The Ending Of I’m Thinking Of Ending Things Explained

Watching a Charlie Kaufman movie means bracing for the unconventional. From a tiny portal into John Malkovich’s mind to an entire city tailored for a stage play, Kaufman never ceases to surprise with his creative flair. However, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” might take the cake as one of the most puzzling entries in his filmography. In fact, it could easily become one of the most challenging films to follow in cinematic history. Yet, despite its complexity, this relationship drama found great success on Netflix when it was first released.

No need to worry if you were puzzled by the ending. We might be able to clarify some points, like why the young woman’s name seems to change frequently and why her boyfriend’s parents appear to undergo such surprising changes. There’s a coherent rationale behind the musical interlude as well. Skeptical? Keep reading for the solutions.

What you need to remember about I’m Thinking of Ending Things

The movie titled “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” revolves around a character portrayed by Jessie Buckley, whom we’ll call Lucy for ease, and her boyfriend Jake (played by Jesse Plemons). During the story, Lucy is introduced to Jake’s parents, played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis, who might be recognizable to “Harry Potter” fans. As the movie progresses, Lucy starts questioning her relationship with Jake due to a perceived loss of spark, planning to communicate her desire to end it at an opportune moment. Throughout the narrative, there are frequent instances where Jake refers to his girlfriend by different names, but we’ll call her Lucy for simplicity. The dinner with Jake’s overbearing parents becomes increasingly uncomfortable as they persistently urge Lucy to stay the night, while Lucy keeps expressing her intention to depart.

Nevertheless, things seem off. For instance, Lucy and Jake offer different accounts of their first encounter. On top of that, Jake’s parents exhibit peculiar transformations – at times appearing middle-aged and then looking old and weak. Most puzzlingly, scenes featuring Jake and Lucy are occasionally replaced with sequences involving a school janitor (Guy Boyd).

In the end, I, Jake, decide to escort Lucy home. However, I manage to convince her to make a detour for some ice cream, even though it’s smack dab in the middle of a raging blizzard. Later on, I claim that the ice cream containers need to be tossed out, so against Lucy’s objections, we pull over at my old high school just to get rid of them.

What happens at the end of I’m Thinking of Ending Things?

All of a sudden, Jake feels uneasy, convinced someone at school is watching as they share a kiss (although Lucy doesn’t notice anyone). Determined to confront the supposed peeping tom, Jake storms into the school. With hesitation, Lucy trails behind him, only to find Jake has vanished. The only person she encounters is an elderly janitor, the same one seen throughout the movie. Inquiring about Jake’s whereabouts, Lucy struggles to recall his appearance. As she recalls, Jake’s image in her mind seems blurry, leading her to ponder if he was ever truly her boyfriend—just a strange old man who flirted with her at a bar and disappeared from her life shortly after. An awkward moment ensues as the janitor and Lucy exchange a prolonged hug before she departs.

Following this point, the movie takes a surreal turn. Initially, you see two individuals dressed as Jake and Lucy engaging in a ballet performance in the school corridors. Later, the caretaker locks up the school and heads to his truck, stripping off his clothes. Subsequently, an animated talking pig (played by Oliver Platt) guides the caretaker, suggesting a possible demise. Simultaneously, we catch glimpses of Jake accepting an award with his girlfriend and parents in attendance, followed by him singing a number from “Oklahoma” on a stage modeled after his childhood room. The film concludes by revisiting the caretaker’s truck, now engulfed in snow, implying that Jake and Lucy may have never existed within this strange narrative at all.

How much of the movie is real?

In case you’re curious about how much truth lies within the movie, it’s almost entirely fictitious. Yes, Charlie Kaufman employed a classic narrative device, the “it was all just a dream,” often seen in TV shows. The vast majority of what we witness on screen is merely a manifestation of the main character’s mind. With the exception of brief scenes depicting a solitary old janitor cleaning school hallways and watching romantic comedies, everything else is purely imaginative. Contrary to initial assumptions, Lucy is not the central figure; instead, it’s the janitor – and surprisingly, the janitor and Jake are actually one and the same individual. The other characters you see are simply figments of Jake’s overactive imagination, a product of a lonely old man’s fantasies as he sits in his car during a blizzard, indifferent to the fact that he is risking hypothermia. This, incidentally, explains why the janitor removes his clothes; victims of hypothermia may instinctively shed their garments as they near death.

In his final moments, the custodian envisions his former self (Jake) introducing a girlfriend to his parents and later showing her his old high school. However, in reality, such an event never transpired; it seems that Jake never had a satisfying romantic experience throughout his life, which explains why he’s dying alone. Lucy is merely an “imaginary girlfriend,” a figure based on a girl Jake caught a glimpse of one night at a bar but never interacted with. The scenes depicting Jake caring for his aging parents are rooted in reality, but the sequence where he presents them to his imaginary girlfriend is purely fictional.

