The Devil Wears Prada 2 Ending Explained: Plot and summary

The Devil Wears Prada 2 ending explained and Spoilers Alert !!

I genuinely expected this sequel to be an absolute disaster. We are suffocating in an era of pointless Hollywood reboots, and the original movie left off with a perfectly wrapped conclusion. But against all odds, the sheer charisma of Anne Hathaway and the terrifying brilliance of Meryl Streep somehow keep this strange, overstuffed movie afloat.

Let’s just address the glaring visual problem right out of the gate. Personally, I absolutely despise modern color grading, and this film suffers heavily from it. Instead of the opulent, vivid luxury of the 2006 original, the color here is completely washed out and gray. The Runway sets are basically identical to the first film, but the stark lighting makes everything look weirdly cheap.

The costumes, however, survive the transition. Patricia Field didn’t return, but her protégé took over, keeping Nigel in gorgeous custom suiting, Emily in wild Dior fits, and Miranda in chic, modern suits—including a sharp blue button-down and white jeans in the Hamptons. Andy is still dressing like a white woman who went to India and made it her entire personality, which actually fits her global journalist background perfectly.

The film kicks off aggressively relying on nostalgia bait. We watch Andy getting ready for work, skipping the “not like other girls” juxtaposition of the first film, as she heads to the journalism awards. On her way, she walks past a vendor holding up two identical cerulean belts—a direct nod to Miranda’s iconic monologue.

Andy wins a massive journalism award and delivers a passionate speech about how legacy media is dying and journalism still matters. The speech instantly goes viral.

Then, her phone buzzes. She gets fired via text from her serious paper, the New York Vanguard, because print is dead.

The Runway Sweatshop Scandal

At the exact same time, the Met Gala is happening under the theme “Florals for Spring”—another painfully obvious callback. But Runway Magazine is in full-blown crisis mode. They are being publicly canceled and losing advertisers because they recently ran an article supporting a Shein-esque fast-fashion brand built on sweatshops.

To restore journalistic credibility, Elias-Clark publisher Irv Ravitz and his neo-baby son (BJ Novak) hire Andy to run Runway’s features department. Actually, wait, let me clarify that. They hire her without telling Miranda.

Miranda is furious. She is flanked by her new assistants: a fantastic second assistant played by Caleb Hearn, and her new first assistant, played brilliantly by Simone Ashley. Simone’s entire running gag is policing Miranda’s politically incorrect language. I was terrified they were going to sanitize Miranda for modern audiences, but thank god they didn’t. She is still an impossibly cruel, offensive oppressor who casually asks for “body negative” models before being corrected to “body positive”.

Andy is thrown back into the trenches. She goes to the Dior flagship to beg them not to pull their advertising, where she runs into Emily Charlton. Emily now works in Dior’s retail advertising department. They trade a feature article about the Dior store in exchange for keeping the ad money. Emily drops a completely unhinged monologue defending $2,000 handbags, claiming luxury is now a necessity for housewives and “BAMF”.

Boyfriends, Billionaires, and Bad Decisions

Here is where the movie completely loses me for a bit. Why does everyone have a boyfriend? We waste precious screen time on Miranda’s boyfriend (Kenneth Branagh) and Andy’s new guy, Peter, an Australian contractor who builds luxury apartments for the ultra-rich. By the way, Adrian Grenier’s toxic “Nate” is nowhere to be seen, which is the best decision this script made.

Despite constantly whining that luxury apartments are everything wrong with the world, Andy literally turns around and buys one with her new Runway salary. She has had the job for a month. She works for a fickle boss who hates her in an industry actively bleeding money. Buying Manhattan real estate is the single worst financial decision I have ever seen on screen.

Andy is desperately trying to generate “clicks” to appease Miranda, a concept she supposedly never encountered in her 20 years of journalism. Desperate, she lies about securing an interview with Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu), the elusive ex-wife of tech billionaire Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux). She spends 15 minutes of screen time hunting Sasha down, finally securing the interview, which briefly satisfies Miranda.

Meanwhile, Andy’s publishing friend (Rachel Bloom) suggests Andy write a tell-all book about Miranda. Andy acts morally superior, claiming she only wants to write a “true story” about a strong woman, but she inevitably starts drafting the proposal.

