Deep breaths.
*Warning: This article contains spoilers for the final episode of Netflix’s One Day.*
For those viewers who weren’t familiar with David Nicholls’s best-selling book, the twist in the penultimate episode of One Day has been a devastating shock.
After twelve episodes saturated with enviable displays of love, the kind that songs and books and movies are written about, Emma (Ambika Mod) and Dexter’s (Leo Woodall) happiness comes to an abrupt and unforgivable end.
Read on to find out how everything wrapped up for Emma and Dexter, but be warned, for there are major spoilers ahead.
One Day ending explained
In episode 13, on the way to meet Dexter for a house viewing to start the next chapter of their lives together, Emma is hit by an oncoming car and dies, alone on the tarmac.
To add to the overwhelming tragedy, Dexter is stood on what could have been their new home, with a blossoming smile as he listens to a voice mail from Emma declaring her love for him.
A unique element of One Day, which echoes Nicholls’s novel, is that the story doesn’t end there. Instead, it continues for several years after Emma’s death to show how long-lasting grief can be.
The final episode sees Dexter struggle to process the profound loss. After a brief trip down memory lane to 1988, where Emma and Dexter are curled by the fire at Christmas, in a warm, hazy glow of love, we’re hurtled towards the first anniversary of Emma’s death in 2003.
In a chaotic, self-destructive display, Dex is in the middle of the dance floor at a children’s birthday party, beer in hand, bopping to Cotton Eye Joe. The stark contrast to the cosy, intimate display, makes it horrifically clear that Dexter isn’t coping.
It’s a different situation to the book, but the trajectory is the same, Dexter gets extremely drunk, is refused service from the bar and thrown out at closing and beaten by the bouncers. Dribbling blood into the carpet, he’s stumbled back to Sylvie’s house, where his dad arrives to take him home.
Haunted by his former happiness, Dexter sits on the stairs of his family home and remembers that Christmas from the ’80s. Filled with love and laughter, before both his mother and Emma had passed away and left the house hollow, dim-lit and doused in silence.
As his father, Stephen (Tim McInnerny) sits in awkward silence he confesses that he “really doesn’t want to have a heart to heart”, Dexter, dejected and deeply depressed, can’t meet his father’s gaze as he succumbs to the sadness he’s been desperately trying to drown out.
Though he is a man of few words, Stephen emphasises with his son’s situation, having lost his wife over a decade before. He tells Dexter to try to “live as though she was still here”, which he reveals, in a rare moment of emotional vulnerability, is how he’s managed to cope with his own grief.
After this difficult conversation, Dexter, inconsolable, breaks down. The guttural grief breaks through, along with the realisation that he has to learn to accept Emma’s death and move forward.
Fast forward to July 2004, the second anniversary of Emma’s death, and Dexter has recently moved into a flat near Hampstead Heath. Half-unpacked and lacking any hint of personality, it’s clear this isn’t home, but Dexter is trying to build a life again.
Interrupted by a knock at the door, Dexter finds a gaggle of his closest friends, his dad and frenemy Steve have arrived, as they didn’t want him to be alone on the anniversary.
An awkward reunion resumes, with silence broken by small talk, before Tilly (Amber Grappy) brings up the inevitable weight on all of their minds, how two years have passed since that dreadful day. They raise a toast to Emma, before Dexter becomes overwhelmed and teary-eyed and escapes to the garden in the hope of catching his panicked breath.
His private moment collecting himself is cut short by Steve’s arrival. Emma’s old friend admits that he never liked Dexter, which stirs a poignant chuckle out of him, before Steve tells Dexter how much Emma loved him and how happy he made Emma, much to Steve’s own disappointment.
It seems as though everyone has come to terms with their conflicted emotions: the pain and joy of having known and loved Emma and being witness to her once in a lifetime kind of love.
The story then skips further ahead, back to those familiar cobbled streets in Scotland where it all began. Dexter’s daughter Jasmine is keen to walk up to Arthur’s Seat, which he reluctantly agrees to. After making it to the summit, Dexter relives the last time he trod that path with Emma and almost watches on as his own young giddiness is played out before him.
The past and present is spliced together as Dexter seems to be learning to co-exist with the bittersweet pain of his wonderful past with Emma, that taints his life in the present.
Poetically, the series ends in the same way that Emma and Dexter’s relationship started – on the famous Vennel Steps. As Dexter strolls up them in the present, he’s transported back to when he sprinted up, breathless, to catch Emma and kiss her for the very first time.
In that split second, Dexter relives all of their kisses. Their happiness flashes before his and our eyes in a poignant montage, before it concludes in their passionate first kiss.
Dexter is now a bystander to his old happiness. But it’s a reminder that while Emma’s gone, the memory of her isn’t. He now painfully holds his heartbreak that Emma is gone and his gratitude that he knew her and loved her so fervently, while he had the chance.
Read more:
- One Day’s powerful ending shows how love and loss can co-exist
- One Day stars defend “shocking” twist: “I think it’s necessary”
- One Day’s Leo Woodall had to ditch the gym for role after White Lotus
- One Day’s Leo Woodall on adapting book for Netflix: “We knew it was a mountain to climb”
- One Day soundtrack: Full tracklist for Netflix drama
- Leo Woodall on One Day, The White Lotus and exceeding expectations
- One Day star Ambika Mod says Netflix series will cover more of book
- One Day cast: Meet the characters in the Netflix series
- Ambika Mod on modernising One Day: “I’m very different to Anne Hathaway”
One Day is available to stream now on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £6.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.
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