Spoilers for the book-to-screen adaptation of Verity are ahead! You can catch the movie in theaters now. Immediately after I saw Verity, the ending was all I could think about. After Lowen read that manuscript and then found the letter from Verity after she and Jeremy killed her, I couldn’t help but wonder what was true and what wasn’t. It was an ambiguous place to leave things, and it made for a very fun viewing experience. However, that was not always the ending that was going to be used, and I talked to Anne Hathaway and the film’s director, Michael Showalter, about all this. Before Verity premiered on the 2026 movie schedule, Colleen Hoover, who wrote the book of the same name, told Today that the movie’s ending was the “biggest challenge,” and she saw “about seven different endings” before they got to the one we saw on the big screen. She said she was “blown away” by the one they landed on, and when I asked Anne Hathaway about this, the Verity actress told me that they got to this conclusion because the audiences made it clear that it was what they wanted: Well, funny enough, the ending that is in the film is very similar to the one that was shot. I think that it was, as other aspects of the film were coming together, it was which one was gonna wind up. And we just really – talk about exploring the space – I mean, there was a lot of ones that we presented to audiences. And audiences were really clear that they wanted to live in the ambiguity after the film the way that they had been able to after the book. The movie’s ending certainly is ambiguous, and it’s a conclusion that’s worthy of debate, because after Dakota Johnson's Lowen finds the letter where Verity reveals that everything she wrote in her manuscript was false, the film ends. We don’t know if Lowen did anything with that information, we don’t really know how she feels about it, and we don’t know if Verity’s manuscript or letter is the truth. Showalter also told me that they tested the movie in front of “focus audiences,” and he spoke specifically to how they reacted to Lowen’s story ending. Recalling what they learned and the conclusion they came to, the director said: Lowen is the avatar for the audience, obviously. And the audience themselves felt that they didn't know how to feel at the end of the movie, and so they wanted Lowen to also not know how she feels at the end of the movie. And so we had different versions where we had Lowen ending in a place of sort of she's come to terms with it, and she knows how she feels. But we ultimately realized that super ambiguous ending where Lowen is like just as confused as everybody else was the way that the audiences sort of wanted to leave the story.In one alternate ending, Lowen was revealed to be the “master villain,” Showalter told Variety, and after the reveal it was going to cut to “Verity sinking into the lake and her eyes open.” However, as both Hathaway and the director told me, test audiences didn’t want a definitive ending. They wanted Lowen to be unsure about everything that happened. So, that’s why they went with the final scene we saw. Instead of answers, we’re left with a big reveal and lots of questions, leaving plenty of room for debate about Verity, Lowen and Jeremy. Personally, I’m happy that’s the conclusion they ended on, and I assume test audiences are too. However, to see if you agree with this ending or not, you can see Verity in theaters now.