Miseducation Ending Explained: Netflix never runs low on teen dramas, and unfolding the newest gossip session on the streamer is the latest South African series Miseducation that released on September 15, 2023. It has been created by Rethabile Ramaphakela and Katleho Ramaphakela, and stars Buntu Petse as Mbali, Lunga Shabalala as Sivu, Preven Reddy as Jay, Micaela Tucker as Natalie, Mpho Sebeng as Caesar, Baby Cele as Brenda Hadebe, Luyanda Zwane as Aphiwe and others in this 6-part journey that concluded its first season on an open-ended note, sparking hints of a possible second instalment.

The show is centred around Buntu’s character Mbali, a wannabe influencer and the daughter of a disgraced politician Brenda Hadebe. Following a very public humiliation on her birthday, not only does Mbali’s social status take a major hit, she’s also forced to move out of her house while her mother finds numerous ways to flee the country. The same incident compels her to turn to a small-town Makhandan Grahamstown University as no other college would take her in, and there she desperately grasps onto the chance of breathing life into her popularity while also crushing on Sivu Levin.

Miseducation Netflix Series Ending Explained Contains Spoilers

Miseducation Ending Explained

Once the the truth about Sivu’s presidential victory is outed, Caesar heads out to confront the higher authorities as a call for him to be reinstated as the student body president. However, the VC demands that the most democratic thing would be to run another election, and as a counter response, the council even seems to have agreed upon the fee freeze, the very issue the student body was protesting for in the first place.

Though Aphiwe tries to knock some sense into him, Caesar abruptly silences her because he sees it as his only chance to become president again, and she finally sees him for the man he is, someone who’d rather push his own political agendas than be concerned with others’ goodwill.

The VC requests him to not stir up drama anymore, as it would only undermine their procedure and authority further, so he then demands a temporary reinstatement as the president, with the standing condition that Sivu isn’t allowed to contest in the re-elections.

Before this confrontation, Sivu sits down with his sister Natalie, who then ends up telling him the truth about how Mbali wanted to help him win the elections. She comes clean about her, Jay and Mbali being in on it together as they stuffed the ballots with fake votes, but failed to properly clean up their mess while burning up the original ones. He walks out without a second thought and just as Natalie is about to text Mbali about her confession to Sivu, she’s ambushed by her school teacher, Clint’s arrival at her house.

He claims that Natalie had taken his camera for an assignment and he’d just come back to collect it. As she heads back to the room to get it, all flummoxed, he also follows her and their very verbal confrontation about the elder man having one-time thing with her is overheard by her parents, who then take turns to punch him in the face.

Meanwhile, Jay makes peace with Thato, and they decide to get “goodbye drinks” as the former is convinced that he’s going to expelled for having messed up with the school server, or as the higher-ups believed it to be his job anyway, while he had already investigated the matter , with his findings leading him up to Mbali’s truth.

Sivu and Mbali meet up for drinks, but this time with the former knowing the whole truth about the issue. He feels disgraced that his name had been associated with the act of cheating, so when he confronts Mbali about the issue, she again lies about how it was all Jay’s plan to exact revenge on Caesar for assaulting him. Sivu already knew she was lying so he left the venue while she was busy getting them drinks.

The next thing you know, he stops taking her calls and replying to her messages. And around the same time, Natalie visits Mbali in her room and explains everything that went down at her place. They both get into a verbal spat and dump mean comments on each other as Natalie also puts two and two together about Mbali only befriending her to get close to Sivu.

Once Natalie furiously walks out, Mbali, brokenhearted as she was, ends up calling her mother. Brenda starts going on about her own predicament and issues and talks about how she has no time to deal with this drama, and so Mbali pleads her to be her mother for once and hangs up knowing that it was no use talking to her anyway.

The next day she walks straight up to one of the senior teachers at the university, and she confesses that she was the one who had used the corrupt neon USB to crash the server and the voting app. She also claims that she had done it all alone and she’d even stuffed the ballot with fake votes basically it was all her doing.

And though she was ready to take full responsibility for her actions, the teacher simply adds that he appreciated her speech and would like to see her better next semester. This rings an alarm in her mind and she can’t help but ask why she wasn’t being expelled, to answer her question, her mother’s overbearing presence takes over the scene.

She walks up from behind, as she’d been sitting there all along with a bag stashed with cash to the top. Mbali tries to stop her and asks where she’d gotten all that money from, and Brenda says nothing but that she was finally being the mother she’d wanted her to be and that Mukhanda would be their new home.

So, to put it short, Mbali’s corrupt politician’s mother remains the same sneaky scandalous woman as always, and she stuffs up the authorities with a hefty bribe to keep their mouths shut about her daughter’s involvement in the case. Talk about Mbali’s mother “saving the day” and opening the show up for more future drama!

Sivu’s Crisis

At the beginning of the final episode of the series, Sivu opens up to Mbali about feeling like an outsider, and on seeing her old picture with her late father, he get into the whole conversation about his biological parents being out there. And since he has no way of finding out who he’s related, he even lightheartedly takes a jab at them possibly being related to it each other.

It’s almost as if the show is setting up the scene for a possible new season in the future to take this matter up again. While we’re left in the dark about that bit, a similar conversation is picked up between Sivu and Natalie towards the end before she confesses the truth about the student council presidential elections to him.

When she catches the drift, she asks him if he ever feels like he doesn’t fit in with their family, and he promptly, though lowly replies “Sometimes”. Keeping the conversation going, he addresses that he’ll always be there for her and that she’ll be his sister no matter what, but the wistful tone of his demeanour opens up the room for reading between the lines. It’s as if the show was foreshadowing him going off to search for his birth family in the next season.

What do you think will happen in the next season if the show is renewed for another round? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

All 6 episode of Miseducation are streaming on Netflix.

Also read: Miseducation Review: South African Series May Not Be the Best but It Serves an Inclusive Campus Life With Entertainment