True Love Never Dies: One Day Ending, Explained

Summary:

• New Netflix ’s romantic series, One Day, based on David Nicholls’ novel, tells a story of the 20-year-old connection between the two young people.
• It presents an extremely devastating ending which leaves viewers in tears.
• However, its finale comprises curious reflections on the beauty of the chance and the spontaneous nature of true love and bonding.

Warning: the article contains spoilers for One Day.

Fans of romantic drama movies can certainly recall the 2011 heartbreaking banger titled One Day, starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, but not all of them know that it’s based on the novel of the same name by David Nicholls, who also take part in the One Day’s new adaptation, which premiered on Netflix last month in the form of the series.

The story follows a young couple who spends the night together on 15 July 1988, knowing they must go their separate ways the next day, but since then their lives become interconnected as we see them on every 15th of July for the next 20 years.

The newly-released show, which is quite a literate adaptation of the book, shocked viewers by its tragic ending, which features Emma (Ambika Mod) getting hit by a car and leaving Dexter (Leo Woodall) alone in grief.

It was so quick and unexpected in the sense of the genre where happy endings happen more often than such devastating ones, so fans “felt his [Dexter’s] pain so strongly it hurt,” as said by the Redditor @jubajab.

Even though it kind of kills butterflies in the stomach, which the previous events of the series is giving, the ending is much more meaningful and beautiful than you think. Firstly, there is a symbolism regarding the date of both their first meeting and Emma’s death with the two events happening on July 15. It presents a cycle of life leading to death, love leading to pain if you lose your partner, which is tough to admit.

Then there comes a conclusion which can be drawn from another similarity of these two moments, with the characters’ first meeting coming in flashbacks in the last show’s episode, showing three anniversaries which Dexter passes without Emma. Both these two life-changing events were abrupt and inexplicable, as if they came out of nowhere.

The spontaneous night together brought Emma and Dexter 20 years of complicated relationship, full of adventures, jealousy, separation and, eventually, love that followed by admitting mistakes and reconciling. It reminds us how meaningful can turn out to be even the smallest detail or how important one encounter can become in your life.

Stream One Day on Netflix if you feel like reflecting on your life and maybe have an existential crisis.

Sources: Netflix, Reddit