Exterritorial Ending Explained: What Happened to Josh? Is He Real?

Netflix’s ‘Exterritorial’ is a dynamic action thriller in which a woman is both the hunter and prey in a mysterious overarching conspiracy. The German film revolves around Sara Wulf, a special forces-trained veteran who is dealing with a traumatic past. Therefore, in an effort to find a new start, she decides to move to America with her 6-year-old son, Josh. Yet, once at the US Consulate, the young boy ends up going missing, much to his mother’s horror. Worse yet, when she tries to reach out to the regional security officer Eric Kynch, the otherwise sympathetic man begins doubting whether or not her son ever set foot on the premises. As a result, Sara finds herself becoming a fugitive on the consulate grounds, hellbent on finding her kid. However, in doing so, she accidentally ends up uncovering something infinitely menacing about her own past. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Exterritorial Plot Synopsis

Ever since Sara’s return from her time in Afghanistan, the former soldier has struggled with PTSD and flashbacks that often end up resulting in violent outbursts. Nonetheless, she tries her best to cope with her trauma in order to bring some semblance of normalcy to her life as a single mother. For the same reason, she makes the decision to take up a job opportunity in the US, eager for her son, Josh, to be closer to his late father’s family. The duo’s trip to the local US consulate agency drags on for some time in the waiting room area, which compels Sara to take Josh to the indoor playpen for a while. However, when she returns from a brief coffee run, it’s to find the playroom unnervingly empty without any signs of her son.

Naturally, Sara’s frantic search for him ends up catching the attention of the security guard, who brings her face-to-face with Eric Kynch, regional security officer. Initially, he is sympathetic and even willing to open high-security doors to help her out. Even so, everything changes when Gunnery Sergeant Donovan reveals that there are no records of Sara entering the building with a child. Everything from witness statements to records logs suggests the woman came into the building on her own. Consequently, the same, paired with her delusional and violent past, compels the Agency to try to sequester her off the premises. Nonetheless, since the German authorities have no jurisdiction in the US Consulate, the mother knows that she won’t stand a chance of investigating Josh’s disappearance if she leaves.

For the same reason, Sara ends up using her special forces skills to escape from Kynch’s surveillance over her. Instead of lurking in the CCTV-filled halls of the Agency, she chooses to scale the outside of the building through windows. After some trial and error, she ends up sneaking into the basement area, where she breaks into a woman’s room, who is staying over as a guest of the Consulate. The woman, who seems to be harboring a secret of her own, strikes up a deal with the veteran to help her look for Josh if she repays the favor by helping her escape from the Agency. As the duo sneaks around the Consulate, they track down the lockers of a suspicious man whom Sara had spied exchanging a duffle bag around the same time Josh went missing.

The duffel bag ends up sheltering blocks of drugs inside. Still, before Sara can follow this thread, a pair of deadly kidnappers attack her newly acquainted accomplice. While the veteran manages to fight these men off, it also lands her right in Kynch’s grasp. However, much to her horror, the man makes a different revelation instead of outright punishing her. Through CCTV footage, Kynch proves that Sara never entered the building with Josh. Just when the mother begins giving in to this narrative, the other woman, Kira, breaks her out of the medical ward, insisting that the Agency isn’t telling the whole truth because they’re already trying to cover up her kidnapping incident. Thus, the two women decide to investigate some more, which brings them to Donovan’s office. There, a string of emails reveals a strange, yet hidden connection between Sara and Kynch, back from their time in the army.

Exterritorial Ending: Is Josh Real? Why Did Kynch Kidnap Him?

Early on after Josh’s disappearance, several elements begin to suggest that his mother had imagined the entire thing in her head. Record logs that should hold both visitors’ names show only the mother’s entry, and even eventually revealed security camera footage shows her alone in the waiting room. All this evidence implicates Sara in attacking people and disrupting order without any real reason behind it. Even though Kynch and the Consul General, Deborah Allen, are sympathetic toward her plight, they insist that they can do nothing to help her out of the situation. Everything points toward the unimaginable possibility that Sara’s psychological issues, that have previously manifested as psychotic and delusional breakdowns, had led her to imagine the entire ordeal.

If Sara had indeed lost Josh, Kynch asserts it must’ve been somewhere outside the Consulate grounds. Nonetheless, rivaling his assertions, the mother has one single piece of evidence that reinforces her truth: Josh’s little action figure. Sara had found the toy in the play area where she had last seen her son. If someone had indeed kidnapped him for whatever reason, the toy had accidentally been left behind as a testament to the same. Initially, she assumes the abduction must have had something to do with the underground drug smuggling happening in the Agency. Nonetheless, a confrontation with the smuggler tech guy Martello confirms otherwise. Better yet, a discovery about Kynch reveals an entirely new angle.

On her way to the Consulate Agency, Sara had received an email from a journalist who claimed to have found some recent information about her career-ending incident in Afghanistan. Back in her army days, when she met the American soldier who would end up being Josh’s father, the German and US forces ran a mission together that ended up being an ambush. Eight lives were lost on that day, with her emerging as the only survivor. When Sara and Kira go through Donovan’s emails, they find evidence that proves the veteran was actually lured into the Agency with a planted job offer. This means that someone wanted the veteran to be in the building.

