A woman walks into a bar, and the bartender gives her a drink on the house.

While that sounds like the start of a joke (and the barkeep is an aspiring comedian), it’s also Baby Reindeer’s inciting incident — and the events that follow are no laughing matter.

“That one act of kindness changes Donny’s life forever, because for the next three years, Martha stalks him,” Jessica Gunning, who plays Martha, tells Tudum. “She sends him 41,000 emails and hundreds of hours worth of voice messages. But it’s not your conventional stalker storyline.” Baby Reindeer creator, writer, and star Richard Gadd says this was an important aspect of telling this story, based on his real life.

“I didn’t want it to be a victim narrative,” Gadd says. “I think there was a version of the show where I hid from my own mistakes a bit, and I offered her this cup of tea and I’m a perfect, nice guy. But I made mistakes. And I think art is quite interesting when you don’t know who you are on the side of. You sort of feel sorry for Martha, but then you feel sorry for Donny, and then you feel sorry for her again, then you hate her and you hate him.”

Gadd welcomes uncertainty regarding who viewers side with in this story, a subject he spoke about on Skip Intro with Krista Smith. “I actually like audiences to take what they want from [the show]. I think Baby Reindeer shows a human experience and people make wrong decisions, but they don’t mean to. It shows this slice of life and I think the fact that people go away questioning it and taking different things from it — that’s kind of powerful for it. I quite like to let people make their own minds up. I quite like leaving it ambiguous.”

Throughout the series, Donny’s “wrong decisions” fuel the fire sparked by Martha’s delusions and forge their twisted dynamic. “Sometimes Donny would play into her fantasy: He’d flirt back, and she’d be absolutely thrilled,” Gunning says. “He just doesn’t know how obsessed she will become.”

Ed Miller/Netflix

How does Martha stalk Donny?

At the end of Episode 1, Donny accepts Martha’s Facebook friend request, a pivotal decision that opens the floodgates to chaos and drama. At that point, Martha’s obsession with Donny is intense, but as soon as she’s given access to previously uncharted areas of his life, she lunges over the line, harassing Donny’s ex Keeley (Shalom Brune-Franklin) and attempting under a fake name to befriend Keeley’s mother, Liz (Nina Sosanya), with whom Donny lives. Martha also waits at a bus stop near Donny’s home for up to 15 or 16 hours a day in frigid weather, all for a brief chance to shout unreturned pleasantries.

Her antics crescendo at the end of Episode 3, when she crashes Donny’s stand-up performance with hostile heckling, then confronts him while he’s out with Teri (Nava Mau), a trans woman. Donny and Teri’s touch-and-go romance has endured its share of difficulties due to Donny’s secrecy and shame (including a crushing moment when Donny ditches Teri on the subway), but she’s shown patience with him. Her admirable understanding is a credit to her career as a therapist, something that resonated with Mau prior to taking on the role.

“I was a counselor to survivors of violence in my previous career,” Mau tells Tudum. “It was serendipitous that Teri’s a therapist. I understood the mode that she gets in with Donny sometimes. I came to call it like flipping a switch. There was the switch that she would flip when she’s going to be seductive, and she could flip it back when she’s in therapist mode.” 

After Martha’s heckling ruins Donny’s set, he and Teri run off to grab a drink. Then Martha shows up. The confrontation escalates, and Martha assaults Teri, ripping out a clump of her hair. Donny finally goes to the police.

And then, in Episode 4, perhaps the heaviest of the series, Donny’s visit to the station triggers memories of a traumatic experience years earlier.

The Making of Baby Reindeer

What happens in Baby Reindeer Episode 4?

Donny meets a successful, older TV writer named Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill) at Edinburgh Fringe (where Baby Reindeer made its debut in 2019 as a play). Darrien masquerades as a mentor, promising to get Donny's career off the ground, instead getting him hooked on hard drugs and alcohol, then sexually assaulting Donny during intoxicated blackouts. Gadd reveals the episode was originally 60 minutes long — about 15 longer than it is now — and “a lot darker” before some scenes were cut.

“It was difficult going back to these things,” Gadd recalls of Episode 4, which he wrote “obsessively” over a couple days. “I felt like I needed to get it all out in one go because if I broke from it, I might break from the flow of it.” The subject matter stunned Gadd’s Baby Reindeer colleagues. “I think it shocked a lot of people,” he says. “A lot of people who worked on the show found it incredibly hard to read and do. I hadn’t admitted some of it to anyone. I think I’d obviously said that I’d been sexually abused and various other awful things that had happened to me before, but I hadn’t gone into that [level of] detail, and it was quite confronting.”

Despite the challenges, writing Episode 4 changed the feel and format of the entire series. The script featured a lot of voiceover, leading to a makeover of the scripts Gadd had already finished. “Everyone read it and was like, ‘Well, this is what we’ve got to do in all the episodes,’ ” he recalls. “So I actually went back to the start and put this pulsating voiceover all the way through the narrative. I felt like the voiceover was almost the identity in that episode. It was one of the best parts of the writing process. I almost think I found the show writing Episode 4.”

