- - “One Battle After Another” Ending Explained: Who Is Willa's Dad?

Christopher RudolphDecember 20, 2025 at 9:00 AM

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Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

'One Battle After Another.' -

One Battle After Another was released on HBO Max on Dec. 19

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Chase Infiniti and Sean Penn, among others

The action-thriller follows a father and daughter who revisit the past together

One Battle After Another tells the story of a father's love, a mother's disappearance and a future that could have been had events gone a different way.

The film follows Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a former revolutionary who has retired from radical life. Years later, he is brought out of hiding when he and his daughter Willa Ferguson (Chase Infiniti) are hunted by the deranged Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).

Lockjaw is in the process of trying to join a powerful and secret White supremacist society, known as the Christmas Adventurers Club, when he realizes that his past sexual relationship with Willa's mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), might jeopardize his membership.

With that, Lockjaw launches a mission to track Willa. This ignites a fire within Bob, prompting him to take action and keep his daughter safe and alive. But it'll take some trust.

Here's the ending of One Battle After Another explained, including which characters survive and whether Perfidia returns.

What happens at the end of One Battle After Another?

Warner Bros.

'One Battle After Another.'

To be kept safe, members of the French 75, the revolutionary group her parents belonged to, take Willa.

While Bob tries to relocate Willa, Lockjaw gets to her first and performs a DNA test, confirming that he is her biological father.

Willa is taken by a bounty hunter, who decides not to kill her, but is then shot himself. She escapes, driving into the winding roads of the California desert, as her dad, Lockjaw and Tim Smith (John Hoogenakker), a member of the Christmas Adventurers Club, are all involved in a fast and chaotic car chase.

During the high-speed pursuit, Lockjaw is shot and crashes his car, leading Willa to be in a tense standoff with Tim. After pulling a slick maneuver, she survives and reunites with Bob, who takes her back to safety.

Do Bob and Willa reunite?

Warner Bros.

Following the car chase, Willa shoots and kills Tim, a member of the Christmas Adventurers Club, who had been pursuing her. Shortly after, Bob arrives at the scene and sees Willa rattled, questioning everything and everyone she knows.

Bob proves to her that he is who he says he is by reciting a line of code she was taught. Finally believing him, Willa runs to Bob. The two then get in a car and drive away from the crime scene together.

What happens to Willa?

Warner Bros.

'One Battle After Another.'

After finding each other, Bob and Willa return to their home, where he is seen trying to learn how to operate an iPhone, signaling that he is finally ready to rejoin society.

Meanwhile, Willa decides to follow in her mother's activist footsteps by listening to a police scanner transmission. When Willa hears about a protest happening in Oakland, she quickly runs out of the house to join it.

"Be careful," Bob tells her.

"I won't," she replies, before shutting the door and jumping in her car.

Does Lockjaw die?

Warner Bros.

'One Battle After Another.'

Yes, Lockjaw is killed at the end of One Battle After Another.

The seemingly unstoppable colonel manages to survive the car crash. He walks away bloody and severely disfigured, but still alive.

Later, Lockjaw meets with the Christmas Adventurers Club, who now know about his relationship with Perfidia. But Lockjaw comes up with an excuse that they accept, and he is welcomed into the group — or so he believes.

After delivering the news that he has been admitted into the club, they show Lockjaw around their headquarters, where they lead him to his new office suite. Lockjaw is then left alone in the closed room, which begins to fill with gas.

Within minutes, the colonel is killed as he sits behind his desk. Two men in hazmat suits then take Lockjaw's body out of the office and to an incinerator, where they cremate him.

Does Perfidia return?

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

'One Battle After Another.'

Following a bank robbery gone wrong, Perfidia is arrested, and she turns on her fellow French 75 members to avoid a jail sentence. She is placed in witness protection, but eventually flees to Mexico.

Perfidia is absent for most of Willa's life, and she does not physically return at the end of the movie, though she makes another kind of appearance.

In the final minutes of the movie, Bob presents Willa with a letter from her mom that he had been "holding on to."

Perfidia reads the letter in voiceover to her daughter, telling her that she thinks of her "every single day."

"I know someday, when it's right, and it's safe, you'll find me," she closes out the letter, asking Willa to give Bob a kiss for her.

A flashback is quickly shown of baby Willa being held by Bob and Perfidia in bed.

on People

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”