The Ending of Netflix’s ‘El Camino Christmas’ Explained: Did Eric Find What He Was Looking For?

‘El Camino Christmas’ is a 2017 American comedy film available on Netflix. Directed by David E. Talbert, it features a star-studded cast, including Luke Grimes, Vincent D’Onofrio, Dax Shepard, and Jessica Alba. The movie was released on December 8, 2017, and despite having a stellar cast, it didn’t garner all that much attention. What makes ‘El Camino’ different is the fact that you need to go through a lot of stress to get to the wholesome part of the story, and the ending leaves much to be desired and the overall execution of the plot was criticized for the most part. Due to this, we decided to explain the movie in more detail, as well as its ending.

‘El Camino Christmas’ is ‘Love Actually’ of comedy movies

The movie starts in medias res. There is a shootout in front of the liquor store, and that’s pretty much the only context we’re given. There is a lot of police and a lot of action in that first scene, but the movie suddenly shifts to 39 hours earlier, and we are introduced to a slate of characters whose ordinary lives will be driving this story forward.

Carl Hooker (Vincent D’Onofrio) is a police officer in El Camino, but somewhere along the line, he stopped caring and gave himself to alcohol. He is missing some important emergency calls and overall has a pretty crappy attitude toward people and his work in general. Bob Fuller (Kurtwood Smith) is his boss and the Sheriff of El Camino County. He rips him a new one after missing a fire emergency, but the Sheriff is already an old guy, and he will soon have to be replaced; he realizes that at the moment, there’s really no one decent to take over his job.

Deputy Billy Calhoun (Dax Shephard) is Bob’s nephew or something; in any case, they are related by blood. Billy is a complete idiot, and besides being a deputy at the police station, he also runs a local motel. The motel is visited by Eric Norris (Luke Grimes). Eric Norris just arrived in El Camino, and Billy is immediately suspicious of him due to driving a nice car. When Eric’s card declines and he decides to pay everything in cash, Billy’s mind starts running several different theories in his mind that are brought to another level when Carl comes to visit him. They immediately assume that Eric is involved in some kind of drug-running operation and that the target has been placed on his back.

In his room, Eric notices that his toilet has overflowed and needs to be fixed. It seems like such a minor detail, but it will be important later.

The next character is Kate Daniels (Michelle Mylett); she has a young son with developmental issues who refuses to talk despite being young herself. She works at a local liquor store for Vincente Santos (Emilio Rivera) and goes to school at night to get a degree in developmental biology. At the diner, Kate and Eric meet because Eric decided to treat her son, Seth with a piece of cake Kate couldn’t afford at the moment.

Then we have Beth Flowers (Jessica Alba) who is in El Camino to cover a wholesome Christmas story about a handicapped librarian finally setting up a theater play that was her passion for some time. Beth is a journalist, and she is heavily pregnant; despite her circumstances, Beth is bored with covering small-town stories and dreams of covering something that will put her on a national program.

It all started with a clogged toilet

As we’ve said, Eric had a clogged toilet and decided to deal with that himself. He purchased a bottle of cleaning supplies, unaware that he was being tracked by Billy and Carl. Billy and Carl assume that the cleaning supplies that Eric bought will be used to make meth, and they start tailing him even worse.

Eric makes his way to the liquor store and meets with Kate there again, she is being quite rude toward him for seemingly no reason and Eric can’t believe that El Camino s such a messed up time. Everyone he met so far was either incredibly rude or just downright imbecile. But he is on a mission. Eric’s mother recently passed away, and he found hundreds of letters from a man named Larry Roth. Larry is supposed to be Eric’s father and has been living in El Camino for the last 15 years.

Since it was Christmas, Eric planned on reuniting with his father, but the task proved more difficult than he imagined it to be. Eric has the last known address from the letters and knocks on the door. A man who claims his name is Charles Bukowsky (Tim Allen) answers and tells him that no Larry Roth has lived in this apartment for over 5 years now, but he is willing to tell him more about it if he buys him a drink.

“Charles” is an extreme alcoholic and also addicted to several substances. He starts smoking weed in Eric’s car, and in the bar, he almost starts a fight with some other guys over nothing. Eric is pissed off that “Charles” used him to get free booze, and he leaves the bar. He runs a red light, and several seconds later, he is promptly arrested by Carl and Billy, who are just looking for an excuse to arrest him. In a twist of fate, Charles’ bag of weed is left in the car, and Billy finds it. Eric tries to explain that it’s not his weed, but Billy and Carl won’t hear about it. He is thrown in a jail cell, and Carl beats him up now that he is sure that Eric is running a drug operation in El Camino.

Billy makes things worse as Eric “takes” hostages

It’s Christmas morning, and everyone is recovering from last night in one way or another. Kate is called to the liquor store where she works at to repair the refrigerator. She takes Seth along with her because her mother is entertaining her new boyfriend. Carl visits Vincente in the liquor store and has some generally assholish and racist remarks before leaving with his beer. All Vincente did was comment that Carl maybe shouldn’t drink on duty.

“Charles” also comes to the liquor store for pretty much the same reason: he is here to buy drinks so he can spend yet another miserable Christmas Day alone. At the jail cell, Billy realizes that they have basically beaten up an innocent civilian for no reason whatsoever and that he might press charges. To get himself out of hot water, he allows Eric “to escape” from the cell. As Eric is leaving the station in his car, Carl notices him in his car, and, not knowing that it was Billy who released him, he starts chasing him.