The stakes completely shift during a weekend trip to Miranda’s Hamptons house, packed with random celebrity cameos like Jenna Bush Hager and Karl-Anthony Towns. Miranda privately reveals that publisher Irv is going to promote her to head of all content at Elias-Clark during his upcoming birthday party.

But at the birthday party, right before the announcement, Irv drops dead of a heart attack.

I actually laughed out loud in the theater. It is a brilliant, brutal twist. With Irv dead, BJ Novak’s tech-bro character takes over the entire company, and Miranda’s promotion evaporates into thin air.

Operation Save Runway (and The Coach Class Humiliation)

With the publisher dead, his tech-bro son BJ Novak takes full control of Elias-Clark. He immediately brings in a team of business consultants to gut Runway. They slash the budget, fire anyone who has been there longer than three years because they are “too expensive,” and completely shut down Andy’s features department.

Andy now has a massive Manhattan mortgage to pay and no department to run. Panic sets in.

Because of the budget cuts, the entire Runway team is forced to fly coach to Milan for a major fashion event. Watching Miranda Priestly navigate economy class is pure comedy. Simone Ashley’s character desperately asks a flight attendant for a glass of their finest champagne, only to be flatly denied.

Right before they leave, Andy gets into a massive fight with her contractor boyfriend. She argues that stripping down journalism for corporate efficiency is wrong, and flat-out tells him that journalism is more important than building luxury apartments. He gets offended and leaves. The movie frames Andy as being arrogant here, but she is absolutely right. Reporting on unions and the Federal Reserve is more important than building penthouses for the children of war criminals.

Desperate, Andy literally shows up unannounced at Miranda’s house. Who does that? Just send an email. She demands to know if Miranda has a plan to save the magazine. Miranda coldly tells her to leave. Furious, Andy officially submits her mean, tell-all book proposal to her publisher friend.

Emily’s Brutal Betrayal

In Milan, the movie gives us exactly what we want: a gorgeous montage of Miranda, Andy, and Nigel attending shows set to Madonna’s “Vogue”.

Behind the scenes, Emily is plotting. Andy and Nigel spy on Emily and Benji buying high-end jewelry through a glass storefront. Emily meets with Andy, and they conspire to have Benji use his billionaire money to buy Runway and save it from the tech bros. Emily even has a screaming match with Donatella Versace over lunch. It looks like the ultimate girl-power team-up.

Benji agrees to buy the magazine. Andy and Emily happily confront Miranda in a room featuring a painting of The Last Supper—a brilliant visual cue for betrayal. They proudly announce they saved her job.

Miranda just stares at them. She reveals the sickening truth: Emily didn’t orchestrate this deal to save Miranda. She engineered it so Benji would buy Runway, oust Miranda, and install Emily as Editor-in-Chief. Emily wants revenge for Paris. She complains that Miranda never gave her a chance, and now she is taking it by force.

Miranda doesn’t scream. She doesn’t panic. She just looks at Emily and delivers the most devastating line of the film: “You are not a visionary. You are a vendor”.

The Ex-Wife Ex Machina

Andy is horrified that she was used as a pawn in Emily’s hostile takeover. Back in her hotel room, she frantically makes phone calls trying to find a solution while Miranda attends shows. Her publishing friend calls with insane news: the mean book proposal sold for $350,000. Andy tells her to take the deal because, well, she has a mortgage to pay.

That night at the main Runway event, Lady Gaga performs. We actually get a fantastic scene where Gaga and Miranda snipe at each other, proving Gaga can hold her own acting opposite Meryl Streep. Miranda is scheduled to give a desperate speech to save face, but Andy suggests someone else should do it: Nigel. Finally, after decades of being taken for granted, Nigel gets to step into the spotlight and speak for Runway.

But speeches don’t stop corporate buyouts.

Andy and Miranda head to a villa to meet BJ Novak, Benji, and Emily to finalize Benji’s purchase. Just as BJ Novak is about to sign Runway over, his phone rings. The deal is dead. Somebody else just bought the entire Elias-Clark publishing company, meaning Benji can’t buy Runway.

