Rose Byrne is earning acclaim for her turn in Mary Bronstein's harrowing (and grimly funny) film. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ending explained: What is the cosmic hole in the ceiling? Rose Byrne is earning acclaim for her turn in Mary Bronstein's harrowing (and grimly funny) film. By Randall Colburn :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/RandallColburnauthorphotoe7e8b48d9f8645588439077e721a5f48.jpg) Randall Colburn Randall Colburn is a writer and editor at . His work has previously appeared on The A.V. Club, The Guardian, The Ringer, and many other publications.

Rose Byrne is earning acclaim for her turn in Mary Bronstein's harrowing (and grimly funny) film.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ending explained: What is the cosmic hole in the ceiling?

Rose Byrne is earning acclaim for her turn in Mary Bronstein's harrowing (and grimly funny) film.

By Randall Colburn

Randall Colburn

Randall Colburn is a writer and editor at **. His work has previously appeared on *The A.V. Club, The Guardian, The Ringer*, and many other publications.

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March 10, 2026 7:00 a.m. ET

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Rose Byrne as Linda in 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You'. Credit:

*If I Had Legs I'd Kick You* is the best kind of nightmare, with Rose Byrne delivering one of the fiercest performances in recent memory as a mother under duress.

Mary Bronstein's grimly hilarious odyssey, one of **'s favorite films of 2025, has generated much awards buzz for Byrne's dizzying performance, earning her a Golden Globe, an Independent Spirit Award, and the prestigious Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, not to mention an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

"Byrne is gobsmacking as a strung-out caregiver at the end of her rope, each minutiae of her forced smile begging for someone, anyone, to validate her anguish instead of blaming her for it," raves EW*.* "It's an ugly but honest portrait of the self-doubting, resentful side of motherhood doused in Lovecraftian existential terror. This is not 'I am woman, hear me roar!'; it's 'I'm f---ing human, let me scream.'"

Below, we unpack the movie's nerve-shredding twists, cathartic ending, and what it all means.**

What is If I Had Legs I'd Kick You about?

Rose Byrne as Linda in 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You'.

*If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, *with its queasy camerawork and suffocating closeups, is an intimate portrait of Linda. She's well past her breaking point amid a series of crises, several of which involve her anxious daughter (Delaney Quinn), whose unspecified health issues require her to have a feeding tube.

Her situation grows immeasurably worse when a hole opens in the ceiling of her Long Island apartment, flooding the unit and forcing her to into a seaside motel. Her husband, Charles (Christian Slater), is away on a months-long work trip, forcing her to deal with their obstinate landlord alone.

It only gets worse from there, with a strung-out Linda clashing with her daughter's doctor, a vengeful parking attendant, a doomed hamster, and her own therapist (Conan O'Brien), who has none of the answers she needs. The only person who shows her any grace is motel boss James (ASAP Rocky), who lives in the room next door and helps her buy cocaine on the dark web.

Linda, who works as a therapist herself, struggles to stay attentive during sessions with her clients, including Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), a young mother struggling with postpartum anxiety and the fear of something horrible happening to her child.**

What happened to Caroline?

Danielle Macdonald as Caroline in 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You'.

During one session with Caroline, the young mother goes to the bathroom and never returns, leaving her infant child alone with Linda. After an unproductive call with Caroline's belligerent husband (Ronald Bronstein), Linda gives the child to the police.

Later, she receives an email from Caroline. Attached to it is a video of Andrea Yates, the real Texas woman who drowned her five children amid an episode of postpartum psychosis and was found not guilty by reason of insanity, per the *New York Times.*

"Better to tie a millstone around your neck and throw yourself into the sea, rather than cause someone to stumble," Yates tells an interviewer in the clip, referencing a quote attributed to Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

"I am not trying to be her," Caroline writes in the email.**

Rose Byrne on her 'scary' close-up as a mother on the verge in 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You'

Rose Byrne defends Bobby Cannavale missing Golden Globes for reptile expo

Caroline eventually surprises Linda at the motel. Manic, she asks Linda if she "understands" her fears about motherhood and her own capacity for violence. "All of their faces. Their little faces, they look at us and there is nothing there," she says.

