TTK Original — Beyond the Headlines
Spoiler Warning: This article contains major spoilers for One Battle After Another (2025), including Willa’s biological father, the DNA test, the Christmas Adventurers Club, and Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw’s fate.
Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw spends much of One Battle After Another hunting a teenage girl.
He commands soldiers, exploits state authority, and pursues her across a landscape of raids, secret identities, and political violence.
At first, his pursuit appears connected to an old revolutionary organization and his obsession with a woman named Perfidia Beverly Hills.
Then the film reveals something far more disturbing.
The girl Lockjaw wants eliminated is his own daughter.
Willa Ferguson, raised by former revolutionary Bob Ferguson, is biologically related to the man who is trying to destroy her life.
And Lockjaw knows what that relationship could cost him.
He wants membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club, an elite white supremacist organization that promises access to influence and belonging.
But Willa’s existence threatens everything he has built.
She is living evidence of his past relationship with a Black woman.
Instead of acknowledging her, Lockjaw arranges for her death.
The obvious explanation is that he wants to protect his reputation.
But that answer only scratches the surface.
Why is membership in a secretive organization worth more to him than his daughter’s life?
Why does he need a DNA test before acting?
And why does a man obsessed with racial purity become so desperate to hide the consequences of his own desires?
The answer lies in the relationship between ideology, shame, and the need for acceptance.
Lockjaw is not merely afraid that Willa will expose his past. He is terrified that the people whose approval defines his identity will reject him.
1. Who Is Willa’s Real Father?
For most of her life, Willa believes Bob Ferguson is her father.
Bob was once Pat Calhoun, a member of the militant revolutionary group known as the French 75.
He and Perfidia Beverly Hills were partners during the group’s most active years.
After the organization collapses, Bob raises their daughter under an assumed identity.
He is imperfect, anxious, and often overwhelmed.
But he remains present.
Willa grows up knowing him as her father.
The biological truth is more complicated.
Years earlier, Perfidia became involved with Colonel Lockjaw, a military officer she encountered during the French 75’s operations.
Their relationship was marked by a disturbing mixture of attraction, coercion, humiliation, and unequal power.
Willa was conceived during that relationship.
Near the film’s climax, Lockjaw confronts Willa and performs a DNA test.
The result confirms that he is her biological father.
This is not merely an unverified fan theory.
The film presents the DNA result as a major revelation.
Some viewers have speculated about possible errors or manipulation, but the narrative does not establish that the test was fraudulent.
The central mystery is therefore not whether Lockjaw is Willa’s father.
It is why confirming that fact makes him even more determined to eliminate her.
2. Why Does Lockjaw Want to Join the Christmas Adventurers Club?
The Christmas Adventurers Club is one of the film’s most unsettling institutions.
Its members belong to an exclusive white supremacist network.
They possess wealth, influence, and the ability to operate behind the scenes.
For Lockjaw, joining the club represents something greater than professional advancement.
It promises entry into a community of powerful men whose approval he desperately wants.
He already possesses substantial military authority.
He can command armed personnel.
He can intimidate civilians.
He can pursue enemies through the machinery of the state.
Yet none of that appears sufficient.
He wants recognition from people he considers superior.
This desire reveals an important weakness.
Lockjaw presents himself as a dominant, uncompromising figure.
But psychologically, he is deeply dependent on external validation.
His identity rests on being accepted by a hierarchy.
And he is willing to do almost anything to secure his position within it.
That dependence makes him vulnerable.
The club does not need to threaten him openly.
Its standards are enough.
Lockjaw understands that his relationship with Perfidia and the existence of a biracial daughter could disqualify him.
He therefore treats Willa as an obstacle to advancement.
His ambition turns fatherhood into a liability.
3. The Contradiction at the Heart of Lockjaw’s Racism
Lockjaw’s relationship with Perfidia exposes a profound contradiction.
He wants acceptance from a racist organization that condemns interracial relationships.
Yet he has been involved with a Black woman.
His personal desires conflict with the ideology he wants to embrace publicly.
This does not necessarily mean his racism is insincere.
Prejudice and attraction can coexist in deeply contradictory ways.
