Now that Black Bag is available to buy and rent on digital platforms, even more folks will be watching this 2025 spy drama that has critics buzzing.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, with a screenplay by David Koepp (who also collaborated with Soderbergh on the 2022 Max original movie Kimi starring Zoe Kravitz, and the recent 2025 horror movie Presence), Black Bag is a spy thriller starring Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as elite spies who also happen to be a married couple. When Blanchett’s character, Kathryn, is suspected of treason, Fassbender’s character, George, is forced to choose between his loyalty to his wife and his loyalty to his country.
Also starring Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, and Pierce Brosnan, Black Bag plays out like a classic “whodunit” mystery flick. There is betrayal, treason, and, of course, Russian operatives. It wouldn’t be a spy movie without Russians!
That said, the Black Bag ending dumps a lot of information on viewers very quickly. If you were confused, don’t worry, Decider is here to help. Read on for a breakdown of the Black Bag movie plot summary and Black Bag ending explained.
Warning: Major spoilers for the Black Bag movie below!
Black Bag movie plot summary:
George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is a British intelligence agent, who’s informed by his higher-up, Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård), that someone on his team is a traitor. One of Woodhouse’s colleagues stole a top-secret software called Severus, which could be used to cause a government melt down. Meacham gives George a list of five suspects, which includes George’s own wife and fellow agent, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett).
George invites to dinner the other four suspects: Freddie (Tom Burke), a high-ranking agent that George passed over for promotion due to his alcohol and drug problem; Clarissa (Marisa Abela), a young, flirty agent currently dating Freddie; Zoe (Naomie Harris), a level-headed psychologist who works with the agents; and James (Regé-Jean Page), a former colonel who’s currently dating Zoe. George warns Kathryn not to eat the chana masala, because he dosed it with a drug called DZM 5. Through drugs and George’s manipulation, it’s revealed that Freddie is meeting up with a woman weekly at a hotel to cheat on Clarissa. It’s also revealed that George really, really hates liars.
That night, George finds a movie stub ticket in the bathroom trash. This raises his suspicions, especially after he asks Kathryn to see the same movie with him, and she denies having seen it before. The next day, Meacham dies of a “heart attack,” suggesting that someone at the dinner took him out. George breaks into Kathryn’s office and learns she’s flying to Zurich. Coincidentally, James informs George that there is a bank account in Zurich with 7 million pounds in it, under one of Kathryn’s aliases. The implication is that Kathryn—who, it’s revealed in a therapy session with Zoe, grew up poor and always worries about money—sold Severus in order to secure herself a large sum of money.
George convinces Clarissa to help him override one of the agency’s spy satellites in order to spy on Kathryn. He witnesses Kathryn meet with a Russian, where she appears to offer to buy something from the Russian. Meanwhile, Zoe dumps James, and he reacts badly. He threatens to kill her if she ever reveals what he told her about Severus. Hmm, pretty suspicious!
It turns out that in the three minutes that George and Clarissa overrode the system to spy on Kathryn, another Russian operative disappears from a safehouse in Liechtenstein, with a copy of Severus. The Russian intends to use it on the Russian government in order to end the war against Ukraine and get rid of Putin. But the price would be thousands of lives. The agents’ big boss, Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan), reprimands his team and accuses someone on the team of being a traitor. But Stieglitz insists no one tells the CIA. George realizes he is being set up to look like the traitor. Sure enough, Clarissa rats him out to Freddie. Freddie, in turn, tells Kathryn that George is the suspected leak, and is in trouble with the agency.
In bed that night, George and Kathryn compare notes. At this point, it becomes clear neither of them are the traitor. Instead, they are both being set up, and both being used to get to the other. George tells Kathryn he intends to bait someone into an overreaction, in order to find the truth. He conducts a series of polygraph tests on the remaining four suspects. After reaching a conclusion, he invites the four suspects over for another dinner at his home.
At the same time, Kathryn confronts Stieglitz and tells him she suspects that he is the one who leaked Severus. She reveals that she leaked information to the CIA in order to have the Russian operative—the one with a copy of Severus—taken out with an American drone strike. Therefore, she stopped the plan to melt down the Russian government. Kathryn tells Stieglitz that she knows he had help, and that she has faith that her husband will figure it out.
Black Bag movie ending explained:
At “dinner” at George’s house, no food is served. Instead, Kathryn puts a gun on the table, and tells her guests they are playing a game. Then, in a classic “whodunit” fashion, George (not Clarissa) explains it all. In fact, Clarissa had nothing to do with it, George says. She’s totally innocent.
George reveals that there were two different plans happening at the same time: One to steal Severus and use it to melt down the Russian government, and one to prevent the meltdown from happening.
James and Stieglitz stole Severus, intending to use it to end the war in Russia. While at the first dinner, James planted the movie stub ticket in George’s trash. The idea was to frame Kathryn for leaking Severus, but also to goad George into spying on Kathryn via the redirect, allowing the Russian operative to escape. James was the one who lured Kathryn to Zurich, and he was the one who opened the bank account in her name, to make it look like she sold Severus for money.
But while drunk, James bragged to his then-girlfriend, Zoe, about the plan. Zoe, a woman with strict morals, resolved to try to stop the Severus meltdown, which would lead to the deaths of many innocent people.
That’s where the second plan comes into play. Zoe recruited Freddie to help her stop the Severus meltdown. It turns out that Zoe is the woman that Freddie has been cheating on Clarissa with. When Freddie learned about the redirect, he told Zoe. Zoe, in turn, asked Freddie to tell Kathryn about the redirect (and about George being the presumed leak), assuming that Kathryn would cover for George by canceling the meltdown operation. And she did!
At this point, James realizes he is cornered and picks up the gun on the table. He confesses he is the one who stole Severus, and insists he did so for noble reasons—to stop the war on Ukraine. He also confesses to killing Meacham. Kathryn reveals the name of the game is “See who picks up the gun.” George reveals that the entire conversation has been recorded, and James’s confession is on tape. (Really? An intelligence agent didn’t consider that he might be being bugged?)
James fires the gun at George, but it’s filled with blanks. Kathryn reaches into her bag, pulls out an actual loaded gun, and kills James. He aimed and shot a gun at her man, after all. And as Freddie says, all Kathryn and George care about is each other. They would never betray each other! Kathryn lets everyone else go with a warning: Never f–k with her marriage again.
George dumps James’s body in a lake. His death is made to look like a work casualty. Everyone else goes back to work. Kathryn warns Stieglitz to remove himself from the picture, but later reveals to George that she doesn’t think he was intimidated. George reveals he never thought Kathryn lied to him about the movie stub, because he knows she would never be that sloppy. He was only spying on her because he was worried she was in danger. He also reveals that the 7 million pounds is still in a bank account under Kathryn’s name, suggesting that his loyalty will always be to his wife before it is to his country and morality. With that, the movie ends. Aww! The whole thing was a love story.
