Straw Ending Explained: Find Out What Happens at the End of the New Tyler Perry Movie

This article contains major character or plot details.

Tyler Perry’s new film is called Straw for a simple reason. “Straw is about a woman who reaches her tipping point,” star Taraji P. Henson tells Tudum. In other words, Janiyah (Henson) is on her last straw.

“Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong in this one day,” Henson continues. “It’s about how humans operate in that heightened state of panic and anxiety and pressure. When the pot is boiling and it finally explodes, what happens? What does that look like, and how does it affect the people around you?” 

In Janiyah’s case, the explosion leads her down a desperate, chaotic path that even she doesn’t seem in full control of — starting with the killing of her boss, and ending with a standoff with the police as she (almost accidentally) holds a bank hostage. “She’s just trying to survive, trying to be a great mother to her daughter, and then the circumstances in life put her in this situation,” writer, director, and producer Perry says. 

But as the situation escalates, it becomes clear that there’s an even darker story at the center of Janiyah’s pain. Read on to dive into the twists and turns of Straw — if you’re ready for the truth.

Why is Janiyah’s daughter taken away from her?

Janiyah’s day is a whirlwind of indignities. She’s on the verge of being kicked out of her apartment over unpaid rent; she’s on the outs with her boss Richard (Glynn Turman) at work; and she struggles to withdraw money from her bank account to pay for her daughter Aria’s (Gabby Jackson) lunch. 

Everything culminates with a phone call from Aria’s principal — child protective services is threatening to take Aria away after bruises were discovered on her back. Janiyah knows those bruises are from a slip in their bathtub, but she’s still too late to stop the authorities from removing Aria from her care. 

It’s a crushing blow for the single mother. “For Janiyah, the thing that is keeping her alive is her daughter, because that’s her sense of belonging,” Henson says. “That’s the one thing that makes her feel like a person, because she brought life into this world and she takes it very seriously. She doesn’t have much, but all she has, she gives to her daughter.”

What happens to Janiyah’s boss Richard?

After Aria is taken away, things go from bad to worse. A racist cop (Tilky Jones) runs Janiyah off the road and threatens her; in the aftermath, her expired license is confiscated and her car is impounded. At work, Richard reprimands her for disappearing to her child’s school and fires her, promising to mail her final check. Janiyah walks home in the rain to find that her landlord has put her belongings out on the curb. 

Then things take a turn. Upon returning to Richard and pleading with him to hand over her final paycheck, Janiyah is caught in the middle of a grocery store robbery. Two masked men enter and hold Richard and Janiyah at gunpoint, forcing them to load a bag with cash. One of them calls Janiyah by name, reading from her name tag. 

A struggle ensues, and Janiyah gets her hands on one of the robbers’ guns; she shoots him, and the other flees, leaving Richard to accuse Janiyah of complicity in the botched robbery. After all, he thinks, one of the men knew her name. 

“Janiyah says in the script, ‘Nobody sees us,’ ” Perry says. “There’s a contingent of people walking around on this planet who feel that way, and especially ones who look like her and are in her position.” Richard doesn’t see Janiyah, and he certainly doesn’t listen to her. He pays a painful price for his callousness — in a haze, Janiyah shoots her boss in the middle of the 911 call accusing her of the robbery. 

Why does Janiyah hold up the bank?

At the bank across the street from the grocery store, Janiyah reaches her last straw. “She’s trying her best with very little, but what she lacks in opportunity, she has in abundance when it comes to the love she has for her child,” Henson says. Janiyah is desperate to get her child back, and she brings her bloodstained paycheck to the bank as a first step toward that goal. 

But things go south quickly. Janiyah’s expired license is still with the police, and she needs a form of identification to cash her check. At her wit’s end, Janiyah places the robber’s gun on the counter, and the bank shuts down. The bank manager sees the blinking lights of Aria’s forgotten science project in Janiyah’s bag and phones in a bomb threat to the police. 

“Janiyah is a woman who doesn’t really have a voice,” Henson says. “She hasn’t been allowed to find it and she’s just trying to survive under the radar. I don’t even really think she wants to be seen by many people.” Whether she likes it or not, she’s seen now: as the police close in around the bank, a tense standoff begins. Janiyah didn’t set out to commit a crime today, but she’s now holding the bank hostage. 

