'Amsterdam Empire' Ending Explained & Finale Recap: Did Betty Get The Jackal?

Amsterdam Empire’s ending was about Betty Jonkers wrangling the reins to the Jackal away from Jack Van Doorn’s hands. How did things come to that? Well, one year prior to the events of the show, Jack, the owner of the most profitable weed manufacturing company in Amsterdam, the Jackal, attended a chat show called Campus Talks, which was where he met Marjolein Hofman (she was the host of the event). That’s probably when their affair started, but it took 9 more months for Jack’s wife, Betty, to realize what was going on. Once she confronted him about it, he wanted to divorce her, but she didn’t want to go down without a fight. Since Betty had a pretty good idea about Jack’s business, she began taking it down piece by piece. She sent the police to his biggest grow house and got that shut down. That led to a fight between him and his associate, Guido, which escalated to such an extent that Jack had to kill Guido. To keep the Jackal alive, Jack, along with his daughter Katja Van Doorn, got in touch with Gijs Tichelaar and convinced him to become their supplier. Since Betty was becoming a headache for them all, Gijs decided to kill her. However, Betty turned Gijs against Jack by promising him full control of the Jackal, and when Gijs got too desperate, he sent Noud Tichelaar to gun down Jack. He survived, and the incident sort of brought Betty, Katja, Marjolein, Patrick Van Doorn (Jack’s son), and Shanti (Jack’s first wife) over to his side. Shanti even brought in an assassin called Harry, who kidnapped Noud so as to bait Gijs and his crew into an ambush and kill them before he tried to attack Jack again. Did that plan succeed? And how did Betty use that plan to her own benefit? Let’s find out.

Spoiler Alert

Since Jack’s cabin in the woods was far, far away from prying eyes, Betty suggested that Shanti and Harry, along with the latter’s henchmen, take Noud to that secluded place and torture him until they got what they wanted. They were joined there by Betty and Katja, and that irked Shanti a lot because Katja had her whole life ahead of her. What they were doing in that cabin was illegal. The police were already looking into Jack and his business. If Shanti and Betty got arrested for being a part of this mess, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal because they had already lived a major chunk of their lives. However, if Katja got arrested, the damage done to her would be irreparable. Hence, Shanti wanted Katja to go back to the city and stay put until this whole situation had been handled. That said, as soon as Katja heard Noud screaming from inside the house, she couldn’t stop herself from getting involved and chose to partake in the endeavor to extract the pin code of Noud’s phone so that they could lead the Tichelaars towards an ambush. While every tactic failed, Betty and her shoe didn’t, and they got access to his phone. 

Katja immediately sent a text to Gijs, where it seemed like Noud had gotten ahold of Betty, and he was asking Gijs and his team to meet him. Gijs tried talking to him on the phone, but Katja convinced him that Noud had his hands full and he could only text. After that Katja sent Gijs a location, which was the Westerflank parking lot, and that triggered Gijs and his crew’s “spidey senses.” I mean, they had been in this business for a long time, so it was normal for them to figure out when they were being walked into a trap. Yet, Gijs said that they should go to that location because unless they do, they won’t know if Noud is alright or if he needs their help. Of course Katja didn’t go to that meeting point to confront the Tichelaars; Harry and his henchmen went there instead while packing all the firepower they could muster on that short notice. 

Jack woke up from his slumber, and the only person by his side, other than the attending nurses, was Marjolein. The nurse asked Jack if he remembered how he had gotten there, and Jack clearly recollected Noud shooting him. But the words that came out of his mouth were “Katja” and “Tichelaar.” Marjolein noticed that, but there was no way to ask Jack what he was talking about because he was still very unstable. So, while the nurses calmed him down, Marjolein went outside and called up Katja to let her know that Jack had woken and he was relatively fine. Then Marjolein shifted to the topic of the Tichelaars and tried to extract some info on them from Katja. But Katja only said that they were the suppliers for the Jackal and omitted the part about the Tichelaars trying to take over the business and orchestrating an assassination attempt on Jack. Marjolein accurately predicted that Jack had brought up the Tichelaars because they were the ones behind this whole fiasco, and she thought that they should pass on that information to the police, but Katja kept her from doing so because it’d ruin their plan to kill the Tichelaars. 

