Promising Young Woman’s Original Ending Was Way More Bleak

Warning: SPOILERS for Promising Young Woman

The original ending of Promising Young Woman was even darker. The Carey Mulligan led film debuted last year at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and after a short theatrical run it is now available to view at home. The follows Mulligan’s Cassie Thomas, a medical school dropout devastated by the loss of her friend Nina. It is heavily implied that Nina committed suicide after being raped during a party at college, an all too familiar story that sees the college ignore Nina’s allegations in favor of protecting the man she accused.

An incisive examination of rape culture and its pervasiveness in society, Promising Young Woman is a genre mash-up, recalling exploitation films, revenge thrillers, and romantic comedies all in its two-hour runtime. The film follows Cassie, who dropped out of school to take care of Nina, as she lures a slew of “nice guys” into taking her home from the bar after appearing extremely intoxicated. Cassie quickly flips on them, though, revealing her sobriety and forcing the men who take her home to look closely at the heinousness of their behavior.

The film culminates in a truly shocking turn of events wherein Cassie attends the bachelor party of Nina’s rapist, Al (Chris Lowell), and attempts to elicit a confession from him. When Al breaks free from his handcuffs, he smothers Cassie to death and his friend helps him burn Cassie’s body. According to Variety, the original plan for the film was to end there and forgo the twist at the end that sees Cassie expose Al from beyond the grave. Director Emerald Fennell that her financial backers balked at this original idea and the final version of the ending was then crafted. Still, Fennell says that she believes that’s where the film should have ended.

[The financiers] were, like, ‘Come on, we’re going to give you money to make this!’ But in my heart, I think that’s where it would have ended.

The ending of Promising Young Woman is already divisive as it is. Much of the talk out of Sundance emphasized how shocking the finale was. In the final version of the film, Cassie has set a trap for Al and his accomplice that sees him arrested at his wedding for Cassie’s murder after sending evidence of her activities to the repentant lawyer looking for redemption, played by Alfred Molina. Cassie’s murder in the film is the only onscreen violence in the film and it is a brutal two and a half minutes that sees Al smother Cassie to death with a pillow.

Fennell has defended the ending, saying that there was never a happy ending planned for Cassie. The final version of the film is about as happy as it gets, with Cassie finally bringing Nina’s rapist to justice, but it is still compounded by tragedy, with Cassie’s promising life derailed by a system that allows men to behave badly and forgoes justice in favor of upholding patriarchal mores. It’s safe to say that Fennell’s original planned ending for Promising Young Woman would have been even more divisive than the final version, but for all its darkness, the original plan is more in line with the film’s themes of terrible men getting away with horrific things at the expense of the women they harm, but fortunately for Cassie, and viewers, some justice was served.

Source: Variety

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Graeme Guttmann
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Graeme Guttmann is an editor, writer, and interviewer for Screen Rant. With a love for all things pop culture, he watches just about everything from the biggest blockbusters to reality shows like Real Housewives. He currently resides in Boston, MA where he is an MFA candidate at Emerson College for creative writing. You can follow him on Twitter @cryptograeme for pop culture commentary and random musings about pop music and just about anything else.

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