Jingle Bell Heist ending explained: What did Sophie do?

Jingle Bell Heist is a 2025 American Christmas romantic comedy film directed by Michael Fimognari with a screenplay by Abby McDonald. Netflix premiered the film on November 26, 2025. The movie features a crime story with a holiday setting revolving around two petty criminals in London planning a burglary during the festive season.

Olivia Holt and Connor Swindells are the main characters in Jingle Bell Heist, which also features a light heist story, romance, characters' personal motivation, and an unexpected twist towards the end that changes the outcome.

The storyline of Jingle Bell Heist is centered on Sophie and Nick trying to break into a department store safe on Christmas Eve night. Initially, blackmail is used as a lever, but then the two characters start working together, and finally, they develop a personal and emotional bond.

The last part of Jingle Bell Heist is the answer to the biggest question of the story: the way the heist is carried out and, more importantly, what Sophie decides to do in the end when everything is already happening.

What happens in Jingle Bell Heist?

The story of Jingle Bell Heist is about Sophie, a store worker, who is going through her mom’s cancer while she manages to keep her house and make life better for her and her mom by working multiple jobs.

She also occasionally steals small amounts of money, and in one instance, she takes a diamond-encrusted dog collar from a rich customer. One day the collar is put in the store’s high-security vault, where Sophie notices other valuables she could potentially take.

At the same time, Nick O’Connor, a former employee of the store, watches Sophie through security footage he installed himself. He had served jail time for an alleged theft that he claims was done by the store’s owner.

Filming Sophie as she steals money from the register, Nick uses the video as leverage to get her on his side for a robbery plot. After initially saying no to the idea, Sophie, upon learning her mother needs an expensive treatment, finally agrees to join the plan.

Their first scene is a department store jewelry vault to hotwire into the vault only to find out that the valuables are no longer there. Later, Sophie intercepts a conversation where it is revealed that Maxwell Sterling, the store owner, is carrying $500,000 in cash in the safe of his office. With Nick, she decides to aim at that instead.

They will also need to have a digital key fob that constantly changes the safe’s access code. Nick tries to get Cynthia, Sterling’s wife, at a Christmas party to get the key fob.

But when she finds out about the plan, Cynthia not only refuses to report them but also invites herself to their team.

Jingle Bell Heist then reveals that Sterling himself had stolen jewelry previously as part of an insurance scam. Nick says he never did the robbery, he was sent to prison and that Sterling is the one who set him up.

Sophie, on the other hand, reveals she was kicked out by her father when she was a kid, thus showing the emotional side of her story. The duo breaking into Sterling’s office on Christmas Eve and managing to unlock the first lock is what we finally see in the next scene. The real impedance is that the biometric gate need for DNA sample.

Sophie is the one who volunteers her finger to be scanned, thus unlocking the safe right away. The story is quite literally unwrapped in the very next scene: Sophie is in fact the biological daughter of Sterling, a fact that he kept under wraps for a long time.

Her mom was previously an employee at the store but after that, she supposedly lost her job when Sterling refused to acknowledge her as his daughter. This relationship is the main reason that is key to why the heist works.

What did Sophie do in Jingle Bell Heist?

The finale of Jingle Bell Heist reveals not only that Sophie used her DNA to open the safe, but was also instrumental in setting up Maxwell Sterling to be the one whose fingerprints ended up all over his own crimes.

The biggest motivation of Cynthia, who consented to take part in the break-in, was to propel her husband out of the company's leadership. She told Sophie and Nick the location of the stolen goods to file the insurance claim. Thereupon, they got the hidden jewels and later put them in the office safe.

When accompanied by the police, Sterling opens his vault but does not find the money that is missing. What he finds instead are the stolen jewels in the safe. This is the direct evidence that points the finger at him as the culprit of theft and fraud.

Sophie makes sure that Nick is not in any way responsible and convinces the security guard at the store to let them go with the words that Sterling was the real culprit.

Therefore, Jingle Bell Heist concludes with Sterling unintentionally being the one to accuse himself, Cynthia ready to take apart his power, and Sophie at the helm of the situation rather than just being a victim of ‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌blackmail.

Interested viewers can watch the movie on Netflix.

Edited by Sakshi Singh