The Housemaid ending explained (and why the movie doesn't end like the book)

In both versions, Andrew dies. How he dies is where the film goes its own way.

First, the twist

For the first half, the film gaslights you into believing Nina Winchester is an unstable nightmare of an employer. The reveal flips it: Andrew is the monster, a serial abuser who locks his wives in the attic to "punish" them for imagined failings. And Nina didn't hire Millie despite her prison record — she hired her because of it. Millie had killed before. Nina wanted a weapon in the house.

How the film ends

Andrew locks Millie in the attic for smashing one of his family's prized plates and orders her to cut 21 gashes into her stomach with a shard of it. What he doesn't know is that Nina left a cake knife hidden in the room. Millie stabs him in the neck, locks him in, pours petrol under the door, and makes him pull out a tooth with pliers.

Then the film breaks from the book completely. Cecelia persuades Nina to return to the house, and when Nina opens the attic door, a very much alive Andrew storms out. He pushes Nina down the stairs, tries to strangle Millie, then corners Nina on the landing and begs for forgiveness. She tells him she'd rather die — he lunges, and Millie pushes him over the railing to his death. Nina drops a chandelier bulb to stage it as an accident, and the investigating officer — whose sister was once engaged to Andrew, and who knows exactly what he was — lets it go. At the funeral, Nina hands Millie a cheque for $100,000.

How the book ends instead

The novel is bleaker. There is no escape, no chase, no fall:

• The hidden weapon — pepper spray in the book, not a knife.
• Andrew's punishment — Millie makes him balance heavy books on his groin for eight hours and pull out four teeth, then leaves him locked in the attic, where he dies of dehydration days later.
• Nina's return — it's the groundskeeper Enzo who talks her into going back, not Cecelia, and she finds Andrew already dead.
• The police — the officer who buries the case is the father of Andrew's ex-fiancée Kathleen, rather than her sister.
• The aftermath — Millie teams up with Enzo to help women trapped in abusive relationships; there's no $100,000 cheque.

The change makes film-Millie more heroic than her book counterpart — she kills Andrew saving Nina, rather than out-torturing him.

The final scene is the same

Both versions close identically: Millie interviews for a new housemaid job, personally recommended by Nina, and the woman hiring her has bruises on her wrists. The vigilante business is open — and so is the door to McFadden's sequels, The Housemaid's Secret (2023) and The Housemaid Is Watching (2024).

For the record: at the funeral, Andrew's mother Evelyn (Elizabeth Perkins) lets slip that she once pulled out one of his baby teeth with pliers. The punishments started long before Nina. Full circle, horribly.