Warning: Spoilers for Mr. Harrigan's Phone.The ending of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone leaves viewers with a number of unanswered questions, which are worth discussing afterward. Based on Stephen King's novella, the Netflix Original movie tells the tale of Craig, a teenager who has been working as a reader for the titular aging billionaire. When Mr. Harrigan gifts him a winning lottery ticket, Craig returns the favor by buying his elderly friend a phone. Mr. Harrigan enjoys his gift, but he passes away before he can make much use of it. Craig tosses the phone into the man's casket during his funeral and occasionally messages his old employer, expecting no reply.
So far, so maudlin. However, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone becomes a classic Stephen King story when a bully beats up Craig and, with no one else to turn to, the boy sends a voicemail to his late employer explaining the assault and venting his frustration and fear. Craig wakes up the next morning to a text message from the very much deceased Mr. Harrigan informing him that his bully has been dealt with, and he soon discovers that this other boy is, in fact, dead.
For a while after the death of Craig’s bully, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone looks like it will have an unusually upbeat ending for a Stephen King movie. But as Craig attempts to reconcile the power he has with the responsibility that it comes with, the movie ventures toward a much darker conclusion, as is expected from works from the horror legend. Here's what happens at the end of Mr. Harrigan's Phone and what it means.
What Happens In Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’s Ending
Craig (Jaeden Martell, from the cast of the Stephen King adaptation It) accepts that the seemingly impossible supernatural event involving his bully occurred, but he decides that he wasn’t responsible for the boy's death. He hides away the phone that he used to communicate with Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), moves off to college, and moves on with his life. Craig is flourishing as a freshman when he learns Ms. Hart (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), the supportive teacher who helped him out when he was being targeted by bullies, has been killed by a drunk driver (Daniel Reece).
Enraged that the man receives no jail time for the crime, Craig messages Mr. Harrigan and all but commands him to kill the driver, who, sure enough, dies within a few days. Craig visits Mr. Harrigan's grave to apologize and, while he is at the cemetery, he visits his mother’s grave site for the first time since he was a child. While Craig felt inexplicably responsible for his mother’s death as a small child, now he feels able to apologize to her, too, and Mr. Harrigan’s Phone ends as he tosses his old cell phone in a quarry.
Why Doesn’t Craig Throw Away His Phone
At the quarry, Craig throws the old phone that he used to contact Mr. Harrigan into the freezing water. However, after deliberating for a moment, he decides to hold onto his current cell phone. While Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is too self-contained to spark a sequel, the reason for this choice is to illustrate that Craig doesn’t feel capable of living without his phone despite the stress, anxiety, emotional conflict, and existential dread that his contact with Mr. Harrigan has caused him. As Craig notes via narration, he feels wedded to his phone, but he also concedes that this is a bad, one-sided marriage.
Did Mr. Harrigan Kill Ms. Hart?
There is no reason to presume that Ms. Hart’s untimely death was caused by Mr. Harrigan from beyond the grave, although this would add some additional moral complexity to the story of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. At first glance, it seems the angelic teacher was coincidentally killed by a thoughtless drunk driver. However, since this event prompts Craig to call on Mr. Harrigan one more time to get gruesome payback from beyond the grave, it is possible that the event was engineered by the ruthless old man. He had lectured Craig about power and tried to convince the boy to be as ruthless as he had been during his long, lonely life, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he was behind the accident and wanted to get Craig back into his orbit.
How Did Deane Whitmore Die?
The official story that medical examiners come away with is that the drunk driver, Deane Whitmore, took his own life by choking himself with a broken bar of soap in the shower. However, Craig recognizes the soap as Ms. Hart’s brand and notes that Deane's one-line suicide note is a quote from the Tammy Wynette song “Stand By Your Man.” Since this was Mr. Harrigan’s favorite song, as well as his ringtone for Craig, the young man quickly discerns that his former employer was really behind the death.
What Does Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’s Ending Really Mean
Although Mr. Harrigan’s Phone features an early, didactic scene wherein the title character “predicts the future” by anticipating the rise of online misinformation and the preponderance of paywalls, the movie's ending doesn’t double down on this doomsaying. Instead, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’s ending sees Craig finally visit his mother’s grave and apologize for his mistakes, and in doing so the adaptation clarifies the message of the Netflix horror movie.
For all of its concerns surrounding technology, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is really a story of letting go of that which one cannot control and taking responsibility for one’s actions. Through Mr. Harrigan and the distancing device of technology, Craig consistently avoids responsibility for his own actions until Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’s ending, when he accepts that he sought out the old man’s help and asks his spirit to rest easy.