A House of Dynamite Cast Reacts To Ambiguous Ending

October 24, 2025

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Warning: Major SPOILERS lie ahead for A House of Dynamite!Kathryn Bigelow’s return to the political thriller sphere ends on an ambiguous note in A House of Dynamite, and the cast have thoughts on what happens. Penned by Zero Day co-creator Noah Oppenheim, the film sees the United States discovering an intercontinental ballistic missile heading for the country, jumping between different branches of the government as they race to not only determine the origin of the missile, but the best course of action for how to respond.

Featuring an ensemble cast, including Idris Elba as the US President, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris and Tracy Letts, among others, A House of Dynamite‘s ending takes a major turn as it doesn’t reveal whether the missile successfully hits its target of Chicago. Furthermore, the film also doesn’t properly reveal whether the President, conflicted about the speed at which everything is escalating, decides to hold back or retaliate on a country he’s unsure of being innocent or guilty.

In honor of the movie’s release, ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley interviewed Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos and Jason Clarke to discuss A House of Dynamite. The group were all asked their thoughts on the film’s ambiguous ending, with one of the final shots being that of various high-ranking government personnel, including Greta Lee’s Anna Park and Moses Ingram’s Cathy Rogers, rushing to get into a Pennsylvania shelter before the missile makes impact.

In reflecting on her character’s perspective of the ending, Ferguson actually called the ending’s ambiguity “one of the most amazing things” about the film, and admitted that “it’s so hard to see how everything ended out“. She also went on to point out that, in the movie’s story, “we don’t have good people or bad people“, but instead “very highly trained” people who have a difficult time determining the right decision in the same way the President does. “I think that’s the conversation that we’re hoping to spark,” Ferguson concluded with.

Elba similarly found it “hard to say” whether his President chose to retaliate or aim for a more peaceful solution. Opining that his character “would probably have kept the world in focus“, and therefore feel open to letting the missile hit, Elba also said he and director Kathryn Bigelow didn’t discuss it in depth, something Ferguson also appreciated:

Idris Elba: Unfortunately, it is the sacrifice of having 10 million people die versus the entire planet would’ve probably been his decision. But I don’t know. I don’t know. We didn’t want to know the answer.

Rebecca Ferguson: And I think this is the thing that Kathryn keeps saying, “Is this the way to keep peace? Is a nuclear weapon the decision? Is that how we retaliate? Is it the fact that we should communicate the fact that we need to deescalate the nuclear warheads that we have around the world?” I mean, it’s absurdity that we think keeping peace is by nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

For Harris, who stars in the film as Secretary of Defense Reid Baker, he also found that the movie’s ambiguous ending “is the point“ of the central message of it. Saying the aim is to “provoke conversations“, the two-time Emmy nominee pointed out that audiences would shrug off the film as “a really intense ride” and turn to other topics if it “had tied it up with a nice bow“:

Jared Harris: But the fact that they’ve left that over to you to end the movie the way that you want to end the film in your own mind is the reason why there are conversations afterwards.

As for his take on what the President ultimately decided in the end, Harris described how “the pressure’s building on him” in A House of Dynamite‘s ending, particularly as the film frequently points out that “other countries have seen that one of [the US’] interceptor missiles has malfunctioned“, thus creating “an opportunity to take advantage of this“:

Jared Harris: It’s part of the idea that there’s a sort of inevitability towards conflict once one of these things start. Which, by the way, is not untrue. There have been times when we’ve narrowly avoided a full-on nuclear-scale outbreak. It isn’t fanciful that something like this could spark this inevitable cascade of events.

Ramos is introduced in the movie’s opening moments as Major Daniel Gonzalez, commander of the Alaskan Fort Greely and responsible for detecting incoming threats and utilizing said interceptor missiles to destroy them. Seen pushed to the emotional limit as the interceptor missiles fail, the movie closes with a shot of Gonzalez on his knees outside the base in despair as the sun dims in the sky behind him.

Reflecting on his journey, Ramos explains that Gonzalez is “sick to his stomach” in A House of Dynamite‘s ending, due to a combination of feeling as though “he let his country down“, as well as being “responsible for the deaths of millions of people“, as the projections indicate upward of 10 million deaths with a Chicago target. The Emmy nominee described his approach to the scene as focusing on the questions, “How do you reconcile with that?” and “How do you deal with that?“, making for the heartbreaking conclusion:

Anthony Ramos: And then, at the same time, they know that they did everything they could. It’s not like there was something else they could have done. The GBI didn’t work; the plan didn’t work; the thing we’ve trained tirelessly for failed. And now a city is going to be obliterated.

One thing that A House of Dynamite frequently brings up is the possibility that the missile may not explode upon landing, with everything from the impact to various technical mechanics leaving a slight chance that it malfunctions. Ramos acknowledges “it could” still have exploded in the movie’s ending, but says Gonzales is “not thinking it malfunctions” and instead can only see the situation as “we failed“:

Anthony Ramos: I’m sure he hopes that the missile doesn’t successfully do what it was intended to do, but he is just in disbelief. There’s guilt, and there’s shame, and there’s deep sadness. I think all of that went into that moment.

A House of Dynamite is now streaming on Netflix.