Does the ‘It Ends With Us’ Ending Make Way for a Sequel?

For the past few years, Colleen Hoover’s 2016 romance novel It Ends With Us has been an inescapable sight on Bookstagram and BookTok. And this week, its screen adaptation starring Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Brandon Sklenar, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj, and Amy Morton releases in theatres amidst much hype.

The film is directed by Jane the Virgin actor and Five Feet Apart and Clouds director Justin Baldoni, who is also the film’s lead alongside Lively and Sklenar. In a complete reversal of roles, Baldoni, who hosts a podcast and has written books dismantling toxic masculinity, plays an abusive husband in the film. It Ends With Us tackles domestic abuse in relationships and one woman’s journey to try and break the cycle of generational trauma for her newborn daughter.

What is It Ends With Us about?

Aspiring flower shop owner Lily Bloom Blossom (Blake Lively) meets neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni) one night on his apartment building rooftop in Boston, and their attraction is undeniable. But their dating goals are different; she is a relationship girl, and he is a f*ckboy. When Ryle’s sister—a rich, bored housewife—Allysa (Jenny Slate) unexpectedly begins working at Lily’s flower shop, Ryle and Lily meet again, and he love bombs her into dating him. Their relationship looks like the montage for a cheesy rom-com until something happens that makes Lily question it.

Parallel to Lily and Ryle’s romance, we get flashbacks to teenager Lily (Isabella Ferrer), living at home with a father who hit her mother. We see her meet Atlas (Alex Neustaedter), a runaway she helps out, and eventually finds he has a story similar to hers. When the older Lily and Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) bump into each other again at his restaurant, he instantly recognises the signs that Ryle is abusing Lily, but she dismisses it. 

Atlas’ arrival sparks Ryle’s jealousy when he realizes the two never got over each other, and it brings out a side of him that chills Lily to the core, turning her into someone she promised herself she would never be—her mother (Amy Morton).

What happens at the end of It Ends With Us?

Lily and Ryle are still going strong despite Ryle’s outbursts of rage and physically assaulting Lily on multiple occasions, which he gaslights her into believing was as a mistake or her own clumsiness. Lily’s flower shop Lily Bloom’s is listed in the 10 best businesses of Boston in a magazine article which has also listed Atlas’ restaurant Root as number one. Ryle comes home and makes Lily read the article, in which Atlas has attributed the restaurant’s name to Lily, and implied that he still loves her. 

Ryle assaults Lily again and tries to forcibly have sex with her, despite her protests. He bites the tattoo below her neck that is supposed to be about a symbol of her love for Atlas, and leaves teeth marks around it. Lily escapes to Atlas’ restaurant. He takes her to the hospital, where she finds out that she is pregnant with Ryle’s baby. She stays for a few days with Atlas, before going back to her own place, but not before he tells her that when she is ready to fall in love again, he hopes that she chooses him.

As Lily ignores Ryle and goes through her pregnancy alone, she gets the unequivocal support of Allysa, who reveals to Lily how Ryle was accidentally responsible for their brother Emerson’s death, and has since then had anger issues. She also tells him that despite being Ryle’s sister, she would never forgive Lily if she went back to Ryle. Lily also finally speaks to her mother about her father. As they discuss why she kept on living with an abusive man, Lily finally understands what it was like for her mother, and it helps her make a decision.

Towards the end of her pregnancy, Lily finally allows Ryle back into her life, not forgiving him but strictly to help her out with preparing for the arrival of the baby. He is even present in the room when she delivers a baby girl, and she names her Emmy after Ryle’s brother. He is moved, and it looks like for that one moment when he is holding his daughter and Lily is looking on, that she might take him back. 

But Lily directly albeit tactfully tells him that she wants a divorce. When Ryle is shocked, she asks him what he would tell their daughter if she came to him and told him that the boy she loved hit her, pushed her down the stairs, and tried to assault her—all the things that Ryle did to Lily. He tells her that he would beg their daughter to leave such a man. As he walks out of the room and their lives, Lilly cradles a cooing baby Emmy and tells her “It ends with us,” implying that she is ending the cycle of generational abuse and trauma with her decision to leave her abusive husband.

We fast-forward to a few months later when Lily and her mother are at the park with baby Emmy. Lily leaves her daughter with her mom, and goes over to a farmer’s market, where she spots Atlas. He asks Lily if she’s still with Ryle and she asks Atlas if he is seeing someone. Both of them answer no, and the frame cuts to credits, indicating that we might just see more of their story later, since the Colleen Hoover novel has a sequel It Begins With Us, that picks up exactly at this point.