Doubting Thomas Movie Ending: Uses Didactic Oversimplification to Address Racial Biases!

By Aarush Sharma On May 18, 2022

The drama Doubting Thomas is excellent. The acting is excellent, the script is straightforward, and the themes of race, perception, and discovering your own self are genuine.

The film premiered in theatres from October 11th to 17th, 2019, and is currently accessible on digital platforms and video-on-demand as of October 15, 2019 (see “view now” links above).

Our objective is to continue telling this tale and having conscious talks about racial and socioeconomic concerns as much as we can, wherever we can. Thank you for your assistance. Will McFadden, Sarah Butler, Jamie Hector, Robert Belushi, Zach Cregger, James Morrison, and Melora Walters star in the film. Production by A Long Way Home in collaboration with Lexicon Entertainment and Gravitas Ventures.

Cast

Hustle as Daryl
Byron Wallace as Byron
Will McFadden as Tom
Sarah Butler as Jen
Jamie Hector as Ron
Shaun O’Hagan as Mike Wilford
Kendall Chappell as Megan
James Morrison as Bill
Melora Walters as Kate
Myke Wright as Walt

Phil Parmet as Albright
Robert Belushi as Alex(as Rob Belushi)
Zach Cregger as Graham
Alicia Blasingame as Kendall
Reggie Jackson as Thief
David Hutchison as Burly White Man
Chuma Gault as Officer Henderson
Jennifer Neala Page as Nurse

Plot

In the 2018 film “Doubting Thomas,” a lawyer named Tom (Will McFadden) is forced to confront his own bigotry.

Tom and Jen (Sarah Butler) appear to have the perfect marriage until it is revealed that the child she recently gave birth to is black. The white couple comes to the conclusion that one of them must have Black ancestry. Jen seeks assistance from their friend Ron, played by Jamie Hector, the sole Black lawyer at Tom’s firm, as she adjusts to motherhood.

When his coworker Graham (Zach Cregger) misinterprets Jen and Ron’s friendly lunch date as something amorous, he suspects they’ve been sleeping together. This makes Tom hostile toward both Ron and Jen. He informs his wife in a particularly heated dispute that he “doesn’t want a Black kid.”

At this point, it appears that Tom is more concerned about the fact that Liam is not white than the prospect that he is Ron’s kid.

When Tom’s mother-in-law, Kate (Melora Walters of “PEN15”), provides some crucial facts, this idea is further explored.

Jen’s mother admits that her father was of African descent.

Jen goes to her parents’ house after Tom makes the racist remark about not wanting to be a father to “a Black baby.” Jen is completely unaware that Kate has invited Tom over to reveal that Jen’s biological father, Rogers, was a Black guy. She eventually reveals to her daughter why he was absent from the picture. Rogers detained a felon when she was pregnant, she explains. Kate goes on to say that “when the officers arrived, they mistook him for the criminal, assaulting an innocent white man,” and that they “placed him in a chokehold,” resulting in his death. “If he were white, he’d probably still be alive,” she claims.

Rogers’ encounter with police officers is reminiscent of a scene in the first ten minutes of the film.

A stranger smashes Jen’s car window while she is still pregnant, and Tom chases after him. Jen quickly understands she is in labor and heads to a birthing center. Before Tom can meet her there, a cop shows up at his house to question him about the robbery. Tom refuses to give the police his identity and displays his power by acting violently.

While this contact causes him to miss his child’s birth, he has a better fate than Rogers because of his race.

Ron believes Tom is a racist.

Tom eventually apologizes to Ron. Ron, on the other hand, claims that he has “exposed” his racism, effectively ending their friendship. This is a good opportunity for the viewers to reconsider Tom’s character. While he claims not to be racist, he commits numerous microaggressions throughout the movie.

For example, before Liam is born, he observes a Black man and his son playing catch. “That’s going to be you soon,” Jen adds, and he says, “I sure hope not.” When his wife inquires, he claims that he dislikes baseball. However, evidence suggests that he was bothered by the child’s race.

Tom reads a letter from Jen in the film’s last scene, in which she admits that she took a paternity test for Liam.

She noted that while she has trouble forgiving Tom, she wants him to be a part of their child’s life.

Tom then proceeds to destroy Liam’s test results without glancing at them. He sees the same child throwing a baseball outside.

Tom looks at him for a long time, as if he is ready to be a father to Liam despite his race.

Jen could forgive Tom

While it’s uncertain whether Tom will ever be able to repair his connection with Jen, the film’s producer Laura Jane Salvato argued that those who hold racist ideas should be forgiven if they attempt to change their minds.

“We can stop dismissing each other because that’s what we do a lot of the time when someone is willing to learn. Instead of using the term racist to dismiss another person, consider this: we all have a little bit of this, so let’s give ourselves a chance to forgive each other and see if this person is willing to bridge the gap, is willing to try to learn, and maybe that’s the way to get past all of these entrenched, polarised feelings that we have right now “said the producer during a screening of the film in October 2019.