'Stay' Ending Explained And Film Summary: What Did Jeremiah’s Spirit Want?

Jas Summers’ Stay is probably the last horror movie you’d expect to see included in Hulu’s Halloween releases. For starters, it’s a far cry from scary. And at best, it’s a tad too melodramatic narrative focused solely on grief, stifled emotions, and the far reaching effects of loss. I mean, in a sense all that is scary. But Stay would’ve fared better as a focused family drama with subtle notes of the supernatural pushing the characters to a long-awaited emotional catharsis. And even then, I wouldn’t rate it very high for its sincerity to the story’s themes. Because more often than not, Stay is way more trite than it needs to be just to throw you off the scent.

Spoiler Alert

How do Miles and Kiara get stuck in the house?

You never really want to see anything bad happen to a couple who look as happy as Miles and Kiara did on their wedding day. Bittersweet flashbacks to a past I bet they both could go back to remember them as two people who found the whole world in each other. So the last thing you expect to watch them go through is an excruciating separation. Something’s happened to them. Something that was big enough to dull the glow of their love to a point where they can’t even be together. Kira’s certainly not taking it well. In fact, she’s decided to spare herself the pain of a life without her “Milestone,” as she used to call her now-estranged husband. Kiara’s last letter to Miles doesn’t blame him for any of it. All it does is mourn the connection she’s lost from her family, her ancestors, and herself. It details the simple truth that Kiara just can’t go on being as broken as she is. But when she drowns herself in the bathtub with a stomach full of sleeping pills, a strange force yanks her out. Kiara can’t die. But what baffles her even more is that she can hear voices in her house, the house that she’s in the process of packing up and handing over to the real estate agents. Kiara and Miles haven’t lived here together in a while. And right now the state Kiara is in, trying to make sense of all the peculiarity around her, I doubt that she can’t get to packing Miles’ things. The broken record player playing Miles’s favorite song and the door opening and closing by itself are clear signs for Kiara that something supernatural is afoot. That’s not something that Kiara needs any additional time to come to terms with. She believes in it all. Hell, she practically specializes in spirits. You see, all the women going back in her family line have been practitioners of Vodou. And even though Kiara’s mother’s early death has somewhat detached her from her ancestry, she somehow ended up circling back to her roots anyway. As a scholar, Kiara researched Vodun, and while Miles took care of the finances with his boxing gym, Kiara took the time to write a book on the same–The Last Priestess of Vodun. With her book, Kiara wanted to do her part to fix the sigmas the west has relentlessly pushed against the ancient African religion of Vodun. But all that passion belonged to the old Kiara. Now, she’s somehow holding on when Miles comes over to pick up his stuff. Miles is rather cliche with his quick dismissal of what Kiara has just been through. There’s this sense that Miles has gotten comfortable with belittling Kiara’s love for the tokens of her ancestry, something that he once encouraged her to pursue. I mean, he did make light jokes about voodoo dolls and stuff before. But now, he practically looks down on Kiara for her belief in the supernatural. From the way they lash out at each other over everything, you know that this is the language they’ve been speaking to each other for a while. The bitterness they’ve allowed has settled into a wall they can’t break anymore. So even though there’s love–because why else would Miles stay the night and take care of her–they’ve become incapable of hearing each other out. Spiritually potential dreams don’t let Kiara find peace even in sleep. A book, a whole lot of symbols, and perhaps what is the metaphysical manifestation of the dark corner of Kiara mind itself. I’ll go on to explain the contextual significance of the things Kiara sees and hears in her dream as she walks around the house. But for now, let’s just say that nothing’s the same after they wake up. What they’re met with in the living room is a gigantic mess of the things that were boxed, and the recording of Kiara and Miles’ wedding bows stab them both right in their hearts as they try to make sense of the weird incidents. They don’t get a whole lot of time to do that. This is mounting up to be much more than Miles wants to deal with. And even though there are signs that Miles isn’t 100% on board with the idea of the two of them parting ways forever–he still wears the rings, and the thought of throwing away the broken record player that Kiara gave him on one of his birthdays breaks his heart–Miles lets his pettiness be his mouthpiece. He knows very well that his accusation that Kiara did all this in a drunken, manic state will hurt her. But that’s really all he wants to do when he’s angry. And he’s pretty angry that for some reason, the door just won’t open. They’re stuck in the house, and for some freaky reason the two guys from the movers company can’t see them through the glass as Miles desperately bangs on it. Something doesn’t want Miles and Kiara to leave the house. And it’s willing to do more than lock the door and close the blinds to keep them in. Miles’ disbelief is proven woefully wrong when the buzzing entity is furious at his impatience. Miles is dragged across the floor by something neither of them can see. So it certainly looks like whether they like it or not, Miles and Kiara have been trapped inside a house by something supernatural. 