All the clues that pointed to the twist ending

In the film directed by Charlie Kaufman, several subtle clues help clarify the perplexing finale. Upon noticing these details, much of the movie’s peculiarities become significantly clearer. For example, why Jake appears to hear Lucy’s thoughts (always at pivotal moments when she is about to break up with him), and why Lucy looks at a photo of Jake as a child but mistakes it for her own image. This is due to Lucy being an embodiment of Jake.

As for Lucy’s inability to recall the length of their relationship, this is because she doesn’t truly exist outside of his imagination. If you’re questioning why Jake’s mother mentions his 50th birthday, it’s because Jake is actually older than he appears on screen. This also provides an explanation for why Jake’s parents are insistent that Lucy stay longer, sleep with Jake in his childhood bedroom, and make their home a permanent place. They symbolize Jake’s subconscious, expressing what he deeply desires from Lucy (even though he may feel too shy to articulate these wishes himself).

Given this new information, Lucy’s unsettling find in Jake’s basement now seems much more plausible. It’s no surprise that Jake has been trying to keep Lucy from seeing the washing machine filled with janitor uniforms – it would have burst his illusion and revealed him as a solitary elderly man who lives out his affection for others by daydreaming about strangers, hiding his true identity.

Why does Jake keep calling his girlfriend different names?

It seems that Jake refers to his girlfriend by various names: Lucy, Louisa, Lucia, and Ames. Moreover, the story of how they initially met fluctuates. Officially, it’s said they first encountered each other at a trivia night in a bar, but Lucy has trouble recalling their opening lines. Later on, Jake tells his father a different tale, claiming to have met her while she was working as a waitress—a scenario reminiscent of a fictional romantic comedy we see the janitor watching. Interestingly, even Lucy’s background story shifts frequently, with her profession transitioning from physicist to poet to waitress without any clear explanation.

The lack of clarity surrounding Lucy’s identity stems from the fact that she isn’t a real person; instead, she represents every girl Jake has ever had feelings for. More specifically, she was inspired by a stranger who smiled at him during a trivia night. As Jake hasn’t been in a romantic relationship before, he constructs this fantasy using characters and narratives from the books and films he enjoyed in his youth. This is why Lucy’s name comes from a character in William Wordsworth’s poem, and their meeting story seems to be derived from the romcoms Jake watches. However, since Jake can’t decide what he wants her to embody, her persona and backstory frequently shift. Essentially, he is attempting — but failing — to envision a scenario where they could have been content together.

Who keeps trying to call Lucy?

During the entire film, Lucy frequently glances at her phone, and the caller ID usually shows some form of Lucy’s name (Lucy, Louisa, etc.), except once when it displayed Yvonne. Each time she answers, an elderly man’s voice softly says, “There’s only one question to answer.” It is suggested that these calls might be the janitor’s actual thoughts surfacing in his hallucination. These whispers could be the voice nagging him from within, convincing him he’ll never find love and it would be better if he just ended his life. To put it another way, these phone calls seem to encroach on Jake’s illusion of reality.

One Reddit user put forth an intriguing hypothesis. The user, u/spinz, suggests that these calls represent a part of Jake striving to awaken himself and confront the decision whether to live or die. Essentially, this is the “one question he needs to resolve.” This user further explains that these calls act as cracks in Jake’s fantasy whenever he encounters something he cannot rationalize. For example, if Jake has a clear image of Lucy but struggles to imagine what Lucy’s friends might look like, his mind may not be fast enough to conjure up an explanation for when Lucy receives a text message from her friend. Instead, his mind fills that gap with the only thing he knows: either his girlfriend’s name or the name of the girl from the fictional Robert Zemeckis romance film, Yvonne.

Why do the characters keep getting older and younger?

When Jake presents his partner to his family, it appears as if his parents undergo a sudden metamorphosis, seemingly fluctuating between youth and old age. One instant, Jake’s mother is frail, seated in a wheelchair, dependent on Jake for assistance with eating. The next, she seems younger, playfully picking up Jake’s toys. If we take into account that Jake may be an elderly man nearing the end of his life, it could be that he is experiencing memory loss. If Jake has trouble distinguishing between past and present moments, this could potentially explain why he perceives his parents (and himself) at various stages in their lives.

In another interpretation, it seems as if Jake’s parents are aging rapidly due to symbolizing Jake’s dread of growing old. Given that Jake may have witnessed his parents deteriorate and pass away before he started working as a janitor, he is acutely aware that the same fate awaits him, perhaps even now. While in the car with Lucy, Jake expresses feelings of social isolation, but his words could also capture the sensation of growing older – feeling your physical and mental abilities decline. “Your body deteriorates, your hearing, your sight,” says Jake. “You become unseen and forgotten, and you’ve taken so many wrong paths.” It’s fitting that his fictional girlfriend advocates for more empathy towards the elderly, because that is precisely what Jake embodies – the aging process. Regardless of his efforts, Jake cannot elude the inexorable march of time, not even in his fantasies.

Is Lucy real?