A quick glimpse at her own emails, particularly the one sent to her by the journalist, reveals that Kynch, who also served in the military, met up with someone in Islamabad, Pakistan, around the same time as Sara’s last mission. In fact, the man he was meeting up with was a Taliban operative—one who was a part of the group that had ambushed the German/US soldiers. Therefore, Sara assumes that this entire thing had been a trap set up by Kynch to get rid of her since she’s the only one who can prove that he had sold out his nation for a quick buck. Nonetheless, that isn’t the entire truth. In the story’s climax, which finds the protagonist and the antagonist trapped in a cell together, Kynch reveals his true motivations.

As it turns out, Kynch hasn’t shed his money-hungry ways throughout the years. His most recent endeavor involved opening up the door to a pair of kidnappers to facilitate the abduction of Kira Wolkowa. Kira is the daughter of a rich German businessman who was involved in prominent money laundering schemes. As such, his family earned a target on their back when he switched parties, inviting the authorities’ ire. Consequently, they ended up killing Kira’s father and swiftly moved on to his daughter, who had a flash drive of much-coveted evidence. For the same reason, she was now on the run as a refugee at the Consulate. Nonetheless, Kynch significantly slowed down her transfer process until he could get Sara into the building. His actual plan revolves around using the lethal veteran and her meltdown, orchestrated through Josh’s disappearance, at the Agency as a scapegoat to explain Kira’s abduction. Nonetheless, his plan ends up in pieces once Sara saves the woman and helps her escape.

Does Sara Die? Does She Reunite With Her Son?

Sara’s pursuit of her son, once she realizes that Kynch has kidnapped him, leads her to turn the tables and corner his young daughter, Aileen. Taking her away to the detention centers in the basement, under the guise of babysitting, the veteran locks herself and the kid up in a high-security cage cell. The cell can only be opened from within and has an air supply valve that can be shut off. Sara enters this cage with Aileen and threatens to let both of them die via oxygen depletion if Kynch doesn’t bring Josh to her before the timer runs out. Consequently, she effectively gives the man an ultimatum: his own daughter’s life for her son.

Nonetheless, Kynch remains confident that Sara won’t kill an innocent child. As such, he continues to play dumb, insisting that the veteran is delusional to the point of danger. Thus, the two find themselves in a lethal game of chicken, one which the mother ultimately loses. Still, before letting Aileen free, she makes one demand: a conversation with her father inside the cage. The Consul allows for this to happen while armed guards continue to surround the cage from the outside. On the inside, a tense interrogation follows, in which Kynch shuts off the comms. He also relents and reveals his master plan to her. At the end of his confession, he pulls out his gun, shooting Sara in the stomach and himself in the leg.

As a result, Kynch has the perfect tale to wrap up the entire mess with, painting Sara as the aggressor who got killed in an instance of self-defence. In the aftermath, she nearly gives in to her demise. Nevertheless, she pulls through, unwilling to leave her son orphaned and in the hands of a maniac. While the guards outside set a bomb around the cage, a severely injured Sara reaches for Aileen’s recording toy, which she had hidden in the bunk. Ultimately, she manages to play it to the comms device before the guards can blow the cage up. Thus, Kynch’s confession, which he had made in the privacy of the sealed cell, is revealed to everyone, including the Consul. This finally makes Allen and the others believe her, pushing them to bring first aid to her, while Josh’s whereabouts are extracted from Kynch. In the end, the medics manage to save Sara’s life, and Josh is finally returned to her side, safe and sound.

Did Kira Escape From the Consulate? What Happened to Her?

Even though Kira’s narrative wraps up before the climax, her fate remains a point of intrigue. So much of Sara’s story ends up being unwittingly intertwined with the other woman’s life. For one, the only reason Kynch targeted the veteran was to facilitate Kira’s abduction. Given her family history, the young woman is at grave risk while in her own country. Nonetheless, once her transfer to the States ends up taking much longer than expected, she begins to realize that it isn’t safe for her in the Consulate Agency either. The only way Kira can truly get to safety is by traveling to America, where she can use her father’s collected evidence to negotiate her own freedom.

Kira’s kindness and empathy toward Sara lead to a strong bond between the two women over the course of their dangerous adventures. For the same reason, once the veteran realizes that Josh’s disappearance has something to do with Kynch and a long-buried conspiracy, she rushes to get Kira out of the building. According to her, the mission is simply too dangerous to risk the other woman’s life. Ultimately, Kira hitches a ride by sneaking into one of the trucks at the warehouse, the only way out of the Agency save for the front door. A few weeks after this entire horrid experience, Sara is looking forward to moving with her son once she has recovered and secured an actual job in the US. Furthermore, as a phone call between her and Kira reveals, the latter is already in the States, safe and back with her own mother.

What Happens to Kynch? Does He Get Caught?

Unlike Kira, Sara, and Josh, Kynch doesn’t have a happy ending waiting for him at the end of the line. The man has a long list of crimes to his name, including his recent attempts to manipulate and frame a war veteran by abducting her son. Just over the course of one day, he has opened the Consulate to outside threats, tried to allow for the abduction of a refugee, while manipulating official surveillance footage to use another veteran as a scapegoat. This alone promises a bleak future for the man.

On the other hand, Kynch is also responsible for selling out his country’s secrets by trading information with the Taliban during his service in the Middle East. His greedy ways, born due to his own contempt for the army after they tossed him away in the light of an injury, had resulted in the deaths of eight soldiers. Moreover, this conspiracy, which he had managed to keep buried for years, could finally resurface with video evidence, Sara’s testimony, and his own confession. Thus, it’s no surprise that in the epilogue, the US authorities have detained him only weeks after the incident.