Who bought it? Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu). Benji’s ex-wife.

Because Sasha is hands-off, she allows Miranda to keep running the magazine. Honestly, this is why screenwriters love putting billionaires in scripts; they act as a magical wand to fix impossible plot holes.

How The Devil Wears Prada 2 Ends

On the drive back, Miranda turns to Andy and brings up the tell-all book. She knows all about it. Andy tries to backpedal, saying she won’t write it to be mean because she respects her. Miranda stops her. She tells Andy to write every single juicy, ruthless detail because the world needs to know the true cost of success.

We jump forward in time.

Andy meets Emily for lunch. Emily is now sporting a bleached blonde dye job and has become a social pariah for trying to usurp Miranda. She lost her job at Dior and is now working at Coach. The theater actually laughed at this, as if any of us are too good for Coach. Emily admits she wanted to be friends after the first movie but Andy never called. Andy gives her a pep talk, and they finally become genuine friends.

Andy returns to work at Runway. She walks up to the building on a soaking wet sidewalk—even though there isn’t a cloud in the sky, a classic Hollywood trick to make streets look better on camera.

Inside, Andy tells Nigel she is amazed that fate brought them back together. Nigel smiles and admits it wasn’t fate. He saw Andy’s viral journalism speech, sent it to BJ Novak, and manipulated the publisher into hiring her. He was pulling the strings the entire time. “Forever my girl,” he tells her.

In the final scene of the movie, Andy walks into Miranda’s office to drop off a hardcover of her new story. She isn’t wearing her grungy reporter clothes. She is wearing a chic, deconstructed blue sweater vest—a perfect, modern homage to the cerulean sweater from the first film.

The Best Jokes, Cameos, and Micro-Details You Missed

While the corporate espionage is the main engine of the movie, the script actually shines brightest in its throwaway lines and bizarre cameos.

Let’s talk about Andy’s inner circle. Tracie Thoms returns, and I am absolutely thrilled because she is a fantastic actress. She plays Andy’s art dealer friend. While touring that nauseatingly expensive luxury apartment, Andy goes on a self-righteous rant about how places like this are everything wrong with the world, completely oblivious to the fact she is talking directly to the contractor who built it. Tracie Thoms’s character hilariously swoops in to get his number for Andy anyway. We also get Rachel Bloom playing Andy’s friend in the publishing industry who originally plants the idea of the tell-all book.

The celebrity cameos are wild. Aside from the Hamptons party, Amelia Dimoldenberg (from Chicken Shop Date) randomly shows up at the publisher’s birthday party right before he drops dead. There was even a rumored Sydney Sweeney cameo involving Emily dressing her, but thank god it was cut from the final film.

But the real gold is in the dialogue. Here are the sharpest comedic moments that prove the writers understood the assignment:

• Nigel’s Dark Humor: During Andy’s makeover in the Hamptons, she complains, “I just feel like I can’t relax. When can I finally relax at this job?”. Nigel doesn’t miss a beat and dryly responds, “I’d say coffin”. It is a perfect, punchy delivery from Stanley Tucci.
• The Kendall Jenner Beef: At the publisher’s funeral, Emily is fuming because Dolce & Gabbana dressed everyone instead of Dior. She realizes it is a petty revenge tactic because she put Kendall Jenner at the very end of a previous runway show. Her billionaire boyfriend, Benji, just blankly responds, “It’s crazy that somebody’s named Kendall”.
• The Tech-Bro Parody: Speaking of Benji Barnes, the movie turns him into a spectacular parody of a modern Silicon Valley idiot. In one scene, he casually tells someone, “Soon you’re not even going to need your neck. You can just get your neck surgically removed”. Later, when offered water at a table, he refuses, claiming, “I’m not doing water anymore. It’s poison”.
• Miranda Hates Sports Metaphors: When BJ Novak’s character takes over the company, he tries to buddy up to Miranda using terrible corporate jargon. He says, “Me and you, we’re going to grab this football and run it into the end zone together”. Miranda just stares at him with absolute disgust and mutters, “The end zone. So beautifully put”. Meryl Streep’s delivery turns a simple line into a lethal weapon.

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