Even devoted Colleen Hoover readers might be surprised by the It Ends With Us ending, as the 2024 new movie adaptation deviates slightly from the author's 2016 best-selling novel.
Directed by Justin Baldoni (Five Feet Apart), the romantic drama stars Blake Lively as Lily Bloom, a fittingly named Boston florist who falls for Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni), a dashing neurosurgeon with a darkness simmering beneath all of his charisma and compliments.
Things get even more complicated between the couple when a ghost from Lily's past — her old high-school beau Atlas Corrigan (played as a teen by Alex Neustaedter and as an adult by Brandon Sklenar) — resurfaces and brings not only childhood traumas into the light but also Ryle's jealous, abusive nature.
We've already seen the flick (read our It Ends With Us review to get our in-depth thoughts on the title, and if you want to experience it yourself, check out our how to watch It Ends With Us guide) and are ready to break down exactly how the movie version concludes and who Lily decides to be with in the end. (Warning: spoilers are obviously ahead!)
Who does Lily end up with in It Ends with Us?
So, who does Lily end up choosing: Ryle or Atlas? That's kind of a trick question because ultimately Lily Bloom chooses herself, and her baby, at the end of It Ends With Us. (In fact, that's the "Us" in the title.)
When Atlas makes a reappearance in her life — having left their Maine small town after high school to join the Marines and moving years later to Boston to open a buzzy farm-to-table restaurant, Root — Ryle becomes obsessive about Lily's relationship with him and turns violent. After a harrowing bout of spousal abuse, Lily manages to fight off Ryle and escape the Boston apartment they share.
Seeking security and solace, she shows up shaken and bruised at Root, looking for Atlas. Given that they both have dealt with and bonded through the pain of domestic abuse in their upbringings — he at the hand of his stepfather, and her mother at the hand of her father — he immediately recognizes what happened to her and takes her to the hospital to get examined. There, Lily is informed by the doctor that she is pregnant with Ryle's child.
Determined not to end up in a marriage like her parents' and to end the cycle of generational abuse, Lily decides to keep the baby but to separate from Ryle. However, she is clearly in contact with her estranged husband throughout her pregnancy: he stops by her new apartment to help build the baby's crib and visits Lily in the hospital when their daughter Emerson — named after his late brother — is born.
But it's in that very birthing room that Lily declares she wants a divorce, despite Ryle wanting her to come home and assuring her he will seek treatment. Lily implores him to think about how he'd respond if their daughter suffered the same abuses at the hand of an intimate partner, as Lily had. Despondent, Ryle agrees and leaves her to be with the baby. "It stops right here... it ends with us," Lily promises the newborn. This is a change from Hoover's original text, which sees Lily continue to co-parent Emerson with her ex even after the split.
In another change from the source text, Lily reveals her abusive marriage to her friend Allysa (Jenny Slate), who is also Ryle's sister and an employee at her flower shop. During an emotional sit-down between the two women, Allysa tells Lily that she will end their friendship if she ever speaks to her brother again. We see that, while Ryle is no longer part of Lily's life, she still remains close to Allysa in the future.
Some months later, Lily and her mother Jenny (Amy Morton) go to visit the grave of her father, bringing the baby to meet her grandpa. After years of resenting her mother for staying with an abusive man, Lily has made peace with her past and leaves behind the blank eulogy note from her father's funeral.
Even later, with Emerson now toddler-aged, the three Bloom ladies are enjoying an afternoon at the park. While grandma pushes Emerson on the swings, Lily peels away to check out the nearby farmer's market. There, she spots Atlas. After updating him that Ryle is no longer in the picture, she asks if he's seeing anyone. "Not yet," he says, ending the film on a hopeful note between the two characters.
It Ends with Us is now playing exclusively in movie theaters worldwide.
