A Normal Woman Ending Explained: Lucky Kuswandi’s 2025 Indonesian Netflix psychological thriller is a unsettling film that gradually unwinds to uncover the grim past and present life of a woman trying to make ends meet in a world of expectations. Featuring Marissa Anita in a commanding performance as Milla, the film also features Widyawati as manipulative mother-in-law Liliana and Dion Wiyoko as emotionally unavailable husband Jonathan. It also features Gisella Anastasia as Erika, Mima Shafa as Angel and Hatta Rahandy as Hatta, a friend who rescues Milla when she needs him most.
Within two hours, Netflix’s A Normal Woman, narrates the story of Milla, a typical housewife, who resides in a beautiful house with a handsome, successful husband. Everything appears perfect on the surface. But inside the house, and in Milla’s mind, something is terribly amiss. The burden of being a perfect wife and mother strangles her to death. Her mother-in-law harasses her mercilessly, controls her life, and even mocks her little daughter about her appearance. Jonathan, far from supporting his wife, silently approves of this attitude. Milla becomes more and more isolated, confused, and lost in her mind.
Suddenly, everything goes horribly awry. Milla starts to dream about a bloodied little girl. She has terrible hallucinations—glass in her mouth, cuts all over her body, and the sense that something is terribly amiss in her life. In trying to make sense of it all, she encounters Erika, a childhood friend whose existence she had repressed. These encounters begin to trigger repressed memories from her childhood.
A Normal Woman Ending Explained
Who was Grace in A Normal Woman?
The name of Milla is actually Grace. As a child she was known as Grace, Milla was a victim of a gruesome accident where a mirror was broken. Her face was badly disfigured and the accident marked a turning point in the life of Milla. Her mother moved them to Jakarta after that and used the resources to totally change the life of her daughter. Grace was remolded into Milla—a new, more “beautiful” one, sculpted by surgery and force to fit the expectations of the world. Everything that had to do with Grace’s life, Milla forgot due to trauma.
The child in Milla’s night terrors is not a phantom, but Grace, the captive child being kept within Milla who cannot break through. Her vision in her dreams, her blood-stained and mutilated glass, are the embodiment of the traumatic memory Milla had been hiding for years. Grace is the flashback to Milla’s true self, one that could never grow up nor heal.
How Did Milla Get the Rashes?
Milla’s facial rash is psychological just as it is physical. Well, the movie did not provide with one correct answer for that but her face begins changing the moment she starts taking pills that her husband and mother-in-law had been administering to her and telling her are vitamins. The pills would make her young and pretty. As Milla’s psychological condition begins to decline, her face begins to exhibit signs of trauma and stress as well. Whether the pills had any effect or not is not even certain, but it is certain that her psychological atmosphere is poisonous.
There’s one scene where Hatta tells Milla that her flowers are not dying due to her, but due to the environment. That’s a one-sentence summary. Milla is ill physically and emotionally due to where she is and how she is being treated. The rash is her body’s reaction to get rid of the artificial life she has been leading. It is not an illness—it is a call for help.
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What Happened to Erika?
Erika comes into Milla’s life as an old friend, but one whose agenda is most antagonistic. Erika and Grace had been two peas in a pod growing up, but while Grace dreamed of freedom, Erika dreamed of marrying rich men, primping, and living in glamour. Erika had the belief that beauty is power, and that being a make-up artist provided her with that power.
Adult Erika observes that Milla, once Grace, leads the life she would have wanted. Erika does not assist Milla; she betrays her. She reveals Milla’s history to Jonathan and Liliana, not to rescue her but to assume her life. Erika steals Milla’s dress and necklace at Milla’s lowest moment when she attends Liliana’s birthday. Milla unknowingly gives away her life to Erika, who has to escape.
Did Milla Manage to Escape from Her In-Laws?
Yes, Milla does escape—but unostentatiously, not extravagantly. Just in time, she slips out of her house unseen and climbs onto Hatta’s truck. It is a low-keyed moment, but a rich one. She is leaving behind it all—her pampered life, her domineering family, and the life she never chose for herself.
Then we see her walking through Surabaya fields, dressed in traditional attire, smiling, and her wounds healed. This may be a flash-forward, or symbolic. But it certainly shows that Milla has achieved peace. She then becomes the person she had always dreamed of being—free, real, and normal in her own right.
What Does the Ending of A Normal Woman Symbolise?
A Normal Woman end is powerful and very emotional. Milla’s freedom is a spiritual freedom and not physical. The title A Normal Woman is appropriately and rightfully claimed by the end. Milla’s experience—being silenced, judged by looks, made perfect—is horrifyingly very normal. The film shows how “normal” these toxic expectations are to women everywhere.
When Milla departs, she is not looking for success or wealth. She simply wishes to be herself. The last shots are of her in nature, without makeup, without stress—just being. The scar remains on her face, evidence that healing is not the erasure of pain but the embracing of it. The movie does not provide us with a fairy-tale ending, but it does provide us with hope: sometimes normal is being free.
Indonesian movie A Normal Woman is streaming on Netflix.
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