The Christophers ending explained
On paper, The Christophers is a heist movie: Michaela Coel's Lori Butler, an art restorer with a gift for painting in other people's handwriting, gets hired by the two worst adult children in London — Jessica Gunning and James Corden, both having a wonderful time — to sneak into their dying father's house and secretly finish his abandoned masterpieces, so they can "discover" them after the funeral and retire on the proceeds.
The father is Julian Sklar, played by Ian McKellen as a magnificent old monster, and the abandoned masterpieces are the Christophers — a series he stopped painting decades ago and refuses to explain. Spoiler territory begins now; govern yourselves accordingly.
Why the paintings were never finished
The title isn't an art-history flourish. Christopher was a real man — Julian's great love, who left him — and the unfinished third series is essentially a wound hanging on the wall. Julian can't complete the paintings, can't destroy them, and keeps ordering other people to burn them precisely because he knows he never could. When Christopher himself finally appears near the end, he's a heartbreakingly ordinary man going about his life, and the whole film clicks into focus. McKellen told Inverse that "my heart missed a beat when we finally meet Christopher" — and reader, mine too.
What actually happens at the end
- Julian figures out the scheme running under his own roof — the assistant, the attic, the children circling like well-dressed vultures.
- Rather than hand his kids an inheritance product, he destroys the work the only way he emotionally can: by "finishing" it himself, sabotaging the canvases with garish paint, feathers, and glitter, and torching the preparatory sketches.
- And then Lori — who came in as a mercenary and leaves as something closer to a disciple — recreates the Christophers herself. Not for money. As tribute.
The con movie quietly dies somewhere in the third act, and what's left is two artists finally seeing each other clearly. That's the twist: recognition, not robbery.
There's a lovely bit of personal history underneath it too — Lori and Julian met years earlier on a reality show where he publicly dismissed her talent, which makes her final act either forgiveness or victory, and the film pointedly refuses to pick. Soderbergh told Variety the film was built without genre in mind: "Human behavior was our compass." Which is director-speak for: yes, the heist was never the point, and no, you weren't supposed to leave the theater emotionally intact.
Previously we wrote: Who pays for the renovations on Kitchen Nightmares? An executive producer has settled it on the record
