'The Boys in the Band' Ending Explained by the Cast

As Michael abandons the wreckage of a party he hosted, and subsequently ruined, he leaves the Upper East Side apartment that serves as the backdrop of The Boys In The Band with a killer final line: "As my father said to me when he died in my arms: 'I don't understand any of it. I never did.' Turn the lights out when you leave."

These words, serenely delivered by Jim Parsons as he nears the end of a downward spiral, have long haunted audiences of Mart Crowley's landmark play. In a piece loaded with questions – of authenticity, of sexuality, of intention – it seems to be the biggest mystery hanging over a play that has intermittently pin-balled between Broadway stages, the West End and the big screen.

Finding meaning remains difficult. Crowley, who sadly passed away earlier this year, was happy to play co-pilot to the directors steering his work. "He really encouraged me, and us, to make it our own," says Joe Mantello, the director of both the 2018 Broadway revival and its latest Netflix adaptation. "He wasn't dogmatic about a single approach to the material, and so he was incredibly generous. I don't want to say he was surrendering, as he was part of the process, but it was important to him that our version of this was unique to us, and that he wanted to try capture something that happened 50 years ago."

View full post on Youtube

Still, Mantello has an idea of what Michael – his Michael – meant as he ventures out into the smoking, broiling streets of New York in 1968. "At that point, he is in an absolute state of confusion not only about himself, but about the state of the world. I think he's been traumatised by society, by people who tell him he has no value and that he's sick and he knows this is wrong. But he can't sort this out for himself, and he's trying to find answers and value in his life in a world that isn't giving him any answers."

In the film's final shot, his slow walk picks up speed as he turns off into the darkness, eventually breaking out into a run as jazz music moans to the end credits. "What the film hopefully captures when he leaves that apartment is how you could make a case that he's running from something, or running towards something. Both have equal value at its core, and it still doesn't make any sort of sense to him."

As a gay man struggling with addiction, and a ruptured sense of self, it's unclear if there is any solace for the antihero of The Boys In The Band. "I think that a majority of the darkest parts of this story can actually all be traced back to that level of not allowing myself to be who I really am," says Parsons of his turn as Michael. "And beyond that, really disliking and having been taught to dislike who I am, the fear of losing love if I'm fully who I am." One could argue, then, that as Michael sprints into the darkness, a sense of lightness or illumination will continue to elude him.

Netflix

Such nihilism gives credence to critics who have long scorned The Boys In The Band as a play that wrongly mires the gay experience in nothing but misery. But for Matt Bomer, the American Horror Story alum who plays Michael's former flame Donald, it's his own character's observations that point to a brighter conclusion. Before Michael leaves, he asks for the time. "It's early," Donald replies – and for Bomer, that simple response means so much more. "It's an intentional line. It was early in the gay rights movement, Stonewall happened only months later, and unless change did happen, we were bound to repeat these nights over and over again."

Change did come. Those very streets that swallow Michael at the film's close go on to see protest, anger and uprising in 1969, when LGBTQ+ people fought back en masse against police raids at the now famous Stonewall Inn. It is seen as one of the most pivotal moments in queer history, and became the spiritual predecessor to Pride marches all over the world.

Like Mantello says, Michael may be running from something – or indeed, towards something. Thousands just like him however, found themselves running against the tide, towards a lighter, more visible, safer space as the gay rights movement gained traction. There's every chance Michael was among them.

The Boys In The Band is available on Netflix now