Netflix’s ‘One Day’ Series Devastating Ending Leaves Viewers Heartbroken

Netflix’s adaptation of One Day is here just in time for Valentine’s Day. If you’re unfamiliar with how David Nicholls’ best-selling book ends, then there’s a good chance you’re gutted by the show’s devastating conclusion.

The series, based on Nicholls’ One Day novel, tells the story of a will-they-won’t-they love story between two friends over two decades. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew first cross paths on the night of their graduation from Edinburgh University on July 15, 1998. Although they spend an evening together, the pair goes their separate ways the next morning. In each episode of the series, viewers see Dex and Em, one year older, on this one particular date.

Woodall added, “From Dexter’s point of view, true love was the one thing remaining in his life after all the mayhem that he chose to put himself through. He realized that the thing that mattered was being with the person that he wanted to be around all the time, which he knew was Emma.”

Nicholls’ One Day novel has amassed a huge following, selling over 5 million copies worldwide in more than 40 languages. Before Netflix ordered the 14-part limited series, the book was adapted into a film in 2011 starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. Nicholls serves as an executive producer on One Day, while Essie Davis, Tim McInnerny, Toby Stephens, and Joely Richardson also star.

It’s time to get your tissues ready. Read on to take a deep dive into the ending of One Day, including what happens to Emma and Dexter at the end of the series. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.)

Emma and Dexter finally get together in Episode 12, which takes place on July 15, 1999. The pair spend a day in Paris together, as Emma has been living there on a research trip, while Dex is recovering from his divorce from Sylvie. Dex brings up their night together before Emma left London. When Dex attempts to kiss her, Emma turns him down and says she’s been seeing someone, which is when finally discuss the night they slept together. Emma tells him that they were intoxicated and he was upset, but Dex tells her that he hasn’t stopped thinking about her.”

After Emma’s death, Dexter is filled with grief, and he resumes binge drinking while his life is spiraling around him. After getting drunk at a birthday party with his daughter, getting kicked out of a bar, and passing out on the door of his ex, Sylvie, he has a sentimental moment with his father, who tells him that he needs to live life as if Emma were still there.

Taylor said she even considered ending the series differently, “but fundamentally, that ending is stitched into the work as a whole.” She continued, “The story kind of has its own thematic integrity, it has its own structural integrity. I feel like the overall meaning of the piece requires that, and I felt like any changing of the ending would be gratuitous and undermine the overall impact of the piece so I think it was the right thing to have a good think about it, question it and not just take it as given.”

“Thankfully, his relationship with his daughter is in a really good place at that point. You’re left knowing that he’ll always be grieving and missing her, but that he’s kind of come out of the tough stages of it,” Woodall told The Wrap about his character’s mindset a year after Emma’s passing. “He’s got his life back together and he’s gonna move on, move forward, as best he can.”

2007 marks the final day in One Day, and viewers see Dex return to the University of Edinburgh. The episode ends just like the premiere — with Dex and Jasmine walking up the cobbled steps in Scotland with the past and present intertwined. In the scene, they exchange numbers, but Dex gives Emma one more kiss goodbye. In an instant, Dexter is reliving all of their kisses, from the end to the beginning, before finishing with their first kiss.

All 14 episodes of One Day are streaming on Netflix.