A person may desire someone while simultaneously participating in a system that devalues that person’s identity.
Lockjaw’s behavior reflects that contradiction.
His attraction to Perfidia does not produce respect for her.
Nor does it challenge his commitment to a racial hierarchy.
Instead, he attempts to separate his private actions from his public identity.
He wants the benefits of his relationship with Perfidia without accepting what that relationship reveals about him.
Willa makes that separation impossible.
She is not merely evidence of an affair.
She is a person whose existence permanently connects him to the woman and history he wants to deny.
The problem is not that Willa has done anything wrong.
The problem is that her existence contradicts the identity Lockjaw has constructed.
And rather than change his beliefs, he attempts to erase the contradiction.
4. Why Does Lockjaw Need the DNA Test?
The DNA test is one of the film’s most revealing scenes.
Lockjaw suspects Willa may be his daughter.
But suspicion is not enough for him.
He demands biological confirmation.
On a practical level, the test tells him whether she poses the particular threat he fears.
If Willa is not his daughter, the danger to his standing within the club may be different.
If she is his daughter, the connection becomes undeniable.
But the test also serves a psychological function.
Lockjaw wants certainty before committing to an irreversible act.
He is trying to transform a morally horrifying decision into a procedural problem.
First establish the facts.
Then determine the risk.
Then eliminate the threat.
This is how institutional thinking can become a shield against personal responsibility.
Lockjaw does not approach Willa as a father meeting his child.
He approaches her as a security problem requiring verification.
The DNA test reduces a human relationship to evidence.
And once the evidence confirms his fear, he acts to protect himself.
The scene is chilling precisely because it replaces the possibility of recognition with the mechanics of disposal.
5. Does Lockjaw Feel Anything for Willa?
This is one of the film’s most uncomfortable questions.
When Lockjaw confronts Willa, there are moments in which he appears to register the emotional significance of their relationship.
He is not portrayed as a machine completely incapable of recognizing what fatherhood means.
But whatever hesitation he experiences does not stop him.
He chooses the Christmas Adventurers Club.
In one of their exchanges, he makes clear that the status he hopes to gain matters more to him than the relationship Willa represents.
This is the decisive moment.
Lockjaw has an opportunity to behave differently.
He could acknowledge the truth.
He could abandon his pursuit.
He could accept the consequences of his past.
Instead, he continues arranging her death.
Whether he experiences a brief flicker of paternal feeling is ultimately less important than what he does.
The film distinguishes emotion from moral action.
A person may feel conflicted and still make a monstrous choice.
Lockjaw’s hesitation, if anything, makes his decision more disturbing.
He is not simply unaware of what he is doing.
He has enough understanding to recognize the stakes.
And he proceeds anyway.
6. Why Doesn’t Lockjaw Kill Willa Himself?
After confirming the DNA result, Lockjaw does not simply shoot Willa.
Instead, he entrusts her to Avanti, a bounty hunter.
He wants her eliminated without personally carrying out the killing.
Avanti refuses to murder a child.
Lockjaw then arranges for her to be delivered to a far-right militia that will do the job.
This sequence reveals another dimension of his character.
Lockjaw is willing to order his daughter’s death.
But he prefers to outsource the act.
There are several possible reasons.
Using intermediaries creates distance between him and the crime.
It reduces the chance that he will be directly associated with her disappearance.
It also allows him to preserve the self-image of someone who is managing a political problem rather than murdering his own child.
The film does not explicitly identify one psychological motive as definitive.
But the pattern is revealing.
Lockjaw uses institutions and subordinates to carry out violence while insulating himself from its immediate human consequences.
He wants Willa dead.
He simply does not want to confront the full reality of killing her.
That distinction does not reduce his responsibility.
It exposes the cowardice beneath his performance of authority.
7. Why Does Avanti Refuse to Follow the Order?
Avanti’s decision provides one of the film’s clearest moral contrasts.
He is not introduced as an idealistic revolutionary.
He operates in a violent world and accepts dangerous assignments.
Yet he draws a line when asked to kill Willa.
He refuses to murder a child.
He initially agrees to transport her to others who are willing to do it.
But even that compromise eventually becomes unbearable.
He changes his mind and helps Willa escape.