Linda offers to take her to the emergency room, but that's not what Caroline wants. She's yearns for Linda to empathize with her, which Linda, stuck in a limbo between the personal and professional, can't bring herself to do. It's the latest instance of many in *If I Had Legs I'd Kick You* of desperate people trying (and failing) to get the answers (and empathy) they desire.

Frustrated, she slaps Linda and runs to the nearby beach. Linda tries to chase her, but gives up as Caroline disappears into the darkness.**

What illness does Linda's daughter have?

Rose Byrne as Linda with her daughter in 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You'.

The illness afflicting Linda's daughter is never specified, though it involves disordered eating and the necessitation of a feeding tube. Linda feels as if the tube is exacerbating the issues, but her doctor disagrees, saying that the tube can only be removed if she meets specific weight goals.

Unable to fix Caroline's problems, Linda endeavors to solve one of her own. That means returning to the motel and removing the feeding tube from her daughter's stomach. That sounds risky, but she *was* told by a doctor that the procedure doesn't require surgery and that the hole will close by itself.

So she begins pulling it out. And pulling. And pulling. The sequence exists in a liminal space between reality and hallucination, with the tube seeming to go on forever. And once it's removed, Linda watches as the gaping wound begins to pulse before closing up neatly before her eyes.**

Does Linda fix the hole in her ceiling?

ASAP Rocky as James and Christian Slater as Charles in 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You'.

Holes are a recurring motif in *If I Had Legs I'd Kick You*, with the literal holes in her daughter's gut and her apartment's ceiling representing a figurative one, a cosmic void that feels all-consuming. Having fixed the hole in her daughter, she chooses to believe that perhaps the hole in her home is also gone.

When she arrives at the apartment, she's elated to see that it's repaired. Charles is there, overseeing men in hazmat suits as they clean up the remaining debris and paint over the new plaster.

Charles' less-than-enthusiastic response to seeing Linda dulls her excitement somewhat, especially when he implies she made the situation worse. In the car, she asks if he loves her. His "yes," though, is tepid.

Back at the motel, she's terrified of him seeing that she not only removed the feeding tube, but left their daughter alone in the room. But it turns out she's not alone — James is there.

Linda tells Charles that James is the babysitter, but James isn't playing along. He tells them that the girl was "scared s--tless," pounding on the wall for help. He also implies that the hole in her belly did not close.

"What did you do?" Charles asks, and Linda realizes that her problems aren't solved, after all. If anything, a whole slew of new ones have spawned.**

What happens at the end of If I Had Legs I'd Kick You?

Delaney Quinn as Linda's daughter at the end of 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You'.

Overwhelmed, Linda takes after Caroline and absconds to the beach. Yates' words about tying a millstone around your neck and throwing yourself into the sea hang in the salty air as Linda dives into the crashing waves.

The sea, however, doesn't consume her. It spits her back out onto the beach. There, Linda lies in the sand, attempting the breath work that's meant to calm her nerves. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, we hear the voice of her daughter. Soon, her daughter begins to sing.

In a sequence that could be real or could be all in her head, we finally see her daughter's face for the first time. Throughout the entire film, she's been a voice offscreen — pleading, crying, nagging, and screaming. Here, though, her disposition is tender and forgiving, and it completely changes how the audience sees the character.

The same goes for Linda, who softens at the recognition of her daughter's humanity, which is all too easy to overlook in times of crisis.

Earlier, Linda admitted to her therapist that she's "one of those people that's not supposed to be a mom." She said, "I'm not a mom. I'm not. This isn't supposed to be what it's like. This isn't it. This can't be it." But, lying in the sand, her daughter's face before her, she appears to accept that, yes, this is it. And it's worth it.

"I'll be better, I promise," she says, echoing a similar promise made by the child earlier in the movie. "I'll be better."

Will she, though? It's nice to think so.**

Where can I watch If I Had Legs I'd Kick You?

*If I Had Legs I'd Kick You* is available to stream on HBO Max.

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.*****

Original Article on Source

Source: "EW Drama"

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Source: Drama

Published: March 10, 2026 at 01:38PM on Source: MANUEL MAG

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