There are several confounding things about It Ends With Us, the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, like star Blake Lively’s press tour outfits and alleged beef with director/costar Justin Baldoni. But none is more of a head-scratcher than the movie’s smallest, weirdest, most unnecessary subplot: its lead’s obsession with Ellen DeGeneres.
Someone who saw the movie without attempting to read the book first may not have picked up on this. The references to the former talk show host are small, almost blink-and-you’ll-miss-them. But if that viewer did happen to notice one of three nods to the celeb, they likely had one reaction: Why is Ellen DeGeneres here? Anyone familiar with Colleen’s hit book knows all too well why we see three explicit references to Ellen, including her face. And they also know that we could have seen a lot more, if the movie were just a little bit more like the book. And in this case, thankfully, it wasn’t.
It Ends With Us is the story of Lily Blossom Bloom (Blake), an unfortunately named florist who falls into an abusive relationship with Ryle Kincaid (Justin), an unfortunately named doctor. As we learn through flashbacks to her teen years, Lily is following in the footsteps of her mom, who endured years of abuse by Lily’s dad. As a high schooler, she trauma-bonds and falls in love with Atlas Corrigan, an unfortunately named classmate who flees his home after his mom, too, experiences and justifies domestic violence. When Lily and Atlas reconnect as adults, he immediately recognizes the signs: Lily is stuck in the cycle of abuse, and Atlas encourages her to leave Ryle before it’s too late. (They also fall back in love.)
In the novel, our narrator Lily revisits her teen years through journal entries, which we get to read along with her. Each one is addressed as a fan letter…to Ellen DeGeneres. “Come on, woman,” begins one. “Reruns? A full week of reruns?” Lily then proceeds to tell Ellen about how Atlas is hiding out in an abandoned house across the street and that she hears her dad yelling at her mom. That’s how all of these go: Teen Lily confides in Ellen about her burgeoning love for Atlas and hatred of her dad, who becomes increasingly violent toward her mom. The tone shifts wildly from fangirl-jokey to serious diary entry. And no matter how many we read or how dark they get, this device never becomes anything less than hilariously odd.
So strong is Lily’s love for Ellen that we learn in It Starts With Us, the sequel—not prequel, as I originally thought based on that title!—she gives her daughter the middle name “Dory.” As in, Dory the fish, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo. It’s clear that her lifelong obsession with the talk show host is similar to her relationship with Atlas: born out of a trauma response. Like many of us in the years before Ellen was canceled for allegedly being a horrible boss, watching Ellen every afternoon was a source of comfort. It’s just that Lily got a little too comfortable.
It seems like screenwriter Christy Hall felt the same way, because Lily’s hyperfixation on Ellen is almost entirely missing from the movie. Only three references to Ellen remain, each one early in the movie.
The first one is subtle: a prominent Finding Nemo poster in teen Lily’s room. It doesn’t really seem like high school senior Lily’s style to have a giant poster dedicated to a Pixar film directly next to her bed, and yet, there it is.
Number two is the most inexplicable, the one that made me turn to my friend and say, “I can’t believe they left the Ellen thing in.” In one shot, we see Lily writing in her journal. At the top: “Dear Ellen.” It’s so quick that someone who isn’t paying attention might not even notice the name on the page. But anyone who does will wonder who Ellen is, and they’ll never get an answer—the journal neither appears nor is mentioned ever again.
One could try to rationalize this as Lily writing to an unseen friend...or something. But the third Ellen reference is the most overt: Lily sitting on the couch, watching Ellen on TV. Again, it’s brief—but we do see Ellen herself, and that’s enough. In a movie with no other pop culture references, to see actual footage from Ellen is impossible to ignore. And yet, like with the other Ellen moments, Lily doesn’t comment on it. For all we know, she’s just a lonely girl watching daytime TV. (Relatable.)
Brief as they are, these moments are also distracting enough to raise questions: Was the Ellen DeGeneres fan letter plot actually going to be in the movie after all? Are there deleted scenes featuring Lily kicking her feet, telling Ellen about how she lost her virginity to Atlas? And...can we PLEASE see them? Or maybe the Ellen nods are just Easter eggs for fans who, for whatever reason, really wanted Lily to spill her guts to a celebrity in letters she’ll never send.
We can only speculate (and pray for deleted scenes) on which of these may be the real explanation behind It Ends With Us’s Ellen content. All we can confirm is that these remnants of what was one of the oddest parts of the novel are still pretty bad—in fact, because of how thoughtless they are, they may be worse.
