Netflix's latest psychological thriller, Luckiest Girl Alive, has captured audiences with its gripping and mysterious storyline. While some fans ask where Luckiest Girl Alive was filmed and others wonder about the true-life story that Luckiest Girl Alive was based on, many are curious about the film's ending.
Luckiest Girl Alive, which was adapted from Jessica Knoll's debut novel of the same name, sees main character Ani, played by Mila Kunis, struggle to come to terms with her past trauma and viewers watch on as the weight of her turbulent journey begins to unravel her now successful life.
Ani's life appears to be perfect. She is a writer at a popular women’s magazine, is engaged to a loving and financially stable man, whom she was about to get married to, and seems to have everything she could ever need. But quickly, viewers realise that Ani is hiding something.
While unraveling Ani's narrative, Luckiest Girl Alive keeps many elements of her past wrapped in mystery, revealing only figments of the traumatic event we know has shaped her present reality. Flashbacks detail how Ani is constantly reliving her trauma and we watch as she attempts to suppress the memories and have control over her life.
Viewers learn that, a couple of days before a shooting at her school, Ani was sexually assaulted by three boys at a party. Unfortunately, when she tried opening up about the experience with the school's authorities and her mother, she was silenced since one of the boys, Dean, belonged to a powerful family.
Feeling frustrated at the unfair politics silencing Ani, two boys at her school orchestrate a shooting in which two of the three boys who had previously raped Ani, get killed. Dean gets shot in the leg and, so she can get her revenge, one of the shooters asks Ani to finish the job. However, she is unable to do it and stabs the shooter instead. Even though Ani has now saved Dean's life, he skews the narrative to suggest that Ani was an accomplice in the school shooting. Dean is paralysed from the waist down and his experience leads him to become a gun control activist and run for the Senate.
Following the traumatic experience, Ani assumes a new identity, becoming Ani as opposed to TifAni, and starts a new life - running from her past until she is forced again to confront it.
The film does end with some satisfying closure as Ani finally gains the courage to rise above her past and plan for a better future, but questions surrounding the ending still linger. Here we explain the ending of Netflix's Luckiest Girl Alive.
Luckiest Girl Alive: Ending explained
The ending of Luckiest Girl Alive shows how coming to terms with trauma and working through past struggles can allow a person to start a new and better life. After landing her dream job at The New York Times, Ani realises that she may never actually take the job unless she can change certain things about her life and come to terms with her past. The job is Ani's driving force and she uses this momentum to rectify all the previous trauma she experienced.
This encourages her to not only square up to Dean but also expose him for the liar that he is. During one of Dean's book signing events, unbeknownst to him, or us at the time, Ani records her entire conversation and gets him to confess that he raped her.
Dean attempts to make an offer with Ani, stating that he would take back his statement accusing Ani of being in on the school shooting as long as she didn’t speak of the rape. But, satisfyingly, she was a step ahead of him with the recording and promptly showed him the finger before walking out.
With this new proof of her trauma, Ani writes down her story in an article for The New York Times, with her words quickly becoming a hit. Consequently, survivors of similar situations come out with their own stories and find solace in one another's understanding.
What happened to Luke in Luckiest Girl Alive?
After coming to terms with her trauma, Ani cancels her wedding and breaks up with the seemingly perfect Luke. The move seems confusing as Ani appears to want to be with Luke and seems to love him dearly.
However, Ani realises that breaking up with him is her only choice as he stands in her way of starting a new and better life. When Luke and his rather well-off family have a problem with her opening up and coming to terms with her trauma ridden past and its negative impact on her life, she decides to end her relationship and choose herself for once.
During the breakup, Ani admits that she is as much in the wrong as Luke is. She details how she tried to be the perfect dolled-up girl for him and explains how “she used him all those years” to climb the social ladder and make a name for herself. Only by being free from him can Ani finally live for herself and not for those around her.
Following the breakup, Luke carries through with his plans to move to London while Ani, now with full closure to a long and upsetting chapter of her life, starts afresh.
Could there be a Luckiest Girl Alive sequel?
Netflix has not indicated any plans to make a Luckiest Girl Alive sequel. Considering that Luckiest Girl Alive is a standalone book, with no follow-up books published so far, it is likely the movie will too be a standalone film.
The film has a satisfying ending that brings closure to nearly all the unanswered questions. Sure, there is the suggestion that Ani’s story isn’t quite over yet, she is only in her 30s, and there are a few open-ended questions about where she’s going next, as there is for anyone in their 30s, but these questions do not necessarily need a sequel to Luckiest Girl Alive to answer them.
However, Mila Kunis has made it clear that she would be completely on board for a second movie. The 39-year-old, who is also a producer on the film, recently told PEOPLE, "Oh my God, I hope my character is happier [in the second movie if there is one]! Yeah, of course [I would be on board]."
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