🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐 

We never learn the name of Jennifer Lopez’s skilled assassin in The Mother, but by the end of the film, the title has become more than just a simple description of her parental role. More than a decade after she abandoned her child to protect her, the Mother finds herself protecting Zoe (Lucy Paez) in a much more immediate fashion, during a high-octane escape from a team of highly trained killers. To make matters even more complicated, two of those killers (Joseph Fiennes as Adrian and Gael García Bernal as Hector) are the Mother’s old flames — which makes one of them potentially Zoe’s father. 

But don’t assume this is some kind of Mamma Mia! situation. While fans are free to speculate, director Niki Caro’s film is never particularly concerned with Zoe’s unknown parentage. “It’s a really beautiful line where she says, ‘She’s not Adrian’s, she’s not Hector’s, she’s mine,’ ” Caro tells Tudum. “The point is not the paternity, the point is the maternity. The point is she’s the mother. She’s the person responsible for protecting this child’s life.”

Director Niki Caro Examines the Role of Motherhood in The MotherIt takes a mother to make The Mother.

And protect her she does, even if, initially, this mission is the last thing she wants on her plate. Slowly, the pair grow closer together, even as the Mother does her best to push away emotions that could get in the way of her duty. “It’s a slow process from where she has Zoe in her care and she has to have a relationship with a child [who] is a stranger to her,” Caro says. “And so it’s a slow and incremental thing that just gets stronger and deeper every moment those two are together.”

Jennifer Lopez takes direction from Niki Caro on the set of ‘The Mother.’ 

Doane Gregory/Netflix

Of course, between bonding exercises, the Mother and Zoe still have to fight off the men determined to split them apart once again. After rescuing Zoe from Hector and dispatching him with ease, the duo escape Adrian’s clutches and head to Alaska, where the Mother gives her daughter a crash course in survival instincts. 

She’ll need them. When Zoe is injured by a wolf pup and needs medical attention (yes, Caro confirms, those are real wolfdog puppies), their cover is blown. Soon enough, Adrian arrives, kidnaps Zoe and the chase is on yet again — but not for long, as the Mother puts her sniper skills to use.

“The act of sniping is sort of weirdly elegant,” Caro says. “It seems weirdly sort of female to me, that you go in, you identify, you do your job, you get out and it’s quiet.” For Caro, the film’s action had to come from a place of serious consideration. “[For] every piece of violence that’s executed, there’s a reason. And the reason in this movie is profoundly maternal: to protect a child. Simple as that.”

The Mother takes the shot, and Adrian is gone for good. Zoe is safe, and she returns to her adoptive mother. But the bond she’s forged with her birth mother isn’t going anywhere; in the final shot of the film we see the Mother watching her from above. “The idea is: she’s always going to be there as her protector,” Caro says. But it’s no longer a purely defensive position, the director makes sure to note. “You see her wearing the little bracelet that her daughter made for her, which indicates that they have a relationship going forward,” she says. Hopefully their next family vacation will be a little calmer.

What song plays at the end of The Mother?

At the end of The Mother, Zoe returns home, to the tune of “This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush. “I should be cryin’ but I just can’t let it show baby,” Bush croons as Lopez smiles and looks on. It’s a fitting goodbye to the stoic Mother and her newly reforged bond with her daughter. 

The Mother is currently streaming on Netflix.