Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for It Ends with Us and discusses the topic of domestic abuse and sexual assault.
Book-to-movie adaptations often bring in a large crowd due to the pre-established success of the book, and It Ends with Us is no exception. The movie, which is an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name, stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in the lead roles of Lily Bloom and Ryle Kincaid and has been quite a hot topic since its release. With behind-the-scenes drama reportedly plaguing the cast, and awful marketing causing flack online, the movie has been subject to its fair share of criticism. On the flip side, audiences have given it a lot of love, and its box office numbers are no slouch, making it a bonafide success. But a lot happened in It Ends with Us’s final act, so let’s break it all down, shall we?
What Is ‘It Ends With Us’ About?
It Ends with Us follows Lily Bloom, who moves to Boston to chase her dream of opening her own flower shop. There she bumps into a handsome and charming man named Ryle, a hot-headed neurosurgeon who immediately sweeps her off her feet. Their love story is juxtaposed by flashbacks of a teenaged Lily (Isabela Ferrer) and a boy named Atlas (Alex Neustaedter), who we come to learn is her first love. Also plaguing Lily’s flashbacks is her father, Andrew (Kevin McKidd), who was physically abusive towards her mother. This is reflected in the present day when Ryle begins showing a darker side of himself that Lily has never seen before. There are several incidents where Lily is injured, with Ryle explaining them away as accidents.
Around the same time, Lily and Atlas (now played by Brandon Sklenar) bump into each other at his restaurant, and it's obvious their love for each other has never fully gone away. After Lily and Ryle get married, she starts to realize the severity of the issues in her and Ryle’s relationship and that her injuries may not be as accidental as he claims them to be. With Atlas’s help, Lily manages to leave Ryle once and for all, but this all takes place in a pretty heavy and packed final act.
Does Lily Leave Ryle In ‘It Ends With Us’?
Before Lily and Ryle marry, Atlas gives Lily his phone number in case she ever needs his help. This comes after a heated confrontation between Atlas and Ryle when Atlas sees Lily with a black eye. She tucks the piece of paper with his number inside her phone case for safekeeping. But one night, he discovers it after he drops her phone. He reveals to her that he called the number and discovered that it belongs to Atlas. This sparks an argument, as Ryle is extremely insecure when it comes to Atlas and doesn’t trust Lily when she tells him that nothing is going on between them. As she follows him out of their apartment during their argument, she ends up falling down the stairs, and the scene abruptly fades to black before we can properly see what happened. Still, we, the audience, know that Ryle purposefully pushed her. When she wakes up, Ryle is stitching a gnarly cut on her forehead and is softly trying to calm her as she begins to panic. He tells her that in the heat of the moment, she fell, and he tried to catch her to no avail. She accepts this as a fact since she hit her head and isn’t able to recall the contrary, though we as the viewers know the truth.
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This is a major event for Lily, but it isn’t until a little while later that she gets the courage to leave. Lily is over the moon when she discovers that her flower shop is featured in a local magazine of the 10 Best Businesses. She goes home that night and is excited to celebrate the achievement with Ryle, but he turns the focus to Atlas, whose restaurant, Root, has been given the number one spot. In the magazine interview, Atlas reveals that he named the restaurant after a girl who he carved a heart into a hollow tree for. Ryle immediately clocks this as being Lily and forces her to read it aloud to him. He then asks her if she still loves Atlas, to which she says she doesn’t know. Furious, Ryle forces himself on Lily, leaves a painful bite mark around the tattoo she got for Atlas, and attempts to rape her.
Thankfully, she manages to fight him and gets away before he can hurt her further, but it’s a terrifying moment nonetheless. It’s during this particular attack that Lily begins to reframe all of Ryle’s past outbursts in her mind and sees them for what they really were, and not the accidents he led her to believe. She drives to Atlas’s restaurant, and he drops everything to take her to the hospital, staying with her throughout the entire ordeal. But Lily’s night is far from over because the nurse taking care of her drops a final bombshell on her: Lily is pregnant with Ryle’s baby.
