Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft Season 1 Ending, Explained (2025)

Netflix's Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft continues the story of the iconic video game character in a new medium. The animated series is a sequel to the rebooted Survivor trilogy of video games, while also incorporating elements and characters from the original games. The first season is packed with action, heart and, of course, a few artifacts that are in need of raiding. But the Season 1 finale isn't a happy ending for all of Lara Croft's companions.

Throughout eight episodes, Lara is taken on a journey that tests her adventure skills as well as her humanity. Lara's moral quandary is a nice continuation of her personal dilemma in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, where she begins to question the destruction she causes in pursuit of legends. Whereas she is usually in conflict with the mercenary organization Trinity for personal and professional reasons (that being them murdering her father, Richard Croft, and stealing artifacts for the sake of power), Lara runs into a different kind of enemy in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. This time around, it's someone who acts like a mirror to Lara if she turns down the path of evil.

Lara Croft Returns the Peril Stones

Lara initially comes into conflict with an unnamed thief who steals one of Richard Croft's artifacts, known as the Sword of Divinity. Lara is initially puzzled by the thief's pursuit of the sword, as it by itself doesn't do much. But upon learning that the thief is in pursuit of an ancient Chinese legend known as the "Peril Stones," she discovers that her quest to stop the thief means much more than a petty crime.

The thief in question turns out to be a man named Charles Devereaux, who, like Lara, has a personal history with a large and powerful group. When he was 12, an ancient organization called The Light murdered his father in Paris. Since that day, Devereaux has been obsessed with revenge and steals all four Peril Stones to gain enough power to defeat The Light. But the Peril Stones also mean the end of the world, as a curator named Eva says: "Fire and storms and wars. The end of all things."

The Peril Stones were initially created by the Chinese goddess Nu'Wa as a means to tame the chaos of the world by balancing it with order. The stones trap the four greatest evils of humanity: power, wrath, greed, and betrayal. To ensure that people would never be corrupted by these evils again, and thus disrupt the balance of chaos and order, Nu'Wa hid the Peril Stones in the far corners of the Earth where no one would find them. But people did eventually find them. Devereaux eventually came into possession of all four stones and used the Sword of Divinity as a containment vessel to harness all four powers at once, similar to Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet.

In the penultimate episode, Lara and her childhood friend Camilla Roth team up to defeat Devereaux, who's turned into a monstrous creature after obtaining all the stones. The red stone temporarily possesses Lara, but she's able to overcome it by digging deep within herself and pushing her childhood anger and grief to the side. It's just as Devereaux said, "It's not the stones that are inherently evil, it's the people that use them." Lara is able to retrieve all the stones and return them to the Peak of Kunlun Mountain, and defeats a dinosaur in the process.A classic Lara Croft obstacle.

Lara Donates Her Father's Artifacts to Museums

A reoccurring theme within the Tomb Raider franchise is the rightful possession of ancient relics. Lara's pursuit of the Peril Stones is clearly one that's justified, given her only intention is to take them out of Devereaux's hands and return them to their rightful place. But that doesn't mean all of her expeditions have had the same noble motive.

Both Eva and Camilla imply that, like Richard, Lara is a thief who would willingly steal from people's homes and museums. It certainly matches up with the name "Tomb Raider." Their apprehensions of Lara's quest to stop Devereaux is similar to the conflict in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, where Lara and Jonah Maiava's friendship is put in a rift when she ignores warning signs of an apocalypse to obtain the Dagger of Chak Chel.

The Season 1 finale of Netflix's Tomb Raider shows Lara's growth as a globetrotter, turning from a "raider" to a "collector." Lara donates her father's artifacts, documents and other findings to museums where they'll be studied and shown to the world. It's not only a decision that makes room in the Croft manor and begins a new future out of her father's shadow, but also establishes Lara as a person who's now taking the cultural significance of the artifacts into deep consideration.

Lara probably won't stop her daredevil trips to climb the highest of mountains or scour the deepest of caves for an ancient artifact, but at least she recognizes they're not hers to keep. The one thing she does keep for herself is a hard-earned souvenir from her trip to Kunlun Mountain: a dinosaur tooth.

Jonah and Abby Get Married

Abby was introduced in Shadow of the Tomb Raider as a supporting character who aids Lara and Jonah on their adventures in Kuwaq Yaku, a remote village in Peru. Abby and Jonah quickly hit it off, sparking a romance between the two that flowers into a serious relationship between the events of Shadow of the Tomb Raider and the Netflix series. When Jonah is presumed dead in Episode 3, "Living Midnight," Lara doesn't have the heart to tell Abby what happened to him. Lara has always felt guilt for dragging Jonah along on her missions as a sidekick, no matter how much he agrees to it. His presumed death only heightened these feelings, as Jonah and Abby were engaged to marry.

Jonah was never actually dead, but under the control of Devereaux. When he's released from his control and helps Lara return the stones to stop the apocalypse, Jonah and Abby have a traditional Māori wedding. It's satisfying to finally see Jonah get his happy ending after all he's done for Lara.

Tomb Raider Sets Up a Missing Person's Case for Season 2

The one person who's missing from the wedding is Samantha "Sam" Nishimura, Lara's best friend from the first Tomb Raider game of the reboot trilogy. Sam was one of the few surviving members of the Endurance, a research vessel that was owned by Camilla's father, Conrad Roth.

During the events of Tomb Raider, Sam was hired as a filmmaker for a documentary on the Endurance, as a way to fund the expedition. But when the crew crashed on Yamati island, a man named Mathias tried to use Sam's body as a vessel for the island's queen, Himiko. Sam was rescued by Lara and made it off the island, but she never appeared in the video games ever again.

Sam also doesn't appear in the series, but she's being set up to be a major character in Season 2, if the series is renewed. After getting a dropped call from Sam, Lara breaks into her apartment to find it's been broken into and Sam is nowhere to be found. While Jonah mentions Sam was on a job overseas, her broken phone was still at her apartment, a shoe was left behind on the fire escape and there's a board of research looking into relics on the black market.

Sam's disappearance opens up a bunch of questions: Who or what is she looking for? Why did she lie about being overseas? And who is after Sam? These are questions only Season 2 will answer, and hopefully, Netflix will renew the series to expand upon Playstation's most famous heroine's social circle.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is now streaming on Netflix.