The bank section of the movie recalls a classic 1975 film, with a twist. “It does have a bit of Dog Day Afternoon,” Perry acknowledges. “I absolutely love Al Pacino’s performance in that — although their intention was to be criminals. That wasn’t Janiyah’s intention.” 

Why does Detective Raymond help Janiyah?

Janiyah’s police counterpart is Detective Raymond (Teyana Taylor), a hard-nosed police officer who nonetheless finds more in common with Janiyah than she initially expected. “I see a lot of Raymond in Janiyah and vice versa, with both of them being single moms, both of them coming from single-mom homes,” Taylor says. “So she could empathize and sympathize with her a lot as well.”

Raymond tracks down surveillance footage of the grocery store robbery and speaks to Janiyah’s neighbor Benny (Sinbad). Benny knows exactly who Janiyah is; even on her worst day, Janiyah never failed to give Benny some change. He communicates that to Officer Raymond, who leaves feeling sure that the seemingly hostile bank robber is actually just a woman in a difficult situation. 

That impression is solidified when Janiyah promises the police she’ll emerge if Officer Oliver (the cop who ran her off the road) leaves. Raymond sets out to discover which officer wrote Janiyah a ticket, negotiating with her over the phone as she does. “Even though we didn’t have many scenes together, [Taraji] helped me through a lot of my scenes emotionally,” Taylor says. “I’m hearing her voice in my head. It’s like she’s there without even being here.”

Raymond tracks down Oliver and puts him in his place, smacking him across the face and dismissing him from the crime scene. Raymond shows Janiyah a photo of the officer, meeting her demands. It’s time for her to leave the bank — but not before she receives a phone call from her mother.

What happens to Janiyah’s daughter?

Throughout Straw, Janiyah has been fighting for her daughter — even as she’s preparing to be arrested, she’s begging bank manager Nicole (Sherri Shepherd) to take care of her baby. Nicole, who like Raymond has found herself sympathetic to Janiyah’s plight, agrees, promising to bring Aria to visit her mother in jail. 

“When Janiyah walks into the bank with the weight of the world on her shoulders, it just calls to Nicole,” Shepherd says.  “It completely snaps her out of her whole suburban world. She sees that Janiyah’s a real person, and the way she can make a difference in this person’s life.” 

But Nicole won’t be able to bring Aria to visit her mother, for one simple reason. When Janiyah’s mother Delores (Cheryl Frazier) finally gets through to her daughter on the phone, she reveals the horrible truth: Aria died of a seizure the night before. The heartbroken Janiyah has been hallucinating her daughter’s presence all day. 

The twist was just as surprising to Perry as it was to his characters. “Realizing that the child wasn’t there the whole time, it was just as jarring to me as I think it is going to be to the audience,” Perry says. 

Filming the scene where Janiyah realizes the truth of her situation was an emotional experience for the cast and crew. “Directing that scene floored all of us,” Perry says. “I was in tears watching her from the monitor. And when the crew is touched, you know it’s going to touch the audience.”

What happens to Janiyah at the end?

As Janiyah grapples with her daughter’s death, an FBI extraction team begins the process of storming the bank, setting up what seems to be an explosive conclusion. But a peculiar sort of sisterhood comes between Janiyah and disaster. She sees a vision of herself riddled with bullets, but Nicole talks her off the ledge and walks her out the exit, standing alongside her as the police surround the pair. 

Detective Raymond puts herself between the FBI and Janiyah, and takes it upon herself to put the handcuffs on. “It’s nice to meet you,” she says — and Janiyah sees the crowd of protesters who have come to the bank to stand in solidarity with her dilemma.

“The movie represents three different types of Black women, who are all the same Black woman, who are all different walks of life, different stages of success, but can all empathize with each other,” Perry says. 

The film’s conclusion is a bittersweet one: Janiyah has escaped the deadliest fate imaginable, but she still has to find a way to live on. “What is the reality of this movie? What does that feel like?” Perry asks. “The choice is left to the audience to decide what they want to believe.”

Straw is now streaming on Netflix.

The Trailer for Tyler Perry’s Straw