Eric manages to evade Carl and runs into the nearby liquor store. Carl, after recovering, also returns to the liquor store and starts shooting at the building, uncaring that there are civilians and children in the building.

Carl enters the liquor store. He is obviously drunk and fuming with anger, but before he can shoot Eric, Charles shoots him in the leg, claiming self-defense. Carl falls down the floor but before Eric can handcuff him, he calls Billy and Bob on the police radio and tells them about “hostage” situation in the liquor store. Billy and Bob arrive at the scene. Billy is in front of the building. Bob goes out the back, planning to use a window to climb into the liquor store so he can take down Eric.

At that moment, Eric is trying to climb out using that window, and when the two meet, it results in a brief shootout. Billy, hearing the shooting from in front of the store starts shooting at the building, Bob hears shots being fired and starts shooting at the building as well, basically Billy and Bob and shooting at each other at this point and when Bob figures this out he difuses the situation.

Inside the store, “the hostages” are unsure who to side with. Carl claims that Eric is a dangerous criminal who was arrested and escaped police custody somehow. The locals know that Carl is a bad cop and have a hard time believing him. Eric claims that he was arrested and beaten up for nothing. Ultimately, “the hostages” refuse to leave because they are afraid of the police outside, not because Eric is holding them against their will.

The press gets involved

Since the situation is escalating as hours pass by, Bob and Billy are forced to pull all units in the vicinity, and they think about State Troopers getting involved in the “case.” Beth Flowers, who is at the local theater show, overhears this by listening in to police radio, and she and her cameraman rush to the crime scene as soon as possible. They start covering the story and massively blow it out of proportion. Billy is giving a statement to her and makes the situation worse. He identified Eric as the shooter but also mentioned how he escaped from custody. Beth wants to know how someone escapes from the County Jail, but Billy refuses to answer any more questions, realizing that his loose tongue has gotten him into trouble once again.

Inside the liquor store, Carl is threatening “to die” literally. He says that he needs medical attention for his injured leg; otherwise, he will die, and this means life in prison for Eric, even though he wasn’t the one to shoot him. Both he and “Charles” are drinking excessively, and Carl is using his past good deeds to gain the sympathy of the hostages. He mentioned how he was the first on the scene when Vincente’s store caught fire while he was taking care of his dying wife. He also mentions how he was the one to save Kate from her abusive boyfriend and run him out of town.

At some point, Charles answers the phone and demands money in unarmed bills as a joke, making this a real case of robbery with the hostage situation. While Eric is taking Seth to the toilet, Carl talks Vicente into freeing his hands so he can reach his .22 from the back pocket and “end this situation.”

Eric finds his father, but perhaps it would be better if he didn’t

Outside of the liquor store, Billy, Bob, and the rest of the police are planning to storm the building. Carl uses his police radio to call them in. The hostages are taking cover since they are expecting the shootout to begin at any moment. Carl uses the moment of chaos to shoot Eric in the lower abdomen, while Eric retaliates and shoots Carl directly in the heart.

While trying to escape from the store, Vincent is shot at the front door, and now they really have some mess on their hands. Stat Troopers really do get mixed into the case, and they see how incompetent the local police is. Beth Flowers is still on the scene, and the stress of the situation puts her into labor.

Charles is trying to help Eric with the wound and starts talking about one of his past missions in Vietnam. Charles apparently stopped the upcoming artillery strike because he wrongly assumed that they were targeting a village full of women and children until the artillery started raining down on them. After this massive mistake, Charles was dishonorably discharged and court martial’d. But Eric already knows this story because he read it in one of the letters. It turned out that Charles was Eric’s father, Larry, all this time.

Larry explains why he was absent and they both conclude that perhaps it was for the better seeing what kind of a mess Larry is. Despite this, Larry wants to do one good thing for his son before he passes away. He plans to take on the brunt of this situation on himself. Since police outside technically had no information regarding who was really responsible for the hostage situation, just about anybody could be the shooter at this point. Larry takes a bottle of booze and loads up his firearms. He throws his dog tags to Eric. He exits the liquor store and starts shooting toward the police. He is shot down pretty much immediately and presumably dies on the spot, clearing his son’s name. The hostage situation ended, and Kate’s son Seth miraculously started talking.

128 days later…

128 days later, the hostage situation is pretty much behind all of them. We can see Sheriff Bob back to his usual self. He undergoes meditation to stop smoking. Beth Flowers finally has a career as a serious reporter covering politics. Kate’s mom has finally found a man.

Billy is still a policeman and has decided to run for Sheriff. Hopefully, his experience with the hostage situation has brought some sense to him. After being shot at by the police and State Trooper, Vicente sued the state and got millions in damages. He is at the resort enjoying his time in the company of a beautiful woman.

Kate and Eric are on good terms, and they’ve met at the diner once again, with Seth apparently speaking normally.

In any case, none of this would be possible if Larry didn’t take the blame on himself. He exonerated his son from any blame since the police never had a clear insight into the situation as a whole, and Larry was the one technically who implicated himself first after shooting Carl in the leg and then after talking to the police and demanding ransom.

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