What do Miles and Kiara go through in the house?

A lot comes out in fights. But that’s not quite the case with Stay’s often frustratingly misleading dialogues. They try to tell you some and hold some back. But what they do tell you is worded in an unnecessarily twisted flow. What we do know by now is that at some point, Miles left Kiara. He hasn’t claimed that it was easy for him to do it. But in that process, he’s also overlooked just how hard it has been for Kiara. There’s mention of a certain “him” that Kiara has supposedly let come between them. And an angry statement phrased that way is bound to have connotations of infidelity, but things really couldn’t be further from that. Once you do fight who Miles was talking about, his accusation would make even less sense to you. But you can chalk that up to unimaginative writing. Evidently, therapy didn’t work for them. The way Miles gaslights Kiara over all the complaints she’s had about him over the years paints the picture of a marriage where Kiara’s pain went unseen. She doesn’t mind calling him a coward for leaving. She also doesn’t feel the need to tell him what she sees in the mirror. Why would she even go through the trouble when he’s just going to call her a drunk? She’s seen a dark, eerie version of herself in the mirror, and the reflection grabbed her throat. But while she keeps this from Miles, she knows that now is not the time to address the truths that he can’t seem to believe. Kiara thinks the entity haunting her house is similar to one that belongs to a legend she heard in Benin during her research on Vodun. This entity locks people up in their houses. Kiara can’t really afford to be hurt that Miles is blatantly disrespectful of her faith and the power of her ancestral link. She’s gotten down to business with her salt circle and a Vodun book of spells. But whoever or whatever is haunting her house doesn’t like the writings on the book too much. They all disappear in front of Kiara’s eyes. And what appears on the page is a symbol she knows very well. In fact, she knows it so well that she’s got it tattooed on her arm. The symbol, as Kiara recognizes, is Oya, the African goddess of death and rebirth. Miles doesn’t see this because he doesn’t need to see this. The entity knows who will understand the signals they’re being sent. Kiara is now certain that someone is trying to communicate with her. Miles obviously doesn’t buy any of this. But it’s just become his thing to disagree with anything Kiara says or believes. It’s almost like he’s punishing her every step of the way because he’s holding on to a sense of rejection. Even when Kiara wants him to take accountability for leaving, he points the finger at her for not trying to work on their marriage. And since it’s all about hurting Kiara for Miles, he also doesn’t mind saying that he would be relieved to be done with her once all this is over. But Miles isn’t getting off this ship that easy. The entity that’s trapped them doesn’t like the idea of Miles leaving one bit. It takes the house up by a storm and communicates its rage over the way Miles has been hurting Kiara. This can’t be a harmful spirit, right? That doesn’t mean that there aren’t demons that Kiara and Miles have to fight. As it so happens, they each fight and conquer the demons that have been holding them back. For Kiara, the demon is her hopelessness and her wish to end her life. So by fighting for her life when the demon holds her head down into the water, Kiara regains her strength to fight for herself. It isn’t that simple for Miles. He’s had a complicated relationship with boxing. When Kiara stumbled on the letters they used to send each other back when they were dating, she remembered how Miles seemed to be entirely consumed by her. For Miles, boxing and Kiara kind of went hand in hand. His opponent had knocked all his strength out of him in one of the fights. That happened to be the first time that Miles saw Kiara, that too through the fence. But just one sight of her was fiery enough for Miles to turn the whole fight around and win against a far stronger opponent. And ever since, they’d both been thriving in the light they brought into each other’s life. Miles had to retire when he busted his knees. But he was fine with running a gym as long as he had Kiara by his side. It makes sense that Miles’ demon is a version of himself that represents his rage. Miles’ anger has blinded him to a lot of things. Lucky for him, his demon is only breaking all his bones spiritually. Miles needed to feel this pain to be open to understanding the biggest mistake he’s made. In the trippy, creepy house, Miles is brought back to helplessly watch himself give up on Kiara. At this point, we don’t know what happened to Kiara for her to look for peace in the bottom of the bottles. But we do know that Miles had enough at some point. He gave Kiara an ultimatum instead of holding her and telling her that he loved her. That’s now his anger stood in the way of him being there for the person he loved. And now, Miles’ tearful eyes watches an old very stupid him walk away from Kiara. This is the first time he sees what happened behind the door after he left. Kiara broke down crying after Miles abandoned her in their home. And now that Miles can see how much he hurt her, he comes closer than ever to acknowledging the part that he played in damaging their relationship. In ways they could never have expected, being stuck in a house that’s being haunted by a buzzing entity has been more enlightening for them than all the therapy sessions they went on. They’ve been forced into being in the kind of headspace where they can see things clearly, without their preconceived notions or their wish to be loud in their complaints getting in the way. Kiara’s reconnection with her the spirits of the matriarchs of her lineage is something she’s put off since she was 16 and tried to conjure her mother’s spirit. This is the second time Kiara’s summoning the strength of her ancestors to communicate with the spirit in her house. With her mother’s half-translated notes, some millet flour, an amethyst pendant that her mother gave her, and the strength of her spirit, Kiara’s seance transports her into the realm of her ancestral spirits. But it’s not her time to join them yet. She’s guided by a link that connects all her ancestors. To fix the link that has broken and detached her from them, Kiara will have to rely on the support of her guiding star–that’s the advice she received from the spirit that guides her in the unknown realm. The spirit also mentions that all that she needs is right beside her. In the real world, Miles is sitting beside Kiara. It’s funny how the spirits know him as her guiding star, considering she used to call him the moon, and he was her north star. 

