Babies ending explained: If Lisa and Stephen have a baby and the finale’s big time skip
Does Babies have a happy ending?
Babies is an upsetting show – so, whether you tapped out early and want to know what happens, or you got to the end and want a recap, let’s break down the ending of the BBC series.
While it’d be a shame if you gave up (it’s just as good, if not more accomplished than Stefan Golaszewski’s other shows, Him & Her and Marriage), we’d understand. Babies has small moments of reprieve, but they usually lead to another gut-punch.
The new BBC drama follows Lisa (Siobhán Cullen) and Stephen (Paapa Essiedu), a couple in their 30s who want to have a baby. They endure multiple miscarriages and struggle to navigate their mounting grief, especially as others around them have children.
The question is, does Babies have a happy ending, and do Lisa and Stephen eventually have a child? Well, that’s what we’re here to answer.
***Warning: spoilers for Babies ahead***
Babies ending explained: Do Lisa and Stephen have a child?
Lisa and Stephen finally have a baby together in the finale of Babies.
It was a tough journey. The series opened in the wake of a pregnancy loss, and Lisa had two more miscarriages over the course of the show.
The penultimate episode saw Lisa and Stephen try therapy, with Stephen finding it hard to vocalise his complicated, tortured feelings to anyone (even his dad). He opened up to Lisa after they watched a film together, and after stifling so many tears, he finally allowed himself to cry.
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In its closing moments, Lisa took another pregnancy test – and it was a positive, starting the cycle of excitement and paranoia all over again.
The finale picked up soon after, with Lisa and Stephen going for their dreaded scan. There was a big difference this time: they heard their baby’s heartbeat.
The rest of the episode tracked all the highs and lows of their pregnancy journey; Lisa’s pain, their anxieties, and plenty of excitement.
Babies has a big time jump in the finale
Straight after the scan scene, the Babies finale jumped ahead around 20 years into the future.
We saw Lisa and Stephen (complete with grey hair) standing in the kitchen, patiently waiting for their son to come downstairs and sipping on cups of tea.
When he appeared, Stephen asked: “Sleep well?” Their son laughed and replied: “Yes, I slept well… why are you so obsessed with how I slept?”
Stephen offered to bring his bags down for him, and then came the reveal: we’re seeing the day their son left to go to university.
The last episode flicked between the present and the future, showing other small moments between Lisa, Stephen, and their son. For example, it showed him asking his mum about recipes to take to uni with him, and Stephen poignantly placing his hand on his son’s back as he clears out his room.
How does Babies end?
The Babies finale culminated in both the birth and the departure of Lisa and Stephen’s son.
In a moving closing sequence, it showed Lisa in labour in the present, their child’s birth, and in the future, Stephen and Lisa tearfully hugging their son goodbye as he left for university.
They both stood outside and waved him off, before going back inside. Back in the present, we got to see the moment Lisa and Stephen brought their child home for the first time.
Stephen grabbed a bottle of bubbly, and they sat down in front of their baby, smiling. However, when the baby started crying, Lisa gets to say the last word of the whole show – and while we won’t say it here, it’s the perfect grace note.
In a piece for the Radio Times, Golaszewski explained how Him & Her was a “response to the wonder I felt at falling in love with the person who would become my wife”.
Babies, on the other hand, illustrates “the way we dragged each other across the wastelands of the apocalypse, the person who from the moment I met her has run through every word I write like electricity down a wire”.
What is Lisa and Stephen’s son’s name?
Neither Lisa nor Stephen ever say their child’s name. However, thanks to the credits, we know what they called him: Charlie.
There aren’t any other characters in the show named Charlie, so it’s unclear where the name comes from. Stefan Golaszewski has children in real life, but we don’t know their names, so we can’t draw any connection there.
In the scenes set in the future, Charlie is played by Tristan Wright.
What happens to Dave?
Dave (Jack Bannion) didn’t end up with Amanda (Charlotte Riley) by the end of Babies. Instead, he invested more time into co-parenting his son, Daniel (Zion Veerapen-Bernard).
We’ll come back to Amanda, but the long and short of it is this: she was pregnant with his baby, but she didn’t believe he was a capable father, so she left him. He (pathetically) tried to mend things with her in the penultimate episode, but she left him alone in the pub and drove off.
Throughout the finale, we saw all of his imperfect efforts to be a better dad. He took Daniel to the park, worried about him climbing too high, and taught him to suck ice cream from the bottom of the cone.
They started to enjoy each other’s company, and Dave even developed a healthier relationship with his ex and her new partner. In his final scene, he spoke to a single mum on the bus and bonded with her.
Before that, after his appalling comments at the wedding earlier in the series, Dave finally had an earnest conversation with Stephen. After learning about Lisa’s pregnancy troubles, they hugged.
Babies ending: What happens to Amanda?
While Amanda didn’t appear in the Babies finale, we know she was pregnant with Dave’s baby, and she left for Singapore without him.
Amanda was a fascinating character. She was in a relationship with Dave for most of the series, and they had plenty of sex, but she never really seemed to like him.
In episode 2, it was revealed that Amanda had been engaged to someone else: Harry (Luke Norris), whom she met in university. Sadly, he died from an unknown illness.
It helped to contextualise all of Amanda’s behaviour; her guilt about being with someone else, her scathing remarks to Stephen, and why she was so wary about raising a child with Dave.
We also got a short scene with Amanda visiting Harry’s parents, who were delighted to see her. They clearly still saw her as family, and she felt an obligation to tell them about her pregnancy.
“I’m pregnant. I didn’t wanna say in front of Janice,” she told Harry’s dad, Richard. “I still love Harry, I promise you.”
Harry’s father, while tearful, told her it was okay and gave her a hug.
In her last scene, she told off her taxi driver for stopping at Chicken Cottage before picking her up for the airport.
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