Ending ambiguously

What I think works . . . and doesn't work.

Raise your hand if you also remember the first time you read an ambiguous ending, particularly where you weren’t sure if the main character lived or died.

For me, that book was THE GIVER by Lois Lowry. (Statute of limitations has passed on spoilers for that one, just saying.) I was in middle school when I read that book, probably sixth or seventh grade, and I remember giving it back to my librarians and just . . . monologuing about how my mind was totally blown by that ending. It completely changed the way I thought about stories. To this day, it is my gold standard for ambiguous endings.

Is that fair to literally anything else? Probably not. But here we are.

Not sponsored, haha. But, uh, Chewy, if you’re reading this, let me know.

So, recently, my husband and I watched a show that, for the most part, we enjoyed! But it ended on an ambiguous note, leaving us debating about whether one of the main characters lives or dies.

Okay, I don’t want to tell you what show it is, both because I’m going to be a little critical of it here, and it’s recent enough (I think) that I don’t think we’ve reached the spoiler expiration date. And again, I liked the show! But I want to talk about why I don’t think this ambiguous ending worked.

So now that we have that covered, just be warned, I’m going to describe the ending. And yeah, later I’m going to compare it to THE GIVER, even though we all know that’s not fair.

I think it’s a pretty common trope for these types of endings to involve a character hallucinating in some way, usually because they’re close to death, right?

In THE GIVER,¹ the main character is trying to escape his city. He has a baby with him, and they’re hoping to reach another town, but it’s the middle of winter and very cold. Also, he doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s just going. The only power he has is the ability to give and receive memories, so he accesses these memories to warm himself up, and warm the baby up. Hypothermia is a real danger, though. But then, as the book ends, he hears the sound of music or something in the distance. A town??

And that’s it. You don’t know if he makes it. You don’t know if the music is real, if it’s part of a memory, or if he’s hallucinating. If the music is real, you don’t know if he reaches the town in time.

But whatever you think happens . . . that’s the right answer.² That is the correct ending for you.

Okay, so now we enter spoiler territory for the show. I’ll try to be vague.

It’s similar in that the viewer gets clues along the way that something might be off, but at first, it seems like this character definitely lives. After they save the city in the climax, we see them saying goodbye to the job, then fast-forward to a dinner party, where the main cast is having a reunion after some adventures on their own. It’s clear that everyone has moved on, but they’re happy, and this dinner is a good time.

But then . . . the main character starts thinking about the climax again, and the viewer gets gaps filled in — the moment after the characters save the city, we see them collapse, the significant other cradle their limp body, the medics rushing in and sadly shaking their heads. Interspersed with dinner party scenes, we see dramatic shots of the main character being zipped into a body bag, and then a long shot of the bag all alone on the street — a mirror to one of the opening scenes. Then flash back to the dinner party and the main character looking pretty disturbed, while their significant other asks if they’re okay.

So that’s how it ends — the main character clearly wondering if this is their brain’s last gasp, trying to give them something nice before full shutdown.

At first, I was convinced the character was dead, but when I started thinking about it, I found myself asking a lot of questions: Why is the body just abandoned on the street?? (Artistic liberty, I know.) How did the main character know about plans other characters had, enough for them to have a discussion at the dinner party, when the main character was nowhere nearby when those characters proposed the idea?

I kept coming back to these inconsistencies and thought . . . maybe the main character was only thinking about how close they came to death, morbidly imagining how it would have gone if they hadn’t been saved just in time.

My husband and I talked about it the next morning. I guess we’d both been thinking about the ending instead of sleeping, which is always fun. Heh. And the show did do that — it sparked a long discussion!

But the more we talked, the more I thought that even though I enjoyed the show, neither ending felt solid enough for me to make an argument for it, only against it. I felt more frustrated than intrigued.

This is all really subjective, of course — it is my newsletter, though! — but I think the writers tried to do too much here. By including entire scenes with dialogue, they gave the audience details to deconstruct, problems to puzzle out, and inconsistencies to wrestle with. Yes, it sparked that whole conversation between my husband and me, but I think it sapped away some of the power of the ambiguous ending.

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If I were advising another author on how to write an ambiguous ending for their story, I’d say less is more. Trust the audience. Don’t give them two possible endings that can easily be picked apart. Just a simple yes or no. In INCEPTION, does the top fall?

So if I were rewriting this ending, here’s what I’d suggest: end with the characters saving the day, then show the main character collapse, the medics rushing to help, the limp body . . . and then fast-forward to a shot of everyone around the dinner table, zoom in on the main character who’s smiling and looking around at their friends, and then that smile flickers to a frown as they clearly start to wonder if this is real. And that’s it. That’s the end.

Skip the medics making any kind of call. Skip the scene where the team is taking their stuff out of the office. Skip all the dialogue at the end, except for, perhaps, the significant other saying, “Are you okay?” as the main character’s expression slips into worry. Like we never see if the top actually falls — just that it wobbled — that sudden shift would leave the viewer wondering. Worried. Still hopeful, but suddenly conflicted.

Am I arguing for the ending to look more like THE GIVER? Yes! Because again, that ending has haunted me for thirty years.³ This ending turned on my editorial brain.

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In the end (lol), I think it comes down to trusting the audience.

That tighter ending⁴ I proposed doesn’t take away the ambiguity at all, but it does require the viewer to remember things characters said twenty minutes ago: that the main character was already hallucinating, that they were near death, and that some of these visions were their brain’s attempts to offer a good ending before the end end. All that was clearly stated.

I know trusting the audience can feel difficult, especially when we keep hearing about fractured attention spans, people immediately forgetting what they just read, and so on. But I think ambiguous endings are one of those tricks that requires complete confidence and commitment.

If you don’t have that, your audience won’t be able to ignore the wobbles and missteps. You’ll lose the power and resonance of the ending — any kind of ending. These are the last moments your audience will spend with your characters, and the way they feel in these moments will affect the way they feel about whole story every time they look back on it. So it’s worth getting right. It’s worth trusting them to decide whether the music is real, whether the top falls, and whether the dinner party actually happens.

But I get it. In the wise words of Chuck the Prophet,⁵ endings are hard.⁶

If you have recommendations for books that absolutely nail the ambiguous ending, drop them in the comments. I want to know what you think works!

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1. It’s been a long time since I’ve read this book, so forgive me if I get anything wrong! I also haven’t read the sequels or seen the film.

2. Since there are sequels, presumably you find out what actually happens, so there is a real answer. But I read this book when It was a standalone.

3. Wow. Okay.

4. I should acknowledge this might be harder just because of the rules of TV and how much time things need to fill. I don’t know the TV rules.

5. Yes, I know.

6. And throwing it out there one more time so that no one mistakes me: I still enjoyed this show a lot. I have critical thoughts about stuff I love all the time.