Why did Jeremiah’s spirit lock his parents in the house?

It didn’t take long for Stay’s narrative to make one thing obvious. The spirit who’s been keeping Kiara and Miles from leaving the house wants them to figure something out together. And for a while there, it even looks like the spirit will go out of its way to clear the path of communication between Miles and Kiara. The drawer by Kiara’s bed opens by itself and reveals her suicide note to Miles. The entity wanted him to know where Kiara stands without himself. She feels like she has nothing to live for ever since Miles has left her. This is the one thing that Miles can never accept. He’s known Kiara to be the brightest spot in every room. He’s known her to be smart, decisive, and sensible. Now that circumstances have kind of made vulnerability a necessity for the two of them, Miles speaks his truth for the first time. When Kiara struggled, Miles wanted her to come to him. He took it personally when she put a wall up between them. But whatever had happened for the two of them to even get that detached had damaged Kiara too much. She couldn’t stand herself. And she could hardly let herself be loved when she hated herself. 

The last seance that Kiara performs to pay her respect to the spirit opens her eyes to things even the last priestess of Vodun couldn’t imagine. But first Kiara has to remember the ritualistic dance that opens herself up to the strength and the blessings of the matriarchs who came before her. The ritual once again brings her back to the realm of her ancestral spirits, but this time, she’s about to learn the truth of her circumstances. We’re swung back to a time when things were going great between Kiara and Miles. In fact, Kiara had just found out that they were pregnant. Life with little Jeremiah was a dream come true for Miles and Kiara. He was a perfect blend of Miles’ thrillchaser side and Kiara’s curiosity about the world. You can already see the tragedy coming when you see the abundance of their happiness reach its peak. On Jeremiah’s birthday, while he played outside with a toy plane he’d just gotten from his dad, Kiara received the news that the New York Times was all praises about her book. Her agent booked a tour for her, and she also couldn’t wait for Kiara to write another book. All it took was one moment of overwhelm and distraction for Jeremiah to walk out of Kiara’s sight. By the time Miles got home with supplies for his birthday party, Jeremiah had drowned in their swimming pool. Life as they knew it ended for Kiara and Miles at that moment. And after that everything went downhill. Here’s where you can decipher the dream Kiara had early on in the film. In the dream, Kiara was getting a call from Sharon, her agent. The phone drowned in the sink full of water. That was Kiara’s traumatized subconscious making her relive the worst day of her life. In the dream, her books were in the over, burning up and making the fire alarm go off. That’s a twisted take on Kiara’s guilt over being happy about the success she was celebrating while her son was dying. Kiara not only fell from the brink of happiness, but she’s also haunted by the feeling that she’s responsible for her son’s death. Not to speak out of turn, but why did it take for Kiara and Miles to be trapped in a house by a supernatural entity for them to learn the most fundamental truths about each other’s grief? How bad was the therapist that this is the first time Kiara is opening up about her guilt over not watching her son for a minute and losing him forever? And how little was Miles thinking about moving forward that this is the first time he’s even acknowledging that they should let go and move on. But wait, we’ve still got the most obvious ending to dissect yet. 

In Stay’s ending, when Miles and Kiara finally admit that they need to move on from the pain of their shared loss, the entity reveals himself to be none other than the spirit of their late son, Jeremiah. He’s been trying to get his parents back together. The future that Miles and Kiara are going to have together, they owe to Jeremiah. Even after he was gone, Jeremiah’s spirit stayed back to fix his parents. In a way, he also plays a part in fixing the detached link between Kiara and her ancestors. When Kiara and Miles got married, she told him that he was now connected to her lineage. Miles’ departure from her life shattered that connection, and Kiara found herself lost in the abyss of despair. With the gift that Jeremiah had given them, Kiara and Miles seem to have found the courage and the will to try life out again. They’re doing it together this time as well, as they should. And it looks like Kiara’s pregnant again. With her second book on the way, Kiara can once again look forward to having everything she and Miles deserve. God knows they’ve worked hard for it. 

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