How To Make A Killing Ending Twist Explained By Director & Star Of Glen Powell's A24 Thriller

Warning: There are spoilers ahead for How to Make a Killing.How to Make a Killing star Jessica Henwick and director John Patton Ford break down the twist ending of the A24 thriller, along with Ford revealing an alternate conclusion that was scrapped.

After killing all the family members ahead of him in the line of succession and then being imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit, How to Make a Killing ends with Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) getting out of jail thanks to Julia Steinway (Margaret Qualley). Julia is responsible for pulling off the murder and framing Becket in the first place, but left with no other choice, he rides off with her, having destroyed any chance at happiness he had with Ruth (Henwick).

While speaking with Variety, Henwick explains that “For a modern audience, I don’t think anyone would have enjoyed Ruth standing by him after all of that. Ruth had to remove herself. It’s just too depressing.” Even though Becket avoids the death penalty and is freed from prison, Henwick feels that he ends the film as a “totally disempowered man.[Ruth] has taken away his option for joy, and Julia is not going to be the life that he actually wants. She’s going to be a terror, and she held his fate in his hands. So it’s his comeuppance.”

Ford, who wrote the movie in addition to directing it, has a similar view of the ending, with it being an ironic tragedy for Becket despite surviving and getting what he thought he wanted: “At the end of the movie, he gets what he always thought he wanted, but it’s too late, and now he knows he would have been better off with a different kind of life. So he gets his goal, but only after he realizes that he actually doesn’t want it. There’s an irony there that’s deliberate.”

In an earlier script, though, Becket had a "way more severe" ending, where Ruth gives birth to their child when he was in jail. After being released, "He’s going towards her, and then he sees that Julia is there as well. And in that moment, he changes his mind and decides to leave Ruth, leave the child, and go with Julia, because he realizes that’s who he really is after all this time.” This was changed because Ford felt it was “especially punishing for audiences” after understanding and sympathizing with Becket. Powell was cast largely because he is “a golden retriever of a human being” who the audience can root for, even as he becomes a serial killer, but finishing the story this way "freaked out" the studio. Check out Ford's additional comments below:

Glen is kind of an unlikely candidate to go and, like, kill eight people; he’s just irrepressibly good. He has the air of someone who is working really hard and working towards a goal. There’s a popular feeling that he’s working at being a movie star, and he’s on this Tom Cruise trajectory. And I thought, if it’s Glen, [the audience will] be like, "This guy thinks he’s doing the right thing. This guy is just trying to do his best." And the irony is that he has absolutely no moral or ethical code whatsoever.

I think the studio was kind of freaked out. They were like, "You can’t have people sit through this entire movie and then punish them at that level."

While the studio didn't like it, Henwick believes the alternate ending still would've felt authentic to who Becket had become: “Is it really jaded and sad to say I think most people would make the same choice as him? When confronted with [Ruth] and her beat-up Honda, or Julia and her billions, I do think most people would go with Julia.”

For Ford, the more balanced ending meant that “I didn’t want to just completely let him off the hook and get away with everything. And yet I didn’t want it to be totally punishing and one-dimensional. I wanted it to be complex. I wanted him to get something but lose something and have mixed feelings about it.” This includes Becket's tears as he returns to the Redfellow mansion, which Ford says is intended to show that "He will certainly come to regret things, but he may not admit it. Or admit it to himself.”

With a 76% Popcornmeter score on Rotten Tomatoes, the majority of audiences seem to be enjoying the choice that was made for Becket's ending. The same cannot be said for the 47% critics' score. In ScreenRant's How to Make a Killing review, Gregory Nussen writes that "From its very title to its sputtering ending, its consistent obviousness ensures Ford's film does not kill nor die by murder but slowly, softly, falling in a weak whimper."

The Glen Powell movie also stars Ed Harris, Bill Camp, Topher Grace, and Zach Woods, all of whom play members of the Redfellow family that Becket has to eliminate to inherit the family fortune. It is his relationship with his childhood friend Julia that ends up being the most important, though, with her being the true winner in the movie's ending.