After the Hunt is one of 2025's most anticipated and polarizing films - but how does the story end? The Luca Guadagnino-directed film, which hit theaters on Friday, October 10, takes place at Yale in 2019 after the MeToo movement. Julia Roberts plays Alma, a philosophy professor who is on the verge of getting tenure. Andrew Garfield portrays her colleague and close friend Hank, while Ayo Edebiri stars as promising young student Maggie. The trio's lives get thrown into disarray during a party at Alma's apartment where after a night of drinking, Hank walks Maggie home only for her to show up at Alma's door hours later upset and insinuating sexual assault allegations against Hank. Warning: Spoilers ahead for After the Hunt. Alma doesn't respond to the claims well, and asks Hank to meet up at a diner for his side of the story. He claims he made a bad call but that Maggie is mostly lying about what happened that night, claiming Maggie, whose parents are big donors for Yale, is reacting badly after she plagiarized her dissertation and he called her out on it. Julia Roberts Stars in 'After the Hunt': What to Know About the Film The rest of the film pins Maggie and Alma against each other as Alma attempts to smooth things over under the radar but Maggie insists she has a right to be heard. She pursues the allegations, getting Hank fired, but as Alma continues to act strange about the incident, Maggie decides to dive deeper into her past for answers. Keep scrolling for the ending of After the Hunt, explained: How Does 'After the Hunt' End? Yannis Drakoulidis /(C) Amazon MGM Studios / Courtesy Everett Collection After Maggie delves into Alma's past, she realizes that Alma once took back her own sexual assault allegations against a family friend and confessed that she made the whole thing up. Alma, meanwhile, continues to spiral over a pill addiction, going as far to steal fellow Yale professor Kim's (Chloë Sevigny) prescription pad for more pain medication. When the transaction is flagged, Alma gets called before the University president and others, including Kim. She is told that tenure is off the table. Upset by the news, she lashes out at Maggie and the two have a confirmation, where Maggie ends up slapping Alma. Alma then heads to her secret apartment and finds Hank sleeping there. The pair kiss - despite Alma being married - and when she tells him to stop several times, he gets rough with her, causing audiences to realize he probably did do what Maggie was accusing him of. Alma is convinced her life is over and ends up being sent to the hospital, where her husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) visits her. It's there she makes her confession: when she was 15 years old, she had an affair with an old family friend. They were in love and then he broke up with her and she was so upset she accused him of assault, which wrecked his life. She recanted the claims publicly but a few years later, he killed himself. To her surprise, Alma's husband reacts with sympathy to the story, pointing out how young Alma was, but Alma isn't willing to forgive herself. The film then flashes forward to five years later. Alma and Maggie meet up at a diner after not speaking for years. It's revealed that Alma is now the dean of a university and has written an article telling her story - which Maggie claims was tailored to make her look sympathetic. Maggie says she could "never" be Alma and doesn't want to be before getting up to leave. Does 'After the Hunt' Have a Post-Credits Scene? There is no traditional post-credits scene in After the Hunt, but the final shot of the film is unique. After Maggie leaves Alma at the table, she stares out the window for a long beat before the camera focuses on her paying the check with a 20 dollar bill. Guadagnino can then be heard yelling "cut" from behind the scenes before the credits begin to roll. During a screening of the movie at New York Film Festival, Guadagnino commented on why he decided to end the film by breaking the fourth wall. Ayo Edebiri Breaks Silence on Viral 'After the Hunt' Controversy "There is this finale that is about a sort of, like, false reconciliation, and maybe needed reconciliation between these two women," he explained while Us Weekly was in the audience. "They've been fighting over, imposing on one another their own truth and being heard by the incapacity of one another to understand their own truth and their secrets, and ultimately trying to find a way to own their powers in their hands, after the hunt, after the dust settles with the distance of time and with the comfortability of the blanket of snow that kind of silences everything, all the screams and all the furies, they understand what one one didn't want from the other and the other way around, and what they got and what they lost." He continued, "But what is always going to be at the center of their lives is capital, and that's it. And once we say 'cut,' we invite the audience to think that this is a movie, and we wanted to ente