After reporting Martha to the police, Donny still struggles. When Martha splashes a drink on Keeley, he comes clean to her and her mother, Liz, about Martha’s stalking him. Liz asks Donny to move out, which lands him in Kilburn with a pair of roommates whose constant parties make his life miserable. So he begins spending more time at Teri’s place as the two try for a fresh start. 

Do Donny and Teri end up together?

There’s brief radio silence from Martha, but then she returns with a vengeance, contacting Donny’s parents and telling them he’s been in an accident. Donny tries to retaliate, and the fallout proves to be too much for Teri, who breaks up with him. Mau believes there’s plenty the audience can take from Teri and her relationship with Donny.

“It’s honorable for our hearts to want to hold someone up, but it can’t be at the expense of our own stability,” she says, adding a crucial caveat: “It is our own responsibility to know where that boundary is.”

Heartbroken after losing Teri, Donny has another encounter with Martha at the bar, and she smashes a glass on his head. Despite being at his wit’s end, Donny takes the stage at a comedy competition, but he deviates from his usual act into an unfiltered public confession, discussing his sexual assault, his experience of being stalked by Martha, and his failed relationship with Teri.

An audience member uploads a video of Donny’s “epic breakdown” and it goes viral, sparking Donny’s career. “For the first time in my life, I really felt like I was going somewhere,” Donny narrates at the start of Episode 7, which Gadd says is his favorite because of the ways it ties everything up. It starts with Donny flourishing, his career blossoming, his dreams coming true. “It’s like my life began three decades in, and all I needed to do to achieve it was be honest with myself,” Donny says. Everything is looking up until there’s a call from Martha, who’s seen the viral video and threatens to tell Donny’s parents the details of his assault. So Donny pours his heart out to his parents, about being raped, and about his bisexuality. It makes him feel lighter. He calls the next day “a new dawn.”

What happens to Martha?

One particular voicemail from Martha, threatening Donny’s family, spurs him to report her to the police again. After being arrested and pleading guilty, she’s sentenced to nine months in prison, and Donny gets a five-year restraining order against her.

While Martha’s courtroom sentencing is the last we see of her on screen, Gadd reflects on Gunning’s performance with the highest of praise. “Not only does she elevate the show in every scene, I can't fault anything she did on camera. There’s not a single line that I’d want differently,” he said on Skip Intro. “There’s not a single emotion that I would want a bit more of or a bit less of. I know Donny was in every scene, but I think the whole show hinged on Martha, to be able to be scary and at times malevolent, but at the same time really sweet and really empathetic. It is a real acting challenge, and she just got it.”

The high praise for Gunning’s performance is shared by the Television Academy, who nominated her for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. This is just one of the 11 Emmy nominations Baby Reindeer received, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series and individual acting nods for Mau, Gadd, and Goodman-Hill. Additionally, the series won a Gotham TV Award for Breakthrough Limited Series, and a TCA award for Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Mini-Series, and Specials.

How does Baby Reindeer end?

With Martha out of the picture, Donny makes peace with Keeley and moves back in with Liz. There, he finds an old script with notes from his former “mentor” and assaulter, Darrien, prompting Donny to pay him a surprise visit. After Darrien calls his viral confession “brave” and offers him work, Donny leaves and collapses on the street, trying to process the flood of emotions. For twisted comfort, he revisits Martha’s old voicemails, which he’s filed under categories like Angry, Sad, Happy, Distressed, or, in this case, Compliments.

In Episode 7’s closing minutes, we hear some of those flattering messages as Donny ends up at a pub. These final few scenes are part of what makes the episode Gadd’s favorite. “I love that sequence. I like the surprise of going back to Darrien’s door. I love the surprise of listening to the voicemails. I just think there’s a deep psychology to it that I really like the idea of. Someone being so lonely and so isolated that they decide to listen to their old stalker’s voicemails.”

It’s within those messages that we finally learn the origin of Martha’s favorite pet name for Donny.

Ed Miller/Netflix

Why is the show called Baby Reindeer?

“Baby Reindeer” is Martha’s nickname for Donny because he reminds her of a stuffed animal she cherished as child and still has to this day. This is all revealed in the show’s final scene.  

While sitting at the bar, Donny opens a voicemail in his Not Listened To folder. In it, Martha explains, “I had this wee cuddly toy when I was young. Went with me everywhere. Earliest memory I have, I think, was Christmastime. This old photo of me, sitting with this paper hat on my head and this baby reindeer beside me. Anyway, this reindeer was this cuddly, fluffy thing. It had big lips, huge eyes, and the cutest wee bum. I still have it to this day. It was the only good thing about my childhood. I’d hug it when they fought. And they fought a lot, you know? Well, you are the spit of that reindeer. The same nose. Same eyes. Same cute wee bum. It means so much to me. You … You mean so much to me.”

Donny weeps, and the bartender asks if he’s OK. Donny realizes he’s forgotten his wallet. 

The series ends with an echo of the scene that sparked it all: A man walks into a bar, and the bartender gives him a drink on the house.

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