Luckiest Girl Alive Movie, Ending Explained – Why did Ani break up her wedding with Luke?

Adapted to the screen from her own novel, Jessica Knoll’s “Luckiest Girl Alive” is directed by Mike Barker and follows the supposedly perfect life of Ani Fanelli (Mila Kunis). While ingrained trauma is hinted at each instance, thanks to a very Gillian Flynn-Esque narration that almost over-topples the running dialogues, Ani is about to be married to Luke (Finn Wittrock), and be at a stage in her life that she supposes would be good enough for her. However, not everything goes the way we want in life, does it? And spite of Ani’s best intentions to find control over her narrative, the past sometimes edges over the present in unexpected ways.

If you are someone, who also got lost in the world of Ani Fanelli, with the numerous and vague literary references, I have tried breaking the Netflix Original ‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ in the easiest way possible. Since the article also includes how the movie ends and what it means in the context of Ani’s life, I’d recommend checking it out once you stream the movie on Netflix.

Luckiest Girl Alive Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

The movie commences with Ani and Luke out to the shops in order to buy cutleries (and men’s wedding bands) for their grand wedding. The constant narration that we hear from our protagonist clues us secretly to how she is actually feeling instead of the fake persona she portrays outside for her perfect husband-to-be. When it’s the time to buy the knives, something triggers inside and we soon realize that not everything is as perfect as she makes us believe. When we see that the couple goes out for pizza, she cleverly camouflages her need to eat the last few slices and only gobbles them down when Luke goes out to the facilities. Lying thereafter about where the pieces went.

We soon come to know that Ani works at an influential woman’s magazine, where she writes things that she is not too proud of. She is visibly angsty and on the edge, or has made herself like this because of a certain need to be cooler than she actually is. Her editor at the magazine is really supportive of her and there’s a chance that she might just land a really cool gig working for The New York Times.

Meanwhile, Ani finally agrees to sit down for a meeting with Aaron (Dalmar Abuzeid). He is an independent filmmaker who has been working on a documentary about the truth behind the 1999 school shootout that she was a part of. One of Ani’s classmates named Dean Barton had accused her back then of being one of the peers involved with the massacre and while Ani had never revealed the actual truth about the case, she has been internally traumatized by it.

Dean, who got crippled due to the shootout has since become quite an influential personality who has written numerous books about gun control. And while the case has been long lost in America’s history, Aaron wants to know Ani’s side of the story to really unveil the truth of the event without taking sides. However, Ani declines once again to be any part of the documentary after learning that Dean would also be in it, and her truth will be put against his, in a world that isn’t fair at all.

Aaron goes away disappointed but his need to know more about the incidents triggers Ani into a downward spiral. Through flashbacks, we see a Young Ani (played by Chiara Aurelia) being driven to a top-tier private school named Brently by her mother Dina (Connie Britton). She is new to the influential school and has secured a scholarship to be a part of the prestigious institution. We see that her school days were not easy initially; coming from a single parent and a not-so-influential one among folks who all come from money, post initial inhibitions she did find her tribe there. But, was it just the calm before the storm?

What really happened back in Ani’s past?

Back in 1999, Ani was able to find her tribe. She was well-liked, both by the rich kids and the geeks because of her trustworthy persona. However, everything went south when the school organized the Fall Dance event. When the event was almost over, Hillary and Ani decided to party some more at Dean’s house. A group of them go down to his house for drinks and games, but when Hilary asks Ani to come back with her to the school’s event, Ani decided to stay and have fun with the guys at Dean’s house.

However, we soon cut to a more traumatic turn of events when we see Ani on the bathroom floor almost passed out and one of the guys named Peyton making out with her. From the likes of it, Ani’s drink must have been spiked and while she couldn’t really make out what was happening, she tries to walk out after Peyton was done. But, she was cut short again when the boys stop her in the hallway. Liam, who she trusted to be someone who likes her, forces himself on her. Thereafter, she tried to find the energy run out but was stopped a third time by Dean, who rapes her too before she finds the courage to punch him and escape.

Distressed and traumatized, she rushes to the nearest store to find a way to go back home when one of her teachers Mr. Larson (Scoot McNairy) finds her in that state. He comforts her and takes her home before asking her to update her mother about the incident. But Ani refuses to do so because she knows that the incident will only make her mother angry and she did not want any negative slack coming towards her from her mother, who seems to blame her for things that she is not responsible for.

The next day, we see Mr. Larson telling about the incident to the headmaster, who instead of rusticating the boys responsible for Ani’s rape, decides to call her mother. Ani, who is furious about having her mother listen to her daughter drinking and getting herself in trouble, decides to not file a case against the boys instead. The headmaster fires Mr. Larson for not stopping the kids after the school event, indirectly supporting the boys because they come from a place of money (I’m assuming their parents fund the school).