His decision costs him his life.
This is important because Avanti cannot claim to be entirely uninvolved.
He has already participated in the process of delivering Willa into danger.
But he ultimately recognizes that obedience is not an adequate excuse.
He chooses to intervene.
Lockjaw faces a comparable moral decision and chooses the opposite.
The contrast is stark.
Avanti is a hired operative who discovers a limit to what he will do.
Lockjaw is Willa’s biological father, yet refuses to recognize that limit.
The man with no family obligation toward her acts to save her.
The man who fathered her arranges her death.
That reversal is one of the film’s sharpest indictments of Lockjaw.
8. The Reddit Debate: Is Lockjaw Driven by Racism or the Need to Belong?
Viewers have debated whether Lockjaw’s deepest motivation is ideological hatred or an almost desperate need for acceptance.
A September 2025 discussion on r/TrueFilm examined the film after a second viewing.
One commenter suggested that Lockjaw’s willingness to kill Willa marks the point where he becomes irredeemable.
Another observed that his return to the Christmas Adventurers Club, even after its members turn against him, exposes how desperately he wants to belong.
This is a useful distinction.
Racism explains the rules of the organization Lockjaw wants to join.
His need for belonging explains why those rules exert such extraordinary power over him.
The two motives reinforce each other.
He adopts the club’s standards as a measure of his own worth.
Then he becomes willing to destroy anything that threatens his acceptance.
The result is a character who appears powerful but behaves like someone terrified of rejection.
His cruelty is not evidence of inner security.
It is partly an expression of his insecurity.
The more desperately he seeks validation, the more extreme his actions become.
And the more extreme his actions become, the less human he appears.
9. Lockjaw’s Obsession Is Also About Control
Lockjaw’s pursuit of Willa cannot be separated from his history with Perfidia.
Their relationship was never a simple romance.
It involved humiliation, domination, and struggles over power.
Perfidia repeatedly challenged his authority.
Lockjaw, who presents himself as a commanding military figure, found himself drawn into a relationship he could not fully control.
Willa is a reminder of that history.
She represents a part of his life that refuses to remain hidden.
Even after Perfidia disappears, the consequences of their relationship survive.
Lockjaw cannot command those consequences to vanish.
He cannot rewrite Willa’s biological parentage.
And he cannot guarantee that the Christmas Adventurers Club will never discover the truth.
His response is to pursue physical control over Willa.
He can track her.
He can detain her.
He can order her transferred.
And he can attempt to have her killed.
But these actions reveal the limits of his power.
He can threaten another person’s life.
He cannot change what happened in the past.
His violence is an attempt to make reality conform to the identity he wants to possess.
10. Why Bob Is Willa’s Real Father in the Way That Matters
The biological revelation creates a deliberate contrast between Lockjaw and Bob Ferguson.
Bob is not Willa’s biological father.
But he has raised her.
He has spent years protecting her.
He has lived under an assumed identity to keep her safe.
And when she is threatened, he risks his life to find her.
Bob is far from a perfect parent.
He is paranoid.
He is often disorganized.
He struggles with substance use and the emotional consequences of his revolutionary past.
But he remains committed to Willa.
Lockjaw has the biological connection.
Bob has the lived relationship.
This contrast challenges the idea that parenthood is defined entirely by blood.
Biology establishes a fact about origin.
It does not automatically create care, loyalty, or responsibility.
Lockjaw’s actions demonstrate how meaningless biological fatherhood becomes when separated from those obligations.
Bob’s actions demonstrate the opposite.
He may not share Willa’s DNA.
But he behaves as her father.
The film makes the distinction through action rather than sentiment.
One man tries to kill her.
The other tries to save her.
That is the relationship that matters.
11. Why Willa’s Response Matters More Than Lockjaw’s Revelation
The DNA test could have reduced Willa to a passive victim of an elaborate family secret.
Instead, the film allows her to become increasingly active in determining her own survival.
She learns that the man pursuing her is her biological father.
She discovers that her family’s history is more complicated than she believed.
She is betrayed by the institutions and adults who should protect her.
But she does not simply wait for rescue.
During the final chase, she makes a decisive choice.
