The Tutor Ending Explained- Who Killed Rachel Platt, Who Was Jackson, And What Happens To Ethan

It’s the kind of story we have seen before. A Fatal Attraction leading to manipulation and destruction. The rich become obsessed with someone for unknown reasons and destroy another’s life using their power and influence. It’s a basic story and one I admit to calling a guilty pleasure. These kinds of films appeal to me because they get such an emotional rise out of me. The Tutor provides an excellent back half twist, which helps it stand out in the sea of other films like this.

Noah Schnapp(Jackson) is great as an odd kid whose dad hired Ethan(Garrett Hedlund) to tutor him. When Ethan arrives, though, the kid doesn’t need any tutoring. He is brilliant already and stranger still; Dad is nowhere to be found.

Competently shot with the kind of shot combination expected in this sort of film. Gorgeous wide shots taking advantage of the massive homes and ground of the ultra-rich combined with tight shots of our characters, particularly at critical points in the story, keep the tension brewing and the drama humming. There are clues throughout that hint at the twist in the final act if we pay attention. What appeared to be a cat-and-mouse game between an innocent school teacher and an unhinged young man becomes something more interesting primarily because of good performances by Schanpp and Hedlund. As the snare tightens around Ethan, we begin to wonder who is really the monster. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of The Tutor, who killed Rachel Platt, and what happened to Ethan.

From the very beginning, we should have seen the twist coming. We first meet Ethan, who tutors a gaggle of privileged people while Danse Macabre plays. He gives all the perfect answers about tapping into potential and making connections while placidly smiling with a benign intelligence. Ethan is not threatening in any way. He’s smart enough to tutor, caring enough to be employed but not the best tutor ever, and good-looking enough to be interesting but not hot. He’s forgettable, which works in his favor both with the ultra-rich and in the film.

Schanpp’s Jackson is so erratic and unsettling he seems like the villain. After Ethan is hired to work on-site at Jackson’s house for a week tutoring him, he immediately sees red flags. Jackson aces all the preliminary tests for one. Why would this smart kid need tutoring? There’s also a creepy “cousin” and his young girlfriend who lurk around and act menacing. You know the type, obnoxious, arrogant, and enigmatic for no reason at all. The cell phone doesn’t work, and Jackson’s dad is nowhere to be found. It’s weird, and Ethan is on edge from the beginning. Jackson knows all about his pregnant girlfriend and asks inappropriate questions.

Things only get weirder from there. Jackson and his cousin try and succeed at bribing Ethan with 5K, and a disturbing late-night interlude makes it clear Jackson is not just a troubled kid. Later Ethan finds Jackson’s laptop with an entire stalker’s arsenal of photos of Ethan and his girlfriend. He also has a bizarre incident during a session where Jackson flips out, screams, and beats himself repeatedly in the leg.

Ethan’s supposed Dad is equally slimy, and nothing feels very safe. Plans change on a whim. Ethan gets drugged at one point at ends up in the police station for the first time, and none of that is enough to convince Annie that something is wrong or convince Ethan he should stay far away. The money is too alluring, and Ethan thinks he is the smartest person in every situation. He thinks he can get himself out of almost anything.

The ending of The Tutor

Everything Jackson did was designed to force Ethan to admit what he did. He used his friend’s girlfriend’s house and pretended it was his own while they were on vacation. He hired someone to pretend to be his father at the house, and later when he called his boss Chris to lodge allegations. His real father died of cancer several years ago. None of that was real. The townhome was staged to trap and drug him so Ethan could be photographed cheating. The goal was to destroy Ethan’s life. Jackson wanted Ethan to suffer. While at the police station, Annie learns about Rachel Platt and begins questioning everything she thought she knew about Ethan. Rachel is Jackson’s mother, who died a decade ago when he was just a kid. Jackson is convinced Ethan killed her.

Jackson asks Ethan to go to the place his mother died. Wanting it all to be over, Ethan goes to Rachel’s old house, which is Jackson’s current one, where Ethan confronts him. He says no one knew where she died but me, my dad, and the killer, so you must be the killer. This is why Jackson lied about where he lived. Ethan has a plausible answer to how he knew where Rachel died, but things get cloudy after Jackson’s cousin beats him in the head. First, Ethan says he talked to Rachel on the phone and later says he was with her shortly before she committed suicide. He delivers floods of crocodile tears that are almost believable if it wasn’t for Rachel’s old diary.

Jackson found it after she died and realized Ethan killed her. In the diary, Rachel clarifies that she was scared of Ethan and that he was just a silly fling. He meant nothing to her, infuriating Ethan, who throws himself into action, kills Jackson’s cousin, and almost kills Ethan before Annie arrives. Ethan finally admits to killing Rachel but says it was all a misunderstanding. He claims he loved her, and it was an accident. However, Annie finally sees behind the mask and realizes he is a killer. While she distracts him, Jackson crawls onto the dock and shoots Ethan. He falls into the water and sinks. Everything looks like it has been wrapped up in a tidy bow until the police can’t find his body.

In the next scene, we see Ethan back doing what he does best. He is interviewing for a tutoring job and is very much alive. He is an excellent compartmentalizer and liar and will probably begin a new life until Annie and Jackson catch up to him. Jackson has endless resources, time, and determination on his side.

Perspective matters in The Tutor

When we first meet Jackson, we see him through a mirror from behind. Everything we thought we knew about Ethan and Jackson was wrong. Ethan is a murderer, and Jackson is the wronged party. His mother was killed by Ethan when he was a child, and he was left with a distant father who sent him to boarding school. Although Jackson seemed like the dangerous one, it was really Ethan who was the bad guy. Jackson only wanted Ethan to admit and be punished for what he did.

Ethan isn’t the great guy he wants everyone to think he is. The preponderance of the evidence paints a very different picture. He makes jokes about his unborn baby being a romance killer. It seems like a joke, but we know otherwise by the end. He cheated on Annie and is belligerent with her friends at a dinner out.

Ethan has been gaslighting people for at least a decade. He is the obsessed bunny boiler and has plastered on a pleasant face since he killed Rachel. Ethan chooses what to tell people and when to maximize his persona. He has a reasonable reason for not telling Annie about Rachel, but it is flimsy at best. Everything he says and does is designed to hide who he really is. He killed Rachel when she rejected him and would have killed Ethan and potentially Annie.

Know matter how long you live with someone, can you ever really know them? As she looks devastated out of the window in the aftermath, Annie wonders about this. Sometimes we see what we want or expect to see, and Ethan is a master at using that. He’s a mild-mannered, hard-working, caring teacher. That’s the image he projects, so that’s what people see. His mask hides a beast capable of anything, though. The Tutor is streaming on Netflix now.