Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Verity.The latest Colleen Hoover movie adaptation, Verity, has finally arrived, this one packed with a star-studded cast led by Anne Hathaway as the titular lead, Verity Crawford, and Dakota Johnson, who plays up-and-coming writer Lowen Ashleigh. As the bloody, unsettling trailer for the movie makes clear, this is far from a romcom, despite the moments of romance. Rather, Verity is a true psychological thriller, complete with jump scares, major plot twists, and a hint of murder mystery, and although reviews of Verity have been a bit scattered, the ending undeniably packs a punch.
The story centers on Lowen’s acceptance of a job working on Verity’s unfinished next book, as she has just suffered a terrible accident that has left her incapacitated. This isn’t just any job, though; Lowen is actually invited out to Vermont to live in Verity’s home with Verity’s husband, Jeremy—who recruited Lowen for the job, essentially—and their son, Crew. She ends up basically living Verity’s life, sleeping in the main bedroom, writing in her office, and eventually getting intimate with Jeremy.
Of course, given that it’s a psychological thriller, that doesn’t exactly go over well. There’s at least one dead body by the time the movie concludes, and the narrative takes many shocking turns, including the reveal about midway through that Verity, as Lowen suspected, is not in quite the vegetative state that she would have everyone believe. Even that turns out to be a complicated plot point to unravel in the end, however, as Verity not only has an unreliable narrator but also intentionally leaves some things up to interpretation. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending.
Who’s Dead By The End Of Verity?
Technically, Verity features three significant deaths in total. The very first death is actually a character who isn’t even named, but his death certainly stands out, as he’s an unfortunate but instrumental part of Lowen and Jeremy’s first encounter. Namely, as the two (without yet knowing one another) are standing on a busy New York City street corner, this poor soul is struck by a car, and the force is so great that a significant amount of his blood ends up on Lowen. This leads to Jeremy helping her get cleaned up and giving her his shirt.
It’s in that scene in the bathroom with Lowen cleaning blood off her face that audiences learn about the second death in the movie, which is that of Jeremy and Verity’s young daughter, Harper. It was clear that this passing hadn’t just happened, but it was implied that it was a relatively recent loss. Ultimately, it’s revealed that Harper tragically drowned in a boating accident out on a lake—and a much more nefarious explanation for that was given later, although this is among the details that viewers have to sort out for themselves.
Finally, the most significant death is that of Verity herself, who is the one character that is actively shown dying on screen; with both the biker and Harper, the moments before and after are depicted, but not the death itself. The same cannot be said of Verity, who is violently suffocated on screen by her own husband, who then dumps her body into the same lake in which Harper died, with the help of Lowen. While that sounds absolutely brutal—and, honestly, it is—the circumstances surrounding this murder are complicated and come down to what viewers believe about Verity.
What Really Happened To Verity Crawford Explained
Perhaps the most central question in the entire movie is what actually happened to Verity. When Lowen first arrives, she hears a story about Verity being in a terrible accident, leaving her in a vegetative state. When she begins to see Verity walking around and staring at her from windows, though, she realizes that things aren’t what they seem. The only additional information she really has access to is a copy of what seems to be Verity’s unpublished autobiographical manuscript, which is genuinely horrifying.
In it, Verity describes hating her twin babies and neglecting them all day, and she eventually confesses to intentionally killing Harper by tipping the boat over—or so it seems. After reading the manuscript in full, Lowen is convinced that Verity is a vicious monster who murdered her own child and has been faking her incapacitation. This leads to a gruesome scene in which Lowen tries to get Verity to talk by stabbing her in the hand repeatedly with a thumbtack (there are truly no heroes in this movie).
When that doesn’t work, she gives the manuscript to Jeremy, who reads the section about Verity killing Harper on purpose and immediately rushes into Verity’s room and begins to strangle her. Lowen tells Jeremy to stop, and for a second, audiences believe she’s going to say this has gone too far and he can’t kill her, only for Lowen to instruct him on how to make it look like an accident. The two then dump her body and are shown in a following scene lying to the police, claiming she must have wandered off.
That ending seemed cut and dry, even if it also meant that Jeremy and Lowen, too, now looked pretty terrible (which was already slightly true of both of them because they were carrying on an affair in the same house where Jeremy’s seemingly sick wife lived). However, the final few scenes of the movie reveal that it’s not quite so straightforward. Eventually, Lowen finds a handwritten letter in the floorboards, which explains that the manuscript was only a writing practice of creating an evil alter ego.
However, Verity claims in the note, Jeremy found the manuscript and believed that it was real and therefore set out to kill her, forcing her to get into a car accident by setting a brick on her gas pedal in her car and sending her into a tree. From there, the letter claims, Verity was plotting to get away with their son Crew. With that shocker, it now seemed like Jeremy was the true villain, and Verity had actually been a victim in more ways