‘The Healer’ Ending Explained: Faith-Based Film on Netflix Ends With Ambiguous Call to Action

The Healer may not have made a big impact when it came out in theaters in 2017, but now that the film has been added to Netflix, it’s a different story. This faith-based drama was recently added to the streaming service, and soon after appeared in Netflix’s Top Ten trending titles list. Today it sits at No. 8 on that list. So what exactly is The Healer all about?

This small movie has some surprisingly big names, including Jonathan Pryce and Jorge Garcia. From writer/director Paco Arango—also a philanthropist who runs a Spanish non-profit dedicated to providing support to children with cancer—The Healer is about a man who discovers he may or may not have the God-given gift of healing the sick, specifically in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. While the film doesn’t quite clear up whether its protagonist is a true healer or not, it does come close. It also shouts out actor Paul Newman, for reasons I will explain below. Let’s get into The Healer ending, explained.

What is the plot of The Healer on Netflix? What is The Healer about?

Alec Bailey (Oliver Jackson Cohen) is a British gambling addict who works in an electronics shop called The Healer. One day, he’s contacted by an uncle he’s never met named Raymond Heacock (the great Jonathan Pryce). Raymond offers to pay off all of Alec’s debt, if Alec agrees to leave England and live in Nova Scotia—a Canadian province—for an entire year. Before Raymond leaves, he asks if Alec has ever noticed anything “odd” about himself. Alec has no idea what he’s talking about. What could it mean?!

After some nudging from a priest, who tells him it’s all part of God’s plan, Alec goes to Nova Scotia. He’s to live in Raymond’s own out-dated house (No internet! One phone!) on the outskirts of a tiny town. Alec meets a woman named Cecilia (Camilla Luddington), who asks him out for coffee within seconds of meeting him. Alec, reasonably, thinks she’s into him—especially after she places an ad in the local paper to help drum up some customers for his electronics business—but as it turns out, she’s into women.

The ad Cecilia places for Alec “The Healer” makes it sound like he miraculously heals people, rather than electronics. Locals express surprise that he would advertise, given that “it’s supposed to be a secret.” Others break down into tears, having their false hope crushed that their loved ones will be healed. The local priest, played by Hurley from LOST (Jorge Garcia), thinks Alec is running a scam. While Hurley is telling Alec off, he has a heart attack. Two young girls videotape Alec trying to move Hurley’s body and think he killed them. Then Hurley wakes up on Alec’s truck, apparently fine.

Soon after, the people who went to see Alec find that they have, in fact, been healed. The local police officer, Tom, arrests Alec for killing Hurley, and when Hurley finally shows up and to clear Alec’s name, Hurley tells Alec that not only did he save his life, he also saved his faith. Hurley believes Alec really is a healer.

Alec finds a secret room in the basement of Raymond’s house full of portraits of Alec’s ancestors. Raymond magically appears and tells Alec he has the family gift of healing, and that this is the wall of healers over the years. How does it work? Well, according to Raymond, all Alec has to do is be nearby the sick or injured, and if they are meant to be healed, they will be.  Alec has the option to reject this gift, and, for whatever reason, he has until midnight on the day after his birthday to decide. (God works in mysterious ways.)

Alec decides to reject the gift. The next day, a desperate couple from out of town arrives and asks Alec to heal their daughter Abigail (Kaitlyn Bernard), who has cancer. He sends them away. Abigail—your classic sassy teen girl with cancer—confronts him later. She tells him she doesn’t believe in healers. She wants to spend the weekend with him anyhow, for the sake of her parents. He reluctantly agrees.

Alec and Abigail montage the weekend away to George Michael’s “Faith.” Abigail tells Alec that Cecilia is lying about being a lesbian, and, of course, she’s right. This is a Christian movie, folks. The guy needs to get the girl, not have a lesbian best friend!

How does The Healer end? What is The Healer ending, explained?

Alec has a dream about his dead brother Charlie and wakes up, racked with guilt. He confesses his twin brother died of cancer, too. He wonders if he could have saved Abigail if he had chosen to accept the gift. So Alec begs Raymond to give him his healing gift back. Raymond says Alec will have to talk to God if he wants to bend the rules. Alec runs to the church and demands God give his gift back. He also calls God an idiot, for good measure.

The next day, Alec gets a note from Abigail to call her. She tells him that despite her medical death sentence, she has miraculously gone into remission. Abigail tells Alec he should take the credit for healing her, even if she herself doesn’t believe it.

Alec and Cecilia have celebratory sex. Alec runs into Raymond while he’s getting a midnight glass of water, and Raymond tells Alec that his father didn’t want to accept the gift, either, but that something changed his mind. Raymond once again asks Alec if he’s ever noticed anything odd about himself. Alec stares at Cecilia’s border collie, Batman, and—perhaps remembering the beginning of the movie in which Batman barked at Alec and acted strange around him—realizes he is the healer after all. We see his portrait on the wall of healers, and the movie ends.

What does The Healer ending mean? What is The Healer ending, explained?

The Healer stops short of definitively declaring that God is capable of magical healing, but it comes very, very close. Did Raymond put up Alec’s portrait on the wall, or did it magically appear? Did Alec actually heal Abigail, or is it more important to just give the people something to believe in? It’s ambiguous. But I would say that, yeah, in the world of this movie, Alec is a magical healer. Pretty much all the signs point to it. Dogs never lie!

Is The Healer based on a true story? What does The Healer credit sequence mean?

No. The Healer is a completely fictional story. It is not based on a true story. (To be clear, if you are being charged money to be magically “healed” by a “healer,” you are, in fact, being scammed.)

That said, a credit sequence after the movie asserts that “healers do exist,” in the sense that the real “healers” are people doing charity work. It shouts out actor Paul Newman as an example of a real-life healer because Newman founded The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a non-profit summer camp for children with cancer and other serious illnesses, which expanded to SeriousFun Children’s Network, a global community of 30 similar camps and programs.

What was Paul Newman’s involvement with The Healer?

All of the proceeds of The Healer were donated to Newman’s foundation, SeriousFun Children’s Network. Arango, the director, worked with Newman before the actor died in 2008, through his own foundation for kids with cancer, which you can find out more about at aladina.org. Arango served on the board of SeriousFun Children’s Network and decided to create a charity film to help raise funds. So even if The Healer didn’t provide a satisfactory ending, hopefully, you can feel satisfied with the knowledge that you helped out a good cause, simply by watching it.

Watch The Healer on Netflix