Was Ani really an accomplice to the School Gun Violence back in 1999?

Since Ani was never able to tell her story about everything, the trauma had set inside her. So now that the documentary was in the works, Ani felt like it was time to stop her downward spiral. Before we get to the day of the school shootout, we need to understand that Arthur, who was one of the more intelligent of the kids was really angry at his friend Ani for not calling out Dean and the other boys for raping her.

Not only that, she even apologized to Liam when she tried to voice her opinion about what go transpired the night she was raped. Arthur made her feel small for not having the guts to stand up for the truth because it wasn’t the first time Peyton, Dean, and Liam had gotten away with being absolute assholes and assaulting others. One of the sequences shows how the boys were really bullish towards Arthur and Ben who were considered geeks and weak by the boys.

Now, coming to the present day when Ani decides to tell her side of the story on the condition that Dean is not a part of any of it. When she is in front of the camera she tells us about what really happened that day. She discloses that the gun violence started out from her perspective when Ben (one of Ani and Arthur’s friends) casually walked into a room that all of them were in and shot Peyton in the head. He then shot Liam who was trying to escape with Ani and Olivia. One of the key parts of the story was not holding the door open for Liam to escape because in some way Ani did not want to risk her life for one of the assailants who raped her.

During the crossfire, Olivia and Ani tried to escape downstairs where they found Dean. It is there Arthur confronts Ani and asks Olivia to leave. He then proceeded to hand over the gun to Ani and asks her to kill Dean, but she is unable to. So, Arthur snatches the gun away from her and in a rage shoots Dean in the leg. It is there we learn that Ani, who had a knife she had with her, stabs Arthur in the neck, who then bleeds out and dies.

So, the answer to whether Ani was an accomplice in the shoot-out is a straight – No! The fact that she was considered an accomplice was due to a rumor that Dean spread the next day. He told everyone that Ani slept with all his friends, which is why he refused to be her boyfriend. So, because of the refusal, she planned the shootout with Ben and Arthur. Ani and her mother learn about all this when they were barred to attend the funerals the following day.

Why does Ani Finally decide to confront Dean?

Ani, who has been hiding the trauma behind concealers does it again while narrating her side of the story about the school shootout. When she sees Dean entering the room where she is being interviewed, she decides to run away. However, when by a stroke of luck she gets to meet her high school teacher, Mr. Larson, and once again, he tweaks her conscience about not being able to take her own narrative in her hands.

He tells her about not taking up The New York Times job and going to London to do an MFA and supporting her husband is one of the examples of her inability to forge a new path for herself.  Mr. Larson tells her that she needs to make a few changes in her life. It is there she realizes that she needs to face her fears and trauma instead of always running away from them.

So, she decides to meet up with Dean and tells him that she will tell her side of the story no matter what. Dean, who is now married and has children first begs and then threatens her not to do it. Ani, however, gets it on record that Dean had raped her back in their school days, finally giving Ani a concrete base to formulate her story and not be blatantly blamed for it.

Luckiest Girl Alive Ending, Explained – Why did Ani break up her wedding with Luke?

The ending of Luckiest Girl Alive takes place at the rehearsal dinner for Ani and Luke. The couple is happy and overjoyed by everyone around them, but it is there that Ani gets a notification about her unpolished and uncensored story about her assault being published in the New York Times.

While she is happy to hear the news, Luke, who is informed about the same as she takes him outside isn’t. He, as a man, is unable to understand why she had to detail the entire assault in such gruesome detail. Instead of comforting her and being proud of her for finally standing up to tell her story, he blames her for putting the name of his family up for a media frenzy.

He also tells her that she could have dealt with the entire matter in private. Thereby, failing to acknowledge that the incident still haunts her, in spite of her perpetrator paying for their deeds in some way.

This is where Ani tells him that she had been putting up a facade all these years for people to like her. She tells Luke that since he was unable to see her pain and is not able to take a little flack for her talking the truth, she doesn’t want to be bound by him or her marriage anymore.

The final sequence of Luckiest Girl Alive shows us Ani working at The New York Times, living a second life and a dream that she had always kept alive in the inner echelons of her heart. Speaking her truth and having received acclaim from women from all walks of life has made the weight of her past slide away a little. And before the screen fades to black, we finally see her inner voice (the narration we have been hearing all this while) submerge with her own.

Read More: The Visitor (2022) Ending, Explained

Luckiest Girl Alive Trailer

Luckiest Girl Alive (2022) Movie Links – IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes
Luckiest Girl Alive (2022) Movie Cast – Mila Kunis, Chiara Aurelia, Finn Wittrock, Connie Britton, Scoot McNairy, Justine Lupe

Where to watch Luckiest Girl Alive