 |
This Article Contains Spoilers -
WARNING: This article contains major spoilers. If you do not wish to know vital information on plot / character elements in a story, you may not wish to read beyond this warning: We hold no responsibility for any negative effects these facts may have on your enjoyment of said media should you continue. That is all. |
  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, strong drug use, extremely traumatic themes, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
| “ | Do you like me? | „ |
| ~ Jamie pleading to his psychologist, Briony. |
Jamie Edward "Jay" Miller is the main antagonist of the 2025 Netflix crime drama miniseries Adolescence.
He is a 13-year-old boy who murders a young girl after she rejected him. As the series progresses, it is clear that Jamie had been radicalised by the 'incel' movement - characterised by a belief of superiority and hatred toward women.
He was portrayed by Owen Cooper in his acting debut.
Description[]
| “ | My advice for parents is: you can’t keep an eye on your children at all times. So don’t let them have social media until they’re older; stick to the advised age restrictions. And then you’ve got to check social media and see what’s going on with them. Because bad things are happening, clearly, all over England. | „ |
| ~ Owen Cooper's advice regarding when a child should gain access to social media in an interview based on circumstances surrounding Jamie's radicalization.[1] |
Jamie is a young, Caucasian boy. He has brown hair and has a pale complexion. Jamie has a violent and aggressive temperament, particularly targeted towards women. He is impressionable and has an explosive short-fuse when provoked or critiqued. He shows timidity when he is being cross-referenced and interviewed by the police. He was shown to be a good student at school.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Jamie with his family
Jamie was born in either 2010 or 2011 to Eddie and Amanda Miller, and had an older sister called Lisa. He may have been born in Liverpool,[2] but had lived in Yorkshire since at least Year 1.[3]
Eddie, who had been beaten by his own father, swore he would never have meted out the same treatment to his own children,[2] though Jamie would witness him occasionally enter periods of violent rage, which he'd take out on inanimate objects, once even demolishing a shed.[4] While artistically gifted, Jamie was athletically lacking, and his father would take him to football matches every Saturday in an attempt to toughen him up. These attempts would prove fruitless, as Jamie's ineptitude would draw the ridicule of other spectating fathers, leading Eddie to turn away in shame,[2] a fact that would haunt Jamie throughout his adolescence.[4] Eddie later tried getting Jamie into boxing, but he lasted only "ten minutes".[2]
At some point, Jamie stopped drawing and requested a computer, which his parents readily provided. While Jamie and Eddie would bond over their mutual love of virtual football games, the latter's work schedule eventually prevented him from spending crucial time with his son. As a result, Jamie developed a computer addiction, often being caught still awake at one o'clock in the morning online.[2]
Radicalisation[]
Jamie attended Bruntwood Academy, a secondary school where the staff had difficulty in maintaining discipline among its pupils.[3] Jamie had few friends, none of which were female. His only close affiliations were with Tommy and Ryan, both of which were social outcasts for reasons of poverty and intellectual underachievement respectively.[4] The three were frequent victims of bullying, which manifested in spitting and tripping.[4] By Year 8, Jamie was in the top set of English and in set two of maths and French, but was otherwise unmotivated, being unsure of wanting to continue into A-levels. His behaviour in class gradually worsened throughout the year.[5]
At some point, many pupils of Bruntwood, including Jamie, became exposed to the manosphere and incel culture, with several of the boys being heard to openly talk about Andrew Tate on school grounds.[3] While Jamie himself would deny being part of the subculture, he nevertheless believed in the "80/20 rule" (an application of the Pareto principle) which suggests that 80% of women desire the top 20% of most attractive men. He also began believing that it was normal and acceptable for a 13-year-old to have, at the very least, touched a girl's intimate parts.[4] His lack of success with girls convinced him that he was "ugly"[4] and he developed a misogynistic attitude, which he would express by leaving aggressive and sexually charged comments on the photos of female Instagram models.[5]
Murder of Katie Leonard[]
| “ | She was a bullying *****, right? But that's the thing, you see? That night, I didn't touch her. I could've touched her, but I didn't. I just... I had a knife. She was scared. But I didn't do that. I could have touched any part of her body. I really wanted to, but I didn't. I just... Most boys would've touched her. So that makes me better. | „ |
| ~ Jamie recounting the night of 7 May 2024 to his psychologist Briony.[4] |
CCTV footage of Jamie murdering Katie
During the spring of 2024, Jamie, alongside other boys in Bruntwood Academy, was forwarded via Snapchat topless photographs of Katie Leonard, a girl in his year with whom he shared an English class. Although Katie wasn't his type, he sought to exploit her vulnerability by feigning sympathy for her humiliation and asking her to join him at the local fair. Katie, however, rejected his advances and began posting emojis (specifically 🫘, 🧨 and 💯) on his Instagram profile which implied he was an incel. The posts received numerous likes, which Jamie interpreted to mean that people agreed with her assessment of his character.[4]
On 7 May 2024, Jamie was spotted by CCTV at Meadows Square with Tommy and Ryan at 19:43.[5] At some point, Ryan lent him his knife, under the impression that Jamie would only use it to scare Katie.[3] He stayed with his friends for an hour before leaving. Katie was seen leaving her house at 20:30 and was spotted being followed by Jamie at 21:47 while walking past the crossing at 4 Bridge Street. The two confronted each other at 22:13 at Crowthers' car park, during which Katie pushed Jamie and attempted to walk away. Jamie responded by attacking Katie, stabbing her seven times on the chest, neck, thigh and arm, but receiving defensive scratches on his left arm in the process. He left her bleeding on the ground and disposed of all his clothes except for his blood-stained Air Max Nike trainers. Katie was subsequently discovered after 22:30, with paramedics failing to stop her bleeding.[5]
Arrest[]
At 6:15 the day after the murder, the Miller household was stormed by armed police officers lead by DI Luke Bascombe and DS Misha Frank. Jamie was arrested in his room, where he wet himself while being read his right to silence at gunpoint. After changing his trousers, Jamie was taken to Heywood Street Police Station, where he was assigned a provisional appropriate adult from Doncaster Social Services. After being briefly held in a dry cell, Jamie consented to having his prints, saliva and blood taken, but refused to divulge the passcode of his mobile phone. Prior to his interrogation, he selected his father as his primary appropriate adult and was advised to answer "no comment" to all questions pertaining to his crime by his solicitor Paul Barlow of Storey and French. While awaiting questioning, Jamie swore to his father that he had done nothing wrong, which Eddie readily believed. His interrogation, undertaken by Bascombe and Frank, began at 6:50 in the company of his father and Barlow, during which he denied any wrongdoing. Against his solicitor's advice, Jamie refused to take a break from the interrogation when the existence of the CCTV footage was revealed. Upon being shown the footage, Jamie broke down, but continued to proclaim his innocence.[5]
Investigation[]
In the following three days, the investigation shifted to locating the murder weapon and establishing a motive. Due to their ignorance of manosphere jargon, DI Bascombe and DS Misha Frank were initially unaware of the true meaning behind Katie's messages to Jamie, misinterpreting them as being amicable. Their confusion only grew when Katie's best friend Jade revealed that Katie did not consider Jamie a friend, and would never have associated with him. Bascombe would only learn the truth behind Katie's posts when his son Adam, who attended Bruntwood Academy, translated the emojis to him.[3]
Jamie's friends Ryan and Tommy had previously been questioned, with Tommy's parents urging him to not say anything, while Ryan's were reportedly apathetic towards the whole situation. When questioned later on school premises by Bascombe, Ryan evaded answering any questions regarding Jamie's motives and the location of the knife, but later admitted that the weapon had been his, thus leading to his arrest.[3]
Incarceration[]
Jamie with his psychologist Briony Ariston
Jamie was incarcerated in the Standling Secure Training Station due to being underage. He was visited by two psychologists hired by the judge to write independent pre-sentence reports in order to ascertain whether or not he understood the charges against him. One of the psychologists was Dr. Briony Ariston, who was scheduled to do five sessions with Jamie and began the first four by asking him straightforward questions on what he considered right and wrong, and developed a rapport with him by providing him with his favourite hot drinks. During his stay at the Station, Jamie got into at least one physical altercation with another inmate.[3]
On their fifth and (unbeknownst to Jamie) last session, seven months after the murder, Briony changed tack and began to question Jamie on his relationship with his father and what he considered to be masculine. While initially cocky and dismissive, Jamie began to unravel when recounting his embarassment over his lack of athletic ability, believing that his father was ashamed of him. His temper flared when Briony refused to show him her notes and revealed that she was in no position to have him transferred to a different facility. During the ensuing argument, Jamie stood up and raised his voice, prompting Briony to urge him to sit down, after which Jamie verbally attacked her, telling her that she could not tell him what to do.[3]
After a short break, Briony confronted Jamie directly on his relationship with the opposite sex and with Katie Leonard in particular. Jamie implied that it was acceptable for someone his age to have had sexual contact with a girl, though admitted that he had never experienced it. He then recounted the incident involving Katie's nude photographs, showing little sympathy for her and expressing scorn for the boy who spread the image, believing that he should have accumulated more photographs before divulging them. He began to lose his composure again when he claimed that girls were not attracted to him on account of what he perceived as his ugliness, becoming agitated when Briony did not contradict him. In his emotional state, Jamie unintentionally admitted his crime then blamed Briony for "putting words in [his] mouth". He then became physically threatening to Briony after being disgusted at her casually waving away the guard assigned to him.[3]
After calming down, Jamie opened up about what led to the events of 7 May 2024, revealing his attempt to ask Katie out and her subsequent bullying of him, as well as expressing agreement with certain manosphere talking points. Eventually, he began engaging in victim blaming, stating that Katie deserved to die, while still denying his culpability, even going as far as claiming that the CCTV footage of the murder was faked. He then recounted how, on the night of Katie's death, he had refrained from raping her, thus making him morally superior. After digesting the callousness of his words, Briony pointedly asked Jamie if he understood what death was, and whether or not he was aware that none of his negative assessments of Katie's character justified her murder. Upon answering in the affirmative, Jamie once again entered an agitated state when Briony revealed that this was to be their last session. Desperate for affirmation, Jamie asked Briony whether or not she liked him, but she refused to answer, leading him to lose his composure once more and demand that she not report what he had said during the session. As he was led away by the guard, Jamie shouted at Briony to tell his father that he was alright.[3]
Change of plea[]
| “ | I... know today's not the day for it, but... it's just happened, you know, and ... Well, with it all getting closer, I... Look, I've thought about it, and... Dad, I'm gonna change my plea. | „ |
| ~ Jamie to his father[2] |
In the months following Briony's final visit, Jamie continued to have issues with the other inmates and at some point had a confrontation of some kind with the facility's librarian. He later reconciled with the librarian and began drawing again, as well as attending a gym.[2]
Thirteen months after the murder, Jamie called his father on his 50th birthday, revealing that, with the trial approaching, he had decided to change his plea to guilty.[2]
Legacy[]
Katie Leonard's death resulted in the start of a social movement, #ourkatie, dedicated to ending knife crime in Yorkshire.[3]
Although the murder occurred outside of school grounds, numerous parents of Bruntwood pupils demanded that the academy introduce safety measures such as security guards and metal detectors.[3]
People within the manosphere community showed support for Jamie, spreading a conspiracy theory that the nature of Katie's injuries showed that her death had been faked. At least one member claimed that many of them would be prepared to pay for a lawyer through crowdfunding, raising the possibility that they considered him a martyr.[2]
Jamie's family suffered months of harassment, to the point where Amanda's mother offered Eddie a job in Liverpool, but he refused to move, as he did not want to disrupt the lives of his employees or Lisa's education. He only fully came to terms with the gravity of Jamie's actions after he had decided to change his plea, realising that he had failed his son by emotionally neglecting him.[2]
Quotes[]
| “ | I don't ****ing wanna sit down! You do not tell me when to sit down! You do not control what I ****ing... Look at me now! You do not control what I do in my life! Get that in that ****ing little head of yours! ****ing hell... | „ |
| ~ Jamie's breakdown as he lashes out at Briony.[4] |
| “ | The other bloke is much more easy. ... Him checking whether I understand was much easier. Whether I understand what I did. ... Look, no, **** off! I didn't ****ing say that! You're ****ing putting words in me mouth! It's a ****ing trap in 'ere! | „ |
| ~ Jamie's second breakdown, during which he accidentally lets it slip that he indeed murdered Katie.[4] |
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Owen Cooper received widespread acclaim for his performance, and has said of his role: "I think what Steven and Jack have done brilliantly is that Jamie is just a normal kid ... That shows that the power of social media can change anyone. It doesn't matter what class you are, how you look; it can happen to anyone."[1]
- Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne has stated regarding Jamie: "I don't want to make this easy and blame the parents. I want to create a complicated portrait. ... This isn't as easy to put in a box and go, 'Oh, this is just crazy people thinking crazy thoughts,' ... In lots of ways, I could understand what would attract Jamie to these ideas. That idea of there is a reason why you aren't liked. There is a reason why you find it very difficult to talk to women. There's a reason why you feel isolated from your parents. There's a reason why you're struggling academically. If you can put all these things in an argument that makes sense, that's really, really dangerous."[6]
- Jack Thorne explained that Jamie Miller and his crime are not based on a specific criminal case, stating in response to allegations that the character was a race-swapped interpretation of a real-life murderer that: "We're not making a point about race with this. We are making a point about masculinity. ... There is no part of this that's based on a true story, not one single part".[7] He also stated that the decision not to base the series on a real case was out of consideration for the families of the people involved: "I've done true-life stories, [and] I know what it costs people when you put their stories on screen... I've been there before, and we didn't go there with this."[8]
- The series never reveals what happened to the knife Jamie used to murder Katie, which was a deliberate decision by Jack Thorne, who stated: "We cannot answer that. We don't answer that. I could have tried to fit it into dialog in episode three, but that would have felt inauthentic and wrong ... I have an answer because Stephen and I worked everything out. But the point is that we didn't have to answer it, and by not answering it, we create a question, and that question hangs on".[9]
- His family home is actually Wentworth Drive in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire.[10]
- If one looked closely at the scene of Jamie's arrest, his hand was touching a part of his room's wallpaper which already torn away in the shape of sharp object — a subtle and easily overlooked hint of him not as innocent as he claimed to be.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Nell Frizzell (26 March 2025), "'I Would Love Leonardo DiCaprio's Career': Owen Cooper On What's Next After His Star-Making Turn In Adolescence", Vogue.ph.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Adolescence, Episode 4
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 Adolescence, Episode 2
- ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 Adolescence, Episode 3
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Adolescence, Episode 1
- ↑ Kayla Cobb (14 March 2025), 'Adolescence' Is More Than Netflix's Take on the One-Take Gimmick — It's a Conversation About Incel Culture, Thewrap.com.
- ↑ Joanna Crawley (25 March 2025), "Adolescence co-writer hits back at 'absurd' claims the Netflix show's main character was 'race-swapped' to be white", Dailymail.co.uk.
- ↑ Jack King (20 March 2025), Writer Jack Thorne on the shattering Adolescence ending and how we're failing young men, Gq-magazine.co.uk.
- ↑ Jack Kanter (19 March 2025), "'Adolescence' Writer Jack Thorne On The Missing Knife, The Scene He Agonized Over, Saving British Drama & His Zoom Encounter With Brad Pitt", Deadline.com.
- ↑ Abigail Kellett (18 March 2025), "Where was Adolescence filmed? Here are the locations used in new Netflix drama", Wakefieldexpress.co.uk.