It seemed like Marjolein had accepted the narrative, but as soon as Katja hung up, she began Googling about the Tichelaars and found out how dangerous they were. Since Marjolein had a somewhat amicable relationship with Patrick, Katja told him to get to the hospital and stop Marjolein from doing anything stupid. However, the damage was already done, and Marjolein had figured out the kind of people that Jack was fraternizing with prior to the shooting. To make things worse, Harry and his men sort of failed at the task that they were given. Well, they did everything right at the aforementioned parking lot, but while checking if all the Tichelaars were dead or not, Gijs retaliated and killed Harry and his men. On top of that, Gijs forced Harry to reveal the location where Noud was being kept. Since Shanti, Betty, and Katja hadn’t asked Harry to give them live updates, they were unaware of this situation and were busy smoking a joint.

As per Katja’s instructions, Patrick got to the hospital to give Jack a brief update about how Shanti, Katja, and Betty were dealing with the Tichelaars and that he needed to stop Marjolein from telling the police that the Tichelaars were behind the assassination attempt on him. When Marjolein entered the chamber that Jack was in, Patrick bolted out of there because he had done his part. Marjolein began questioning Jack about the Tichelaars. He tried to deflect them, but eventually he had to admit that he was working with the Tichelaars, and when Betty soured their dynamic, Gijs sent Noud to take him out. However, they couldn’t reveal any of the police because that’d kill any chance of reviving the Jackal. That’s when Marjolein realized that her relationship with him had run its course, and she walked out on him. Back at the cabin, while Betty, Shanti, and Katja were waiting for Harry to come back with some good news, Noud managed to free himself. 

Therefore, when Shanti walked into the room Noud was being kept in, he held her hostage and ordered Katja and Betty to give the keys to the car to him. The women teamed up and incapacitated. Just when they thought that the worst was behind them, Gijs arrived at the cabin, thereby prompting the women to fight him. During that battle, Gijs accidentally killed Noud, and while he was reeling from the shock of that moment, Betty burnt Gijs’ face, and Katja killed him by impaling him with a fire iron. With the Tichelaars out of the way, Katja went to the hospital to meet Jack, tell him that his killers were dead, and explain how she and Patrick were sorry for momentarily going against him. I suppose Jack forgave them because Katja had redeemed himself in his eyes, while Patrick’s actions weren’t all that harmful to begin with. Also, if he disowned them, who would help him get the Jackal out of the pit that it was in and maintain its stature in the future? In an attempt to resurrect the Jackal, he had more enemies than he had before his tiff with Betty. Hence, it made sense for Jack to keep his family by his side at this volatile hour.

In Amsterdam Empire’s ending, Jack walked out of the hospital, and when Betty got that information from the news, she gave him a call, asking him to arrange a meeting. Jack accepted the proposition, and, to be honest, their conversation started on a good note. Jack even decided to give away half of his property to Betty because he had come to the realization that that’s what Betty deserved. But Betty made things complicated by asking for the Jackal along with the money that Jack was offering. Of course, Jack wasn’t willing to give away the Jackal to Betty just like that, and that’s when Betty pulled out Guido’s lighter that she had found at that cabin in the woods. Yeah, when Jack killed Guido, his lighter fell out, and it was lying there on the cabin’s front yard. When Betty went there for Noud’s interrogation session, she spotted it in order to use it against Jack at the opportune moment. And since that opportune moment had come, Betty dropped that wild card on the table. Jack tried to convince himself that the lighter would never prove that he had killed his business partner, but Betty provided a pretty compelling argument about how it would. The only way to maintain the secret about Guido’s death was to give the rights to the Jackal to Betty. 

Realizing that he had been backed into a corner, Jack actually handed over the Jackal to Betty whilst supposedly promising himself that he’ll reacquire it one day. Did Jack deserve that fate? I know that he’s the protagonist, and he might seem likable to some viewers, but he had cheated on 2 women and killed a friend. He absolutely deserved to lose the rights to the Jackal. Betty might have made some horrible mistakes, but that last play was pretty much perfect, and, after what she had been through, she needed that win. However, it’s one thing to get your hands on the Jackal and a whole different thing to run the enterprise. As far as I know, Betty doesn’t have the expertise to pull that off. Hence, she’ll either need to surround herself with people who can make the Jackal successful again or prepare herself mentally to watch it get wrangled out of her hands by Jack. Whatever the case may be, it seems like Betty and Jack are fated to play this tango until one of them croaks. They can’t love each other, and they can’t kill each other. Who’ll win and who’ll lose? That remains to be seen. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the show. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.