In a non-literal sense, Lucy might not exist as a physical person, yet she possesses her unique identity as a character in the movie. Despite not being the central figure, director Charlie Kaufman intended to grant Lucy some self-determination. He explained this intention to Indiewire by stating, “She is a tool, but I wanted her to have the ability to break free from that.” The film delves deeply into Lucy’s emotional world, portraying her struggle to express her desires to Jake, particularly the desire to end their relationship or assert herself more forcefully. Throughout the movie, she complies with Jake’s wishes: visiting his family, getting ice cream in a blizzard, and revisiting his old school. Essentially, Lucy is living her life through someone else’s decisions. The film underscores the challenging and frightening aspects of being an imaginary girlfriend.

The film can be seen as Jake’s narrative on one hand, but if viewed from Lucy’s standpoint, it assumes a completely different connotation. It could also symbolize the act of relinquishing personal joy and self-identity to satisfy a romantic partner. If you adopt this alternate view, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” pushes this theme to the brink of horror movie intensity. Here, Lucy exists solely for Jake’s pleasure, and she is ensnared in a terrifying dreamscape where Jake dictates her very existence.

Who is the couple dancing through the school hallways?

Why do Jake and Lucy seem to be replaced by dancers resembling them all of a sudden? According to production designer Molly Hughes, this scene symbolizes the janitor’s life flashing before him, but instead of showing his real life, it portrays how he wishes his life had turned out. Hughes elaborated that as the janitor is nearing death, he encounters a poignant, emotional moment or longing represented by this ballet sequence. Notably, this dance is influenced by the “dream ballet” scene from the musical “Oklahoma”. This is because the janitor, being such a solitary man, has no actual experience of love, so his only reference for what it’s like to be loved comes from musicals. As stated by choreographer Peter Walker, “This man has never had a fruitful relationship in his life and doesn’t know what that could feel like.

Yet, this illusion is shattered by a harsh dose of realism. At first, Jake envisions himself as the hero, relating to the dancer who represents his younger self. However, as the dance sequence concludes, it becomes evident that Jake bears striking similarities with the envious older man who attacks the girl and murders her partner – even sharing the janitor keys on his belt. Walker likened this scene to “two different aspects of [Jake] battling over a girl who is merely fictional.

Why does Jake perform a song from Oklahoma at the end?

As a devoted fan, I must admit that the unexpected finale, where Jake serenades us with “Oklahoma’s” “Lonely Room” on a stage resembling his childhood bedroom, might initially appear as an odd choice. However, upon closer inspection, it’s a pivotal hint to the underlying storyline. To truly appreciate this poignant moment, you should first familiarize yourself with “Oklahoma.” This musical is all about a fierce competition between two men, Curly and Jud, both courting the same woman, Laurey. Despite Jud’s persistence, he seems to be at a significant disadvantage compared to his charming and appealing rival, Curly. Jud is older, an outcast in society, not conventionally handsome, and has a somewhat unsettling demeanor. When Jud sings “Lonely Room,” the same tune Jake croons, it’s a heartrending expression of his solitude, as he clings to hope that perhaps a girl like Laurey could ever return his affection.

If you didn’t catch it earlier, the final scene underscores that Jake isn’t like Curly, he’s more of a Jud. By the movie’s conclusion, it seems Jake realizes he’s not the main character, but rather a guy who doesn’t win the girl. Maybe this is when Jake decides to stop pretending to be something he’s not and accept his reality. Or perhaps, up until the very end, Jake continues to deceive himself, thinking he can still find “a woman to call my own.” And when the talking pig tells him, “Someone has to play the part of the swine infested with maggots, don’t I?” it feels like Jake is embracing his true nature.

What does the title mean?

In case you’re pondering about the true significance of the movie title “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” it holds a dual interpretation. Primarily, it hints at Lucy contemplating ending her relationship with Jake. However, upon observing the janitor succumbing to the cold, the title assumes another layer of meaning. Throughout the film, Jake seems preoccupied with thoughts of suicide, as suggested by his recurring discussions on the topic, such as David Foster Wallace’s death and self-sacrificing ants in a colony. These hints subtly foreshadow the unexpected ending where Jake is contemplating taking his own life, with Lucy serving as a manifestation of his inner thoughts.

It seems that Charlie Kaufman suggests that the reason Jake feels compelled to end his life stems from the fact that, within his fantasies, he cannot attain what he truly desires – happiness with Lucy. Even his imaginary girlfriend rejects him, which could hint at Jake’s subconscious belief that he is unworthy of love. This self-sabotage in his dreams may reflect a deeper, unconscious feeling of undeservingness, leading to his current despair.

Jake’s suicide serves as a tragic echo of the theme presented in “Oklahoma.” In the musical, Curly sings the song “Pore Jud is Dead,” suggesting that Jud would be better off deceased because people would remember him more fondly once he was gone. It seems possible that Jake may have been influenced by this message.

2025-03-11 14:38