Back in 2009, you'd find it hard to pass a tube carriage or set of sun loungers without seeing a copy of One Day by David Nicholls perched in front of someone's face.
If you somehow managed to escape even the very premise of it, then we'll get you up to speed. It’s a love story told over 20 years, with the two main characters, Dexter and Emma, taking it in turns to narrate the twists and turns in their friends-to-lovers-to-soulmates relationship. You’ll possibly remember the 2011 film adaptation of the book, but the less said about that the better (Anne Hathaway, woefully miscast as Emma, was recently said to have pulled off one of the worst Yorkshire accents in film history).
But then again you are reading this article, so we're going to assume that you've just finished Netflix's fourteen-part series featuring Leo Woodall (The White Lotus) and Ambika Mod (This Is Going To Hurt) as our confused, coming-of-age lovers, and you've been left somewhat confused by that big twist. Allow us to explain...
One Day ending explained
After spending the first anniversary of Emma’s death getting wasted (you can choose between being thrown out of a strip joint or flailing about pissed to Cotton Eye Joe at a kids birthday party as his lowest point), Dexter’s friends and family decide to spend the day with him. His not-so-merry gang includes his ex-wife, Sylvie, his dad, Tilly, her husband and kid, and Ian, Emma’s ex.
In the book, Ian writes him a letter revealing that it was true that he never liked him, but he understood how much Emma loved him and that the shared feeling changed their worlds. In the TV series, Ian tells him this in person.
When they all leave, Dexter gets stuck into the wine again. Them he sees an apparition of sorts: Emma telling him not to go down that road, that the only thing that’s going to make him feel better is the passing of time, like we’ve witnessed across the past 20 years. There’s a little flashback of the couple in Paris, then we jump forward three years to 2007, where Dexter’s going back over their old stomping ground in Edinburgh.
In the book, this is where we get the reveal of what happened the morning after their first hook-up: of Dexter pretending to cancel plans with his parents on the phone with the speaking clock and of their climb up Arthur’s Seat, whereas the TV series chose to tell this part of the story at the beginning of the series. The book’s second chapter jumps from their first night together to Emma writing a letter to Dexter while she’s in the travelling TIE theatre group.
However, what is in both versions is that Dexter, after walking down memory lane, takes Jazz – sorry Sylvie, we mean Jasmine – for a walk up to Arthur’s Seat to remember Emma.
As the strains of Vanbur’s ‘In Cold Light’ start to play again – the sonic motif of their love affair – Dexter has a flashback to Young Emma and Young Dexter climbing down the hill, with Emma saying that she always wants to be friends and that she doesn’t want to end up being “a footnote in the story of his life”, a particularly poignant line as we know she ended up being the exact opposite of this: she was his main character.
One last flashback before the credits, and it’s Dexter rushing back for a snog on the steps before they parted ways that morning as graduates to start their real life, and it’s come full circle again. Will this nostalgic mini-break allow Dexter to work his way through the grief? Here’s hoping – as WandaVision reminded us, what is grief if not love persevering?
How does the TV series ending differ from the book?
In the book, Dexter ends up with the manager of his cafe, Maddy, who travels up to Edinburgh with him and Jazz, but doesn’t join them on the walk. The show nixes this storyline, leaving him to focus on the one great love of his life, Emma. A misstep, perhaps, as it shows Dexter moving on, happy and in love once again. That’s for the fans to decide. Because as far as the series is concerned, as they once joked about inscribing on a boulder, it’s Dex 4 Em 4 Eva.
