Loving Adults ending explained: Did Christian really kill Leonora?

Our latest obsession is Netflix’s new Danish thriller, Loving Adults, especially after that shocking opening scene. Loving Adults doesn’t waste time plunging us headfirst into the mystery and drama.

Major spoilers ahead for Loving Adults

The film starts with a police commissioner telling his daughter about a case that still haunts him to this day. A man in a truck runs down a woman jogging alone. The police commissioner believes that the woman, Leonora, was murdered by her husband, Christian. But he could never prove it.

What could have led Christian to kill his wife so viciously? It all started a few days before the incident when Christian received a text message at 4 a.m. from his mistress, Xenia. Of course, Christian tried to play it off, claiming the text was from his friend Peter. His refusal to show her his messages also lent credence to Leonora’s growing suspicion. Christian goes so far as to throw his phone against a wall and shatter it rather than let her look.

That text message starts the domino effect that culminates in Leonora’s murder. So, what happens after that? How does Loving Adults end?

Loving Adults explained: Does Christian kill Leonora?

No! No one kills Leonora. We find that Christian tried to kill his wife after she threatened to take Johan away from him. Leonora gave him an ultimatum: either he breaks things off with Xenia permanently, or she would tell the police he participated in a financial scam to help them get money for their son’s surgeries.

Christian panicked over Leonora’s threat and attempted to run her over one night while jogging. Little did Christian know, Leonora had changed her jogging route, and he mistakenly killed an innocent woman.

Loving Adults ending explained: What happens to Xenia?

Lenora figures out that Christian was responsible for the hit-and-run near their house and that he had been attempting to kill her. Armed with that knowledge, she makes a new plan for her and Christian’s relationship. She wants them to team up and kill Xenia to remove the threat to their relationship permanently.

But on the night their plan is supposed to happen, Christian cannot bring himself to kill Xenia. Having suspected this might happen, Leonora sneaks into Xenia’s house and stabs her to death. Then Leonora and Christian hide Xenia’s body inside a bonfire at a big neighborhood party. The bonfire goes up in flames. They take Xenia’s bones in a bag, sell their house, and move out of town.

Did Leonora kill Mike?

Yes. Christian starts digging into Leonora’s past to get some dirt on her when she begins threatening to call the police for financial fraud. He learns from an old friend of Leonora’s that people in their small town suspected she had pushed her boyfriend off a cliff after finding out he was cheating on her.

While telling Christian about her new plan to get rid of Xenia, she admits to having killed Mike. It’s how she became so confident in her murder scheme toward her husband’s mistress. She’s already gotten away with murder once (and so has Christian), why shouldn’t they be able to do it again?

What happens at the end of Loving Adults? Do Christian and Leonora get caught?

The final moments of Loving Adults show us that, this whole time, the police commissioner has been telling this story to his daughter as a way to convince her not to get married. He warns her that love can be dangerous. “Love is far more dangerous than its reputation.”

Ultimately, his daughter still gets married. And as for Christian and Leonora, well, it’s implied they get away with it. The film’s final shot is a slow camera pan underwater where we see they have dumped Xenia’s bones in the middle of a lake, god knows where.

But it’s not really a happy ending for them, is it? It’s very Gone Girl in that sense. Christian has to live forever with the guilt of killing an innocent woman and being partially responsible for Xenia’s death. I guess Leonora got what she wanted in the end, though.