Major, major spoilers for Netflix’s One Day are ahead! If you haven’t streamed the miniseries, you can check it out with a Netflix subscription.
If you ask basically anyone who tuned into One Day when it dropped on the 2024 TV schedule, they’ll likely tell you that the ending ruined them. The series, based on the 2009 novel of the same name by David Nicholls, follows two friends, Emma and Dexter, across two decades. As they fight, fall in love and support each other, the audience falls for them as we check in with them on the same day, July 15, every year for 20 years. However, everything is brutally ripped away when Emma unexpectedly dies in the penultimate episode.
One Day’s unexpected ending is brutal, yet beautiful and real. It forces you to reflect on Emma and Dexter’s entire relationship, and it teaches viewers the power of a single interaction. So, with all that being said, let’s dive into the tragic conclusion of this epic love story.
How Netflix’s One Day Ends
Like the final section of the book, which we’ll talk about next, the last episode of One Day shows three anniversaries following Emma’s death while flashing back to the day after they met when they went to Arthur’s Seat. Dexter says on the first anniversary that “it’s just a day,” but clearly it’s not – July 15 doesn’t just mark the day they became friends, it’s also Emma’s death day.
So, breaking down the anniversaries, on the first one, Dexter gets drunk. Ultimately he ends up at his ex-wife Sylvie’s house and his daughter Jasmine sees him. However, Sylvie helps him though, and then takes him to his dad’s house. Then it flashes back to Emma and Dexter when she visited his house the first year they met, and he’s thinking about them reading Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d'Urbervilles while they discuss how death is “sly and unseen.” Meanwhile, in the present, his dad tells him to try and live his life as if Emma is still there.
That takes us to the second anniversary, where all of Emma and Dex’s friends show up to support him on this tragic day. It’s really awkward, but the sentiment is nice. After they leave he chugs a glass of some sort of alcohol and goes into a room of unpacked boxes where he starts living as if his partner were there. Meaning, that he talks to an imaginary Emma who tells him he can throw away the stuff, but not the photos.
Emma (or Dexter’s inner monologue rather) is going over everything that’s happened and if he’ll ever be able to not feel so much pain, and eventually she tells him that eventually it won’t all hurt as much.
Finally, on the third anniversary, Dexter goes back to Edinburgh, where he met Emma, and the flashbacks to the first day they met start flashing by -- forcing us to think about how integral and meaningful that first day was. In the present, Dex, his daughter and his dad go to the town together, and she asks about Arthur’s Seat. Just like the first day he met Emma, they do the climb, and he trails behind his daughter.
One Day then flashes back to Dex and Emma walking down the hill, and Emma gives almost the exact same monologue that’s in the book. She tells him that she’s “not being a footnote” in the story of Dexter’s life. Oh, she was anything but, she was the whole story.
We then see the moments that follow, and Dexter chases Emma down so they can exchange phone numbers. They kiss, the series flashes to all the kisses they shared, and it’s an absolutely heartwarming and heart-shattering moment as you come to terms with the fact that this is the first day of their lovely lives together, but also the anniversary of the saddest days of their lives.
How It Compares To The Book’s Ending
Overall, the book One Day ends the same way the show does. With David Nicholls serving as an executive producer on his book-to-screen adaptation, that makes a whole lot of sense.
The final section of the book opens with the same quote from Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d'Urbervilles I mentioned earlier, which says:
She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year;...her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking at the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it?
Following the quote, the novel flashes between Dexter and Emma’s first day together and the anniversaries following her death, making the point clear that one moment and one person can dramatically change one’s life forever.
On the first anniversary of Emma's death, Dexter gets wasted, and Sylvie ends up driving him to his dad's house, where his father says almost exactly what he says in the show.
The second anniversary brings the biggest differences. In the book, Dex calls everyone, whereas in the show they show up at his house. Then, like in the series, he goes through Emma’s boxes, reminiscing.
Finally, the third anniversary involves Dex, his daughter and his girlfriend (who isn’t in the show) going back to Edinburgh. He shows Jasmine around his school, and they climb up to Arthur’s Seat.
Then, like the show, the book ends with the final flashback to Emma and Dexter climbing down the hill, her telling him she won’t let this relationship be some meaningless moment, and them saying “goodbye” on the first day they met. Finally, the book closes with the two sharing “the sweetest kiss that either of them would ever know.”
With Nicholls serving as EP, and with a dedicated team behind the show, the ending of One Day is uber faithful to the book. It hammers home the central thesis of the story regarding the power of love and a single interaction, and it shows viewers just how life-altering Emma and Dexter’s meeting was.
The Power Of Flashing Between Dexter Grieving Emma And His First Day With Her
In the book One Day, the first section about the first day they spent together starts with a Charles Dickens quote from Great Expectations. It reads, in part:
…Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day.
That day for Emma and Dexter – at both the beginning of their relationship and the end – was July 15. It fundamentally changed them, their views of the world and the way they went about life. Without that day after graduation, the next 20 years wouldn’t have played out how they did, and their epic love story wouldn’t have happened.
By flashing between this faithful first day and Dexter grieving Emma's death in the town they met, the point of One Day is made abundantly clear. The cycle of life and the butterfly effect of single moments becomes unavoidable in the way One Day ends. Emma and Dexter created this bond, a "long chain of iron" that was complex and loving and one-of-a-kind. None of that would have happened without everything we saw throughout the 20 years of their relationship on July 15.
And, while you were likely pulling for the tissues as you grieved with Dexter, it’s also truly wonderful, because it shows the powerful love they shared while also illuminating exactly how life goes for everyone.
Overall, the ending of One Day is sad, tragic, beautiful, contemplative and very faithful to the book it’s based on. To go back and see the show in its entirety and how it all impacts the final moments of the series, you can binge it on Netflix now.
