Who Does Mack End Up With?

Directed by Trish Sie, Players is a Netflix original romantic comedy that premiered on the platform on Feb. 14, 2024. The popular Valentine’s Day release stars Gina Rodriguez as Mackenzie (Mack), a professional sportswriter in New York looking for love in all the wrong places. Along with her friends Adam (Damon Wayans Jr.), Brannagan (Augustus Prew), and Little (Joel Courtney), Mack participates in manipulative hookup scams that involve targeting a romantic interest and making a calculated “play” to win their affection.

When a dashing reporter named Nick (Tom Ellis) enters the scene, Mack finally appears to have made her a perfect romantic match. However, Mack’s true romance remains hidden in plain sight right under her nose the whole time, ultimately forcing her to confront her genuine feelings by the end of the story. Although the movie has received mediocre reviews for its predictable romantic-comedy formula, the ending is enchanting enough to warrant further explanation. As such, it’s time to find out who Mack ends up with in Players.

Who Are the Main Characters in Players?

To fully grasp the ending of Players, it’s vital to understand the setup of the underrated romantic comedy. The movie introduces the protagonist, Mack, a genuine sports fan and struggling sportswriter living in New York City. Along with her friends Adam, Brannagan, and Little, Mack is single and participates in several tag-team hookup schemes to secure casual one-night stands with very low emotional stakes. Adam is Mack’s closest friend in the bunch, and he has become less interested in the immature scams the group orchestrates regularly. Meanwhile, Brannagan and Little are siblings who are perfectly content with continuing the dating charade and agree to help Mack find a new hookup.

Everything changes for Mack when Nick arrives in New York. Nick is a talented war correspondent whose work Mack respects greatly. Nick is also a charming, handsome Englishman whom Mack instantly finds attractive. To win his affection, Mack runs a calculated play with her friends to isolate Tom in a bar after hours, flirt with him, and engage in a night of no-strings-attached fun. Upon enjoying a steamy night together, Mack is prepared to leave her player lifestyle behind and declares that she wants to enter a real relationship with Nick. When Nick reciprocates the sentiment, Mack’s romantic maturity appears to make her happy.

Why Does Mack Sour on Nick in Players?

As Mack and Nick grow closer, Mack pulls apart from Adam, Brannagan, and Little. As such, Mack begins participating in the players’ schemes less and less. A crucial moment in Mack and Nick’s budding relationship comes when Mack writes an incredibly personal news story for her sports periodical. The article bares Mack’s soul and touches on profound childhood memories that made her a sports fan in the first place. Yet, despite being proud of the piece, Mack is worried the story isn’t good enough for publication. As a result, she asks Nick to proofread her story and give her feedback, trusting that his superior journalistic skills will improve her article and lead to the story’s publication.

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Alas, Nick shows his true colors when he callously rewrites Mack’s story and completely butchers what made it so personal. Worse yet, Nick didn’t even bother to consult Mack before making such sweeping editorial changes. When Mack shows the article to Adam, Adam rightly expresses outrage and insults Nick for badly mistreating Mack and ruining her touching story.

Later, Mack directly confronts Nick about his cruel behavior, and he only makes matters worse by insulting Mack’s writing ability to her face. Mack tries to explain that Nick removed all the aspects of the article that made it special to her, but it falls on deaf ears. Instead of being a loving and supportive boyfriend, Nick tells Mack to turn in her version instead of his rewrite and arrogantly wishes her the best of luck. The truth is, Nick never understood what made Mack tick in the first place.

Who Does Mack End Up With in the End?

Once Mack sticks up for herself and her work, she has the clarity and self-respect to end her doomed romance with Nick. Moreover, the heartfelt conversation Mack had with Adam regarding her sports article opened Mack’s eyes even more. Knowing Mack intimately for years as platonic friends, Adam understood from the beginning that Nick was never right for her. In a pivotal moment, Damon Wayans Jr. gives a solid performance as Adam lets his true feelings be known.

Upon reading how badly Nick removed Mack’s voice from her piece, Adam explains to her in precise detail why Nick was never an ideal match for her. Adam cites how Nick stripped away all the raw emotion and candid vulnerabilities relating to Mack falling in love with baseball as a child and how Nick completely took out the heart and soul that made the article uniquely Mack’s. While it was fairly easy to see the ending coming all along, this marks the moment when Mack realizes Adam has been her true love the whole time.

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Although it took Mack time to realize that her true love was right under her nose all along, the predictable nature of their romance is amusingly mocked by Brannagan, Little, and their mutual friends Ashley (Liza Koshy) and Claire (Ego Nwodim). Once Mack tells the friends that Adam has feelings for her, they tell her that they’ve known about it for years, even since grade school in Little’s case. Once Mack realizes what a mistake she’s made by overlooking what a perfect match Adam is, she finds Adam in the park and confesses her undying love for him in a heartfelt speech that proves how much she cares for him.

By sticking up for Mack’s integrity and encouraging her to remain true to herself in the sports article that Nick was happy to butcher, Adam demonstrated how much he knew Mack deep down and how much he always loved her. Adam’s protection of Mack also opened her eyes to the realization that Adam had been there for her for years and that what she thought was a platonic friendship was always the basis of a genuine romance. At the end of Players, Mack leaves her galivanting ways behind and pursues a romantic relationship with Adam. Although Players may lean on too many rom-com tropes, Mack finally realizes who she is meant to be with. Stream on Netflix.