the resort assistant Will (Paul Mescal) but keeps this a secret and even agrees to let the pair use her apartment.<\/p>\n It is clear that Nina\u2019s husband Toni (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is connected to criminal activity and so Nina fears he would kill her if he discovered her affair.<\/p>\n In a confrontation in Leda\u2019s flat, Leda describes herself as an \u201cunnatural mother\u201d, admitting that the emotional struggle with being a mother that Nina asked about never goes away.<\/p>\n Leda then confesses to stealing the doll and explains it away as her \u201cplaying\u201d, prompting Nina to react furiously and stab Leda in her abdomen with the hatpin that Leda bought her earlier.<\/p>\n Nina flees the apartment while Leda notices the blood coming from the wound.<\/p>\n That night, Leda gathers her things and flees the resort with belongings.<\/p>\n However, she stops her car and wanders onto the beach before collapsing.<\/p>\n She awakens the next morning to the crashing waves and gets a phone call from her two daughters who are relieved she is alive and how they feared she was dead.<\/p>\n The call is intercut with shots of Leda touching her wound before she goes on to say: \u201cNo, I\u2019m alive actually.\u201d<\/p>\n She is then shown to have an orange with her which she peels in the same snake-like motions he used to do when Bianca and Martha were little.<\/p>\n \u201cGo on,\u201d she replies to them as they begin to speak down the phone to her, \u201ctell me all about it\u201d<\/p>\n We then flashback a final time to Leda peeling the orange with her daughters as they whisper: \u201cPeel it like a snake, don\u2019t let it break.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the credits, we see shots of Leda sitting on the beach peeling the orange while on the phone.<\/p>\n Despite the ambiguous and dreamlike nature of the final scene, we do not have it confirmed that Leda Caruso dies at the end of The Lost Daughter.<\/strong><\/p>\n The final scene is portrayed in a slightly dreamlike way, intercut with shots from the past, Leda\u2019s bleeding wound, the curious appearance of the orange for her to peel.<\/p>\n One would be forgiven for wondering if Leda was already dead or dying by the way the scene is portrayed and Colman\u2019s bemused performance of her dialogue about being \u201calive\u201d.<\/p>\n However, Leda is seen visibly to be alive at the conclusion of the film, having her bittersweet discussion with her daughters who she so struggled to be maternal towards.<\/p>\n The plot of the novel by Elena Ferrante ends in a similar fashion to the film with the confrontation between Leda and Nina, the confession and Nina reacting furiously by stabbing Leda with the hatpin.<\/p>\n The book, which is written in the first person from Leda\u2019s point of view, sees Leda realise what Nina had done and notice the spot of blood on her side.<\/p>\n Leda waits for something to happen but she notes that the wound darkened and clotted and the pain faded.<\/p>\n She then begins packing her things and readied herself to leave the apartment when she gets a call from her daughter Marta who speaks to her in unison with her sister Bianca.<\/p>\n The daughters say: \u201cMama, what are you doing, why haven\u2019t you called? Won\u2019t you at least let us know if you\u2019re alive or dead?\u201d<\/p>\n Leda is moved and responds: \u201cI\u2019m dead, but I\u2019m fine.\u201d<\/p>\n It appears Leda is more content with her relationship with her daughters but the final sentence once again adds an air of ambiguity \u2013 or at least melancholy \u2013\u00a0 to Leda\u2019s survival.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t get a definitive answer as to why Leda stole the doll belonging to Nina\u2019s young daughter, Elena.<\/p>\n However, there are a number of reasons that appear to have contributed to her impulsive transgression.<\/p>\n Seeing Nina with Elena stirred memories of Leda\u2019s own experiences as a mother, her struggling marriage to her daughters\u2019 father Joe (Jack Farthing, her own adulterous affair with a professor (Peter Sarsgaard), and her subsequent abandonment of her children.<\/p>\n In addition to this, Leda recalls a time when wilful daughter Bianca briefly went missing as a child and also recall her own doll similar to Elena\u2019s.<\/p>\n Leda appears desperate to reconnect with her own past, including her difficult relationship with motherhood through the doll.<\/p>\n We never get any resolution to Nina\u2019s affair with resort assistant Will and we never know if her husband Toni finds out.<\/p>\n It is clear that Will is a distraction from her struggles with motherhood but also from her strained relations with her husband and his criminal family.<\/p>\n The last we see of Nina is when she furiously departs after stabbing Leda.<\/p>\n The peeling of the orange in a snake-like fashion was a treat that Leda did for her two daughters.<\/p>\n It is an example of a warm memory of motherhood for Leda who always struggled with the conventional idea of what it means to be maternal.<\/p>\n We end with the imagery of a younger Leda peeling an orange with her young daughters, a hopeful and happy image of her time as a mother.<\/p>\n The Lost Daughter is available now on Netflix.<\/strong><\/p>\n Looking for something else to watch? Visit our\u00a0Movies<\/a>\u00a0hub for more news, interviews and features, or check out our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Lewis Knight Published: Tuesday, 04 January 2022 at 12:00 am Well, this is certainly a film to create some discussion. Netflix released Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s directorial debut The Lost Daughter on New Year\u2019s Eve on its streaming platform. Adapting the novel of the same name by Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, the plot of the film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":9525,"template":"","categories":[1,5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/01\/the-lost-daughter-ending-explained-what-happens-to-leda.png",1240,826,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/01\/the-lost-daughter-ending-explained-what-happens-to-leda-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/01\/the-lost-daughter-ending-explained-what-happens-to-leda-300x200.png",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/01\/the-lost-daughter-ending-explained-what-happens-to-leda-768x512.png",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/01\/the-lost-daughter-ending-explained-what-happens-to-leda-1024x682.png",800,533,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/01\/the-lost-daughter-ending-explained-what-happens-to-leda.png",1240,826,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/01\/the-lost-daughter-ending-explained-what-happens-to-leda.png",1240,826,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Lewis Knight Published: Tuesday, 04 January 2022 at 12:00 am Well, this is certainly a film to create some discussion. Netflix released Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s directorial debut The Lost Daughter on New Year\u2019s Eve on its streaming platform. Adapting the novel of the same name by Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, the plot of the film…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/9524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Lost Daughter ending explained<\/b><\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\""Olivia\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/01\/TLD_UKS_0135-630b779.jpg?quality=90&crop=167px%2C0px%2C3023px%2C2014px&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"THE\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Does Leda die in the final scene of The Lost Daughter?<\/b><\/h2>\n
What happened at the end of the novel The Lost Daughter?<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Why did Leda steal the doll?\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Does Nina\u2019s affair with Will get exposed?<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>What does the orange peel symbolise?\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"