The Six Triple Eight ending explained: What happens to Lena in the end?
The Six Triple Eight, written and directed by Tyler Perry, is a war drama film that tells the story of the historic 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. This was an all-black and all-female battalion that played a crucial role in World War II.
The film was theatrically released on December 6, 2024, and it became available to stream on Netflix on December 20, 2024. The ensemble cast of The Six Triple Eight includes such names as Kerry Washington, Ebony Obsidian, Milauna Jackson, Kylie Jefferson, Dean Norris, Sam Waterston, and Oprah Winfrey, among others.
Lena Derriecott King, a pivotal character in the film, joins the war after her fiancé, Abram, dies in the line of duty. By the end of the film, while sorting out the pending letters, she comes across a letter that had been penned by her fiancé before he lost his life on a mission.
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Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for The Six Triple Eight. Reader discretion is advised.
The Six Triple Eight ending: Lena gets a closure
The film delves into the racist attitudes of the time. Before he goes to war, Abram expresses his love for Lena. However, a white man, Abram knows that society would scoff at him for choosing a black woman.
The film also explores how white and black soldiers were given separate duties. While the soldiers of the former race performed crucial tasks during any war, the black soldiers were given seemingly menial duties. This is why Lena’s family discourages her from joining the army when she insists on doing it.
However, by that time, Abram has lost his life while on a mission. Lena wrote him several letters but received none in return. To get a sense of closure and to fight the Axis powers, Lena braves all challenges and joins the army.
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After her joining, she finds that the senior army officials are prejudiced against black soldiers. Lena and her company face double discrimination due to their race and gender. They are eventually given the mammoth task of sorting out the delivery of no less than 17 million pending letters.
The Six Triple Eight shows how, led by the impressive leadership of Major Charity Adams, the all-women 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion pulls off the job, crossing one hurdle after another.
In the process, toward the end of the film, Lena comes across a letter Abram had written before his death. Though he had promised her he would return from the war to be with her, the brutality of the war robbed him of his optimism.
Lena is unable to open the letter just when she lays her hands on it since two of her friends die in an accident. Later, she has the chance to open and read it, in what is one of the most poignant scenes of The Six Triple Eight.
In the letter, Abram asks Lena to move on since he is not sure he will return home to her. He says that Lena should be happy and enjoy her life.
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The real-life Lena also appears at the end
At the end of The Six Triple Eight, the real-life Lena, now more than a hundred years old, appears on screen and narrates her life story. She says how she came back home after the war and married Hugo.
She also states that though they did a commendable job in the end, their battalion was not praised enough. After sorting out the mails in Glasgow, they were stationed in other European cities where they did an equally good job.
Even then, they did not get the reception they deserved when they returned to the USA. Lena mentions at the end of The Six Triple Eight that the historic negligence towards the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion has been changing. The film shows the various tributes that have been paid to the same in recent times.
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What challenges does Major Charity Adams’ team have to face?
Much of The Six Triple Eight explores the various challenges the titular battalion has to face. First, they are given the next-to-impossible job of ensuring the delivery of 17 million pending letters to soldiers in the line of duty.
To make matters worse, not many resources are allocated to them to complete the job. They are stationed at a small school in Glasgow, and the majority of funds go to ensuring the safe passage of arms, not letters.
On top of that, there are racist senior officials like General Halt who practically bank on the battalion to fail so they can double up on their prejudices and openly racist behavior.
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Apart from these societal and infrastructural challenges, the job itself presents obstacles of its own. Most letters’ addresses are unclear, and the senior officials are against the idea of black women opening the letters of white soldiers and reading them to get a clue about their places of origin and intended destination.
However, the spirited women have a point to prove, and no hurdle is big enough for them. They, for example, start sampling the letters based on the perfumes some of them carry, getting a clue about their places of origin.
Further, they discover that some soldiers have drawn their battalion signs on the letters. The women visit the battalions, note their signs, and start tallying the letters on that basis. This is how they complete the seemingly impossible job.
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What does General Halt do?
General Halt is a senior officer in the army and symbolizes the racist temperament of the time in The Six Triple Eight. He is contemptuous of black people, as is evidenced not only by his treatment of Adams and her team but also by his attitude towards Mary McLeod Bethune when she is speaking to the president and the first lady.
Halt does everything to ensure that Adams’ team does not get to work properly. From visiting them from time to time and laughing at their progress to straightaway threatening to dissolve their unit, Halt's racism and misogyny are personified in the film.
In fact, toward the end of The Six Triple Eight, he tries to connect to Truman and have the President call the battalion’s operation off. However, the soldiers’ happiness upon receiving the letters written to them outdoes any evil scheme that Halt may have been planning.
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The Six Triple Eight is currently streaming on Netflix.
