Fair Play Ending Explained: Top 3 Shocking Moments in the Film [Spoilers]

Fair Play is such an exquisitely told story. It is a narrative on power, control, and manipulation and how those feelings subtly sneak in to destroy relationships. 

The Fair Play ending is best understood through three shocking and pivotal moments that elevate this film from good to great. 

As coworkers, Emily and Luke must keep their relationship under wraps given the strict working policies of their cutthroat job. But when Emily unexpectedly gets a huge promotion, the power shift infiltrates their relationship bringing out sinister emotions. 

*There will be spoilers in this review and discussions of sexual abuse and violence.*

Fair Play Ending Explained: 3 Pivotal Moments

1. The Parallel Proposals

At the beginning of the film, Luke proposes to Emily in a public bathroom, sloppily dressed, and ill-prepared. 

As he falls to his knees, the loose ring slips from his hands onto the bathroom floor. 

No sweet lines, no hidden confessions, and nothing distinct or elevated about this proposal at all. In fact, it feels a bit like an afterthought. 

Later on in the film, we see Luke again begging to be promoted to a higher position in his cutthroat job. 

Rather than lazily pull out a loose ring from his pocket and jumble together a few surface-level utterances, Luke pleads for his boss to consider him a worthy candidate for a promotion. 

With a prepared speech about how he would lay down his life for this job, Luke grovels in the presence of the whole company confessing his devotion to the firm, while he could only confess his love to Emily in the privacy of the bathroom.

The well-thought-out passion for a promotion strongly contrasts with the sloppy impromptu proposal Emily received.

“This firm has become my religion. You have become my god.”

2. The Final Straw

As tensions rise between Luke and Emily throughout the movie, they finally have a discussion following his mortifying confession of devotion to the company which was met with the coldest of indifference by the boss. 

This discussion is about as calm as you would expect given the amount of manipulation, sabotage, and insults that Luke has used to try to temper Emily’s incline in social status. And when I say calm, I mean it was chaos.

Soon, the water boils over between Emily and Luke and the heat of the moment has them surprisingly reconnecting romantically after the dry season the change of job positions caused.

But what starts out as quenching a long-held passion for one another turns into another vy from power on Luke’s end. 

Luke begins to take things too far, handling Emily roughly and ignoring her as she tells him to stop. 

The end of the scene leaves us in stark silence as we watch Emily distraught, processing the level of disrespect and debasement that she was unwillingly subjected to.

Here, it is more evident than ever that Luke loves power more than he loves Emily. 

His monstrous thirst for power was jolted awake with Emily’s promotion bringing out this subtle, sinister side of him.

When his attempts to cut Emily down a peg through negging, sabotage, and mental manipulation were counteracted by Emily stepping further into her power, he used a physical form of control to subjugate Emily. 

His desperation for power and control has turned him into a heartless, self-absorbed monster. 

And just when Emily is furious with him for completely embarrassing her and him trying to make her lose her job by outing their relationship to the strict company was enough, he goes off and does this nonsense. And this was the final straw. 

3. The Reclamation of Power

I was not sure how this movie would end. Part of me expected someone to die but the actual ending was quite satisfying. 

By the end of the film, after Luke sexually assaults Emily, he addresses her as if nothing happened. As if their breakup was a simple, uncomplicated fall out rather than the brutal physical beating it really was. 

Emily refuses to allow Luke to believe that anything he did was okay so she picks and a knife and corners him. 

At this point, I expected Luke to lunge and kill her or for her to somehow find the upper hand and kill him instead but there is space for confession and redemption. 

Emily lands a few swipes of the knife to Luke’s body, 

“Cause if I can’t make you cry, I’m going to make you bleed.”

And Luke cowers in the presence of Emily’s power. 

She refuses to be subdued by Luke’s insecurities. 

She refuses to retreat to weakness due to Luke’s fragile masculinity. 

She refuses to feel small so that Luke can feel big. 

She’s been grossly mistreated and Luke will see that by force. 

As Luke bleeds, cries, and apologies, Emily recoils her sharp weapon and says:

“Now wipe the blood off my floor and get out. I’m done with you now.”

Again we see Luke utterly humiliated in his vie for power and it is incredibly satisfying. And we see Emily no longer afraid to stand in her power and take up space. 

In Conclusion…

Fair Play is a near-perfect film with a storyline that successfully creates intrigue through a crisp plot, incredible actors that nail the magic of subtlety, and a script with dialogue that rocks you to your emotional core. 

Rating: 9.7/10

How did you feel about the Fair Play ending? Let me know in the comments below!

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Peace, love, and lots of popcorn,

IMO