She uses the terrain of the road to outmaneuver Tim, the operative pursuing her.
She forces a crash.
And when he fails to establish that he is someone she can trust, she shoots him.
This is not presented as an uncomplicated triumph.
Willa is a teenager forced into a lethal confrontation because adults have created a world in which her existence is treated as a threat.
But her survival demonstrates that she is not merely an object in Lockjaw’s story.
She becomes an agent in her own.
The man who wants to erase her cannot determine her future.
She survives him.
12. The Christmas Adventurers Club Turns Against Lockjaw
One of the film’s darkest ironies is that Lockjaw’s attempts to protect his status ultimately fail.
The Christmas Adventurers Club discovers the truth about his relationship with Perfidia.
The organization does not respond with understanding.
It treats his history as a violation of its racial ideology.
And it becomes willing to eliminate him.
Tim, an operative associated with the club, attacks Lockjaw during the climactic pursuit.
Lockjaw is shot and crashes his vehicle.
He appears to be dead.
But he survives.
Later, he returns to the very organization whose approval he has spent the film seeking.
The club appears to welcome him.
Then it kills him.
The final sequence is grotesque, absurd, and deeply revealing.
Lockjaw sacrifices his daughter to protect his place in an organization that never truly values him.
He attempts to erase evidence of his past.
But the club regards him as disposable anyway.
His loyalty is not rewarded.
His desperation is exploited.
And the hierarchy he worships ultimately destroys him.
13. Why the Club’s Betrayal Is More Than Poetic Justice
It would be easy to interpret Lockjaw’s death as simple punishment.
He tries to murder his daughter.
Then the organization he serves murders him.
The symmetry is satisfying.
But the scene also makes a broader point about authoritarian hierarchies.
Such systems often demand absolute loyalty from individuals while offering little genuine loyalty in return.
Membership depends on obedience.
Status depends on conformity.
And acceptance can be withdrawn whenever a person becomes inconvenient.
Lockjaw believes he can secure his identity by joining the powerful.
Instead, he discovers that power does not guarantee belonging.
The club’s willingness to kill him reveals the emptiness of the recognition he seeks.
He wants to become indispensable.
The organization considers him expendable.
This is the final humiliation.
He has spent years performing strength.
Yet his fate is decided by people whose approval he cannot stop craving.
The man who refuses to accept his daughter is himself rejected by the group he considers his chosen family.
14. The Tragedy of a Man Who Chooses the Wrong Family
The film presents Lockjaw with two very different possibilities.
One is the family he has created biologically.
Willa exists because of his relationship with Perfidia.
She is an individual with a life, relationships, fears, and hopes.
Recognizing her would require confronting his past and accepting responsibility.
The other is the ideological family represented by the Christmas Adventurers Club.
Its members promise prestige, influence, and social belonging.
But their acceptance depends on denying the humanity of people outside their preferred racial hierarchy.
Lockjaw chooses the second.
He rejects the daughter who exists.
He pursues the approval of men who regard him as useful only while he meets their standards.
And he ultimately loses both.
This is why his story is more than a portrait of hypocrisy.
It is a portrait of someone who cannot distinguish genuine human connection from institutional recognition.
He believes belonging must be earned through conformity and cruelty.
He cannot imagine belonging through love or responsibility.
The tragedy is that the kind of connection he rejects is the one that might have offered him something real.
15. Why Lockjaw’s Actions Are Not Simply a Plot Twist
The revelation that Lockjaw is Willa’s biological father could have been used as a conventional thriller surprise.
But Paul Thomas Anderson makes it central to the film’s moral structure.
The revelation changes how we understand the conflict.
Lockjaw is not merely hunting the child of his former enemies.
He is hunting the consequence of his own past.
The political conflict becomes personal.
The racial ideology becomes inseparable from his intimate life.
And the pursuit of institutional power becomes an assault on his own family.
This is why the DNA test matters beyond its shock value.
It exposes the contradiction that Lockjaw has spent years trying to suppress.
He cannot maintain the image of racial purity demanded by the club without denying something fundamental about his own life.
And when he faces that contradiction, he chooses violence rather than honesty.
The twist therefore reveals character.
It does not merely surprise the audience.
16. Did Lockjaw Ever Have a Chance to Change?
The film does not suggest that Lockjaw was destined from birth to become this person.
He makes choices.
He chooses to pursue Perfidia.
He chooses to conceal their relationship.
He chooses to seek membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club.
And he chooses to arrange Willa’s death.
At several points, a different decision remains possible.
He could abandon the club.
He could acknowledge his daughter.
He could stop the pursuit.
He could accept the consequences of his past.
But he refuses.
This matters because it prevents the film from treating ideology as an excuse for individual responsibility.
Lockjaw operates within a racist system.
That system rewards conformity and cruelty.
But he is not merely an innocent person manipulated by it.
He actively seeks its approval.
He uses its power.
And he embraces its logic even when it demands the death of his child.
His eventual destruction does not erase his agency.
He helps create the conditions of his own downfall.
17. The Deeper Meaning: Lockjaw Is Terrified of Being Nobody
Beneath Lockjaw’s racism, violence, and obsession lies a surprisingly ordinary fear.
He is afraid of being insignificant.
He wants to belong to an elite.
He wants his name associated with power.
He wants recognition from men he considers important.
His military rank is not enough.
His ability to command soldiers is not enough.
His personal history must be purified to satisfy the group whose approval he seeks.
This explains the extraordinary intensity of his pursuit.
Willa is not dangerous because she possesses military power.
She is dangerous because her existence threatens his desired identity.
A teenage girl becomes an existential threat to a powerful colonel.
That inversion exposes how fragile his sense of self really is.
The more authority he possesses, the more terrified he becomes of losing status.
The more he fears rejection, the more violently he acts.
And the more violently he acts, the more completely he destroys the possibility of genuine human connection.
His obsession is not strength.
It is weakness disguised as domination.
Final Verdict: Lockjaw Tried to Kill Willa Because He Valued Acceptance More Than Fatherhood
So why did Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw try to kill his own daughter in One Battle After Another?
The immediate answer is that Willa’s existence threatens his membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club.
The organization is committed to white supremacist ideology.
Lockjaw’s past relationship with Perfidia and his biracial daughter expose a contradiction that could destroy his standing.
He believes eliminating Willa will protect his reputation and future.
But the deeper explanation is psychological.
Lockjaw has built his identity around the approval of powerful men.
He cannot tolerate anything that threatens that approval.
He treats his daughter not as a person deserving protection but as evidence that must be erased.
And he attempts to outsource her murder to avoid confronting the act himself.
His decision exposes the emptiness of his supposed strength.
A man who commands soldiers cannot face the truth about his own life.
A man obsessed with racial purity cannot accept the consequences of his own desires.
And a man desperate to join an elite brotherhood cannot recognize the family he already has.
The film delivers its final judgment through the Christmas Adventurers Club.
Lockjaw sacrifices everything for membership.
The club kills him anyway.
Meanwhile, Willa survives.
She returns to Bob, the man who raised and protected her.
Their relationship endures despite the revelation that they are not biologically related.
That contrast contains the film’s most powerful answer.
Lockjaw is Willa’s father by blood, but Bob is her father by choice.
One man sees her existence as a threat.
The other sees her life as worth protecting.
One man seeks belonging through power.
The other demonstrates belonging through responsibility.
And in the end, the man who rejects his daughter is rejected by the institution he loves more than her.
Lockjaw wanted to erase Willa because she threatened the identity he had invented. But by trying to destroy her, he revealed who he truly was.
That is the cruelest irony of One Battle After Another.
Related TTK Original Analysis
One Battle After Another: Why Did Perfidia Betray Everyone?
Explore why Perfidia betrayed the French 75, abandoned Bob and Willa, and chose personal freedom over loyalty—and how her choices set the tragedy in motion.
Sources and Further Reading
- Entertainment Weekly — One Battle After Another Ending Explained
- Slashfilm — The Ending of One Battle After Another, Explained
- Reddit — One Battle After Another Is Even Better After a Second Viewing
TTK Original — Beyond the Headlines. This article separates the film’s confirmed plot events from interpretations of Lockjaw’s psychology and the meaning of his choices.