‘Do Revenge’ Ending Explained: Camila Mendes, Maya Hawke’s Netflix Movie Comes With a Major Twist (2024)

Do Revenge on Netflix is a complicated movie about complicated women.

Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson—the same director who brought you the bittersweet Netflix rom-comSomeone Greatand the MTV seriesSweet/Vicious—this new dark comedy pairs up Maya Hawke, aka Robin from Stranger Things, and Camila Mendes, aka Veronica from Riverdale to, as they put it in the movie, “do each other’s revenge.” What could possibly go wrong?

Both leads are full, nuanced people with complex backstories, which is fantastic, but it also means there are a lot of threads and moving parts. Paired with not one but two plot twists, Do Revenge may be downright confusing to some. This isn’t the sort of Netflix movie you can put on in the background while scrolling through Tik Tok.

Don’t you worry, because Decider is here to help. If Do Revenge lost you somewhere along the way, or if you want to process what you just saw, read on for the Do Revenge plot summary, the Do Revenge plot twist, and the Do Revenge ending, explained.

Warning: Do Revenge spoilers ahead. Obviously.

WHAT IS THE DO REVENGE PLOT SUMMARY?

Drea Torres (Mendes) is an ambitious, popular high school junior at a bougie prep school. Unlike her peers, she didn’t come from money, but that only makes her all the more ruthless when it comes to pursuing her dream of attending Yale. But Drea makes the mistake of sending her boyfriend Max (Austin Abrams) a sexy video. The video leaks to the entire school, and though Max insists he was hacked, Drea knows in his gut he was the one who leaked it. She punches him in front of everyone, and the entire school turns on her. Drea loses all of her friends and social status. She gets put on behavioral probation at school, and the headmaster (played by none other than Sarah Michelle Gellar) warns her that any further altercations with Max will result in the loss of her scholarship.

Over the summer, at tennis camp, Drea meets a girl named Eleanor (Hawke) who seems interested in becoming Drea’s friend. Eleanor comforts Drea when another tennis player is gossipping about Drea’s video and offers Drea a ride when her car won’t start. Eleanor tells Drea that she understands—Eleanor also had someone ruin her life. She explains that when she was 13, she came out to a girl named Carissa at camp. Carissa repaid her by telling everyone that Eleanor had tried to hold her down and kiss her, giving Eleanor a reputation as a predator that completely ruined her teenage years. Now Eleanor is about to transfer to the same school as Carissa—which also happens to be the same school as Drea.

Drea and Eleanor hatch a plan to “do each other’s revenge.” Eleanor will dig up dirt to ruin Max’s life, and Drea will do the same for Carissa. That way, neither of them can be traced back to the person they have beefed with. The plan works surprisingly well… at first. Drea finds out that Carissa is growing marijuana and shrooms on school property, doses everyone at a school function, and gets Carissa sent to rehab. Eleanor finds out that Max is cheating on his new girlfriend, Tara (Alisha Boe), who also happens to be Drea’s ex-BFF. The girls send out the evidence of Max’s infidelity to the entire school… but it backfires. Max claims he and Tara have an open relationship, and he earns even more “woke points” for being so open and modern. Worse, thanks to an op-ed about Drea that Max wrote for the school paper, Drea’s application to Yale is rejected.

Drea becomes obsessed with taking Max down by any means necessary. Eleanor is put off by her intensity and starts ghosting her. Instead, Eleanor hangs out un-ironically with the popular kids, whom she originally infiltrated to dig up dirt on Max. Drea crashes Eleanor’s surprise birthday party, and she and Eleanor have a big fight. After Drea learns that someone purposefully damaged her car over the summer, Drea visits Carissa in rehab, hoping to learn more about Eleanor.

WHAT IS THE DO REVENGE PLOT TWIST?

Are you ready for this? It wasn’t Carissa that ruined Eleanor’s life. It was Drea. Before she had a nose job, Eleanor went by Nora. Drea and the other mean kids called her “Nosy Nora.” It was Drea that Eleanor came out to, and Drea who started that nasty rumor. She ruined Eleanor’s life and didn’t even have the decency to remember her.

Drea realizes that Eleanor has been trying to get back at her this entire time. Eleanor purposefully ran into Drea at tennis camp. She was the one who sent the video around the camp. She clipped Drea’s spark plugs so that she would need a ride. And she was the one who suggested hiring people to take their enemies down.

It’s not clear what exactly Eleanor’s plan was. But in a voiceover from Eleanor, she explains that she called off her revenge plotting after the shrooms-infested class dinner. “Drea really seemed like she changed, and I didn’t want to hurt her,” Eleanor says. “She was my friend.” But after their fight, Eleanor sees that Drea hasn’t changed. She has a new plan for revenge: Attend an infamously wild senior party, where everyone leaves their phones at the door and does a bunch of illegal drugs. Eleanor wants Drea to secretly film the party, leak the footage on her computer, and take down all the popular kids, Drea included.

WHAT IS THE DO REVENGE ENDING, EXPLAINED?

After Eleanor randomly hits Drea with her car, landing her a brief hospital stay (sure!), Drea and Eleanor attend the party to carry out Eleanor’s plan. Eleanor pins a camera brooch to Drea’s dress and then tries to goad Drea into taking drugs with her friends. In retaliation, Drea reveals to the popular kids that Eleanor is actually “Nosy Nora.”

Eleanors storms off in tears. Drea finds her, apologizes for everything, and proposes they stop with all this revenge stuff. She destroys the brooch camera. But it turns out Max was eavesdropping on the conversation. He does a classic villain monologue and sums up all of his wrongdoings: He was the one who leaked Drea’s video, he went through their phones, and has all kinds of evidence to destroy them even more. When he walks away, Eleanor bursts out laughing. Why? She, too, was wearing a tiny camera, which means they just caught everything Max just said on film. Double assurance, baby!

The girls broadcast the video of Max at his party. His reputation is totally ruined. He loses his friends, his girlfriend, and his spot at Yale. In turn, Drea gets that newly vacant Yale spot but opts to go on a road trip with Eleanor instead. While the credits roll, we see that both Eleanor and Drea reconnect with their respective romantic interests. All’s well that ends well!