Wasteman Ending: Dee & Taylor's "Quite Traumatizing" Fates And Future Explained By Tom Blyth & David Jonsson

Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for Wasteman!After an intense bout of testing their limits, Wasteman comes to a harrowing and emotional end for David Jonsson's Taylor and Tom Blyth's Dee.

Helmed by Cal McMau, the new film introduces the Alien: Romulus alum as a prison cook who has spent the past 13 years of his life incarcerated, only to be informed that he is up for parole due to his good behavior. While confronting his uncertainty about getting released, and the possibility of meeting his now-14-year-old son, Taylor is assigned a new cellmate, the hot-headed Dee, who begins a drug-selling operation out of their cell and develops a tentative friendship with him.

Everything changes, however, when fellow inmates, Gaz and Paul, discover Dee's operation and ruthlessly assault him, all while Taylor helplessly watches, and under threat of violence, participates in it. Feeling betrayed, an increasingly dangerous Dee forces Taylor to become his drug mule and threatens him to kill Gaz and Paul during one of their routine haircuts, or else he'll have his gang outside prison kill Taylor's son, leaving Jonsson's character in a difficult position going into the film's ending.

Also starring Rivals' Alex Hassell, Corin Silva and Neil Linpow, Wasteman has garnered widespread acclaim from critics since its 2025 Toronto International Film Festival premiere, maintaining a rare 100% "Certified Fresh" approval score on Rotten Tomatoes. Originally hitting theaters in the United Kingdom in February, the film has made its way to North America through Sunrise Films beginning April 17.

In honor of its North American debut, ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns interviewed David Jonsson and Tom Blyth to discuss Wasteman. The duo broke down the movie's intense ending, including why filming one of their characters' death was "quite traumatizing," even as it was "quite cathartic" and the future of the surviving character.

Dee's Death Breaks Their "Yin & Yang" Dynamic, While Taylor's Future Is Purposely Open-Ended

Feeling there to be no recourse to his situation, Wasteman's ending sees Taylor choose to go cold turkey on the drugs he was addicted to and using the collection of pills he amassed to drug Dee's food instead of killing Gaz and Paul. A scuffle ensues when Blyth's character realizes what's happening, only to fall due to exhaustion and, after sharing a final joint with Jonsson's character, dies, with Taylor cleaning the cell up to make it look like an overdose he had no hand in.

Going into the day of the filming, Blyth recalls the creation of Dee's death to be "quite traumatizing" for him, given an actor often "falls in love with the characters you play," even if it can be "a bit of a scumbag" like his Wasteman character. He also denotes it's also important for his method to "love [your character] like you love yourself" in order to "do right by your character," all of which made it a "complicated relationship" with Dee. Despite the darker side of his demise, Blyth did find a slight glimmer of hope that came from filming it:

Tom Blyth: When you have to say goodbye to them, especially in such a violent way, a violent demise, it is like saying goodbye to someone that you've learned to love. It was a hard day, and it was towards the end of the shoot, but it was also cathartic because it was a hard shoot. And to end on that scene, it was like saying goodbye to the whole thing.

On the other side of the field, Jonsson began by laughing as he shared that "I quite like Dee," finding the character to have been "quite a good time," even if he was "a bit crazy." He also acknowledged that filming Dee's death was "difficult" from an emotional standpoint, as he found both characters to be "yin and yang" for each other, and that his demise "was breaking that," which was a "hard thing to do."

Before the closing credits roll, Wasteman shows that Taylor is finally released from prison, with his departure being filmed by an unspecified inmate. When asked about his character's thoughts in that moment, as much of the film saw him uncertain about his release, Jonsson stated, "That's a question for you," acknowledging his character is "going into a brave new world," but that he liked leaving his future "open-ended":

David Jonsson: I think it's a really hard thing to be literally locked away for years of your life, and then suddenly the doors are open, and it's like, you're free. We worked with a charity called Switchback, and their whole ethos was literally trying to help people who leave prison to come back into real life. And it's surprising how few resources there are for that, to try and just help people come out from prison.

Release Date February 20, 2026

Runtime 90 minutes

Director Cal McMau

Writers Eoin Doran, Hunter Andrews

Producers Sophia Gibber