Lily Takes Back Her Power In ‘It Ends With Us’
After discovering she’s pregnant, Lily stays with Atlas for a few days, during which he informs her that she saved his life when they were teenagers and that if she decides to keep the baby he knows she will be an amazing mother. She also meets up with Allysa (Jenny Slate), Ryle’s sister and Lily’s best friend and co-worker, who gives her an emotional talk in what is one of the movie’s most emotional moments. She explains to Lily the truth about their other sibling, something that Ryle has been extremely secretive about. When Ryle was six years old, he got hold of their father’s gun, thinking it was a toy, and accidentally shot and killed their brother Emerson. As much as she loves her brother, she knows the kind of person he is and that he needs to get help before he can be the kind of man Lily or her daughter needs, something she tells Lily as bluntly as she can: "As his sister, I wish more than anything that you find a way to forgive him. But as your best friend, I have to tell you that if you take him back, I will never speak to you again."
From this moment on, Lily takes her power back and goes on with her pregnancy by herself. We get a sweet montage of her putting together baby furniture with her mom, painting the nursery, and finding out that she’s having a girl. But then Ryle shows up, and we learn that she has invited him over so he can be at least partially involved. He helps Lily build the crib and is about to leave afterward when Lily asks him if he would like to feel the baby kick. He, of course, says yes and then begs Lily to give him another chance, promising that he’s going to seek help for his anger issues and that he will never hurt her again. But she stands her ground and declines his requests for her to come home.
Still, Ryle is by Lily's side when she gives birth. After the baby is born, she tells him that she would like to name her after his brother, Emerson and that they can call her “Emmy” for short. She then tells him that she wants a divorce, which catches Ryle off guard, but she doesn’t even give him a second to argue before she doubles down on her request, refusing to take no for an answer. She then asks him a question that changes everything and makes him understand where she’s coming from.
“What if one day she came to you and said ‘my boyfriend hit me’, what would you say to her? What if she said ‘Daddy my husband pushed me down the stairs, but he said it was an accident, so it’s fine’? What if she said her husband held her down and she begged him to stop, but he swore he’d never do it again. What would you tell her?”
Ryle says that he would beg her to leave him and that he’d beg her never to go back. Finally, it clicks for him and he understands what he has put Lily through, never wanting his daughter to experience the same thing he’s inflicted. He leaves, and Lily is left cradling their daughter, whispering to her, “It stops right here, with you and me. It ends with us.”
‘It Ends With Us’ Movie Tweaks the Book Ending
The movie ends with a flash forward of Lily, her mother, and Emmy visiting Lily’s father’s grave, where she introduces her father to his granddaughter and leaves the blank list from her eulogy on his tombstone. Months later, the three are at a farmer’s market when Lily and Atlas unexpectedly bump into each other once again. He asks her if she’s still with Ryle, but she confirms that it’s just her and Emmy. She then asks him if he has anyone special in his life, to which he replies, “No. Not yet.” And the credits roll.
This ending is slightly different from that of the book. Both still end with Lily and Atlas finding one another again and rekindling their romance, but unlike the movie where it is only heavily implied, the book makes it known that they are getting back together. In the book, she bumps into Atlas and tells him that she is ready to be loved by him again. He then kisses the heart tattoo on her collarbone and tells her, “You can stop swimming now, Lily. We finally reached the shore.” The change for the movie is likely to build intrigue for a sequel, but also because the book had Lily and Ryle co-parenting Emerson. The movie instead focuses on Lily taking her power back and leaving Ryle once and for all, so in a way, this change allowed Lily's happy ending to be more about her breaking the pattern than who she ends up with romantically.
It Ends With Us
710
PG-13
Drama
Romance
- Release Date
- June 21, 2024
- Director
- Justin Baldoni
- Cast
- Blake Lively , Jenny Slate , Brandon Sklenar , Justin Baldoni
- Runtime
- 130 minutes
- Main Genre
- Drama
- Writers
- Justin Baldoni , Christy Hall , Colleen Hoover
You can watch It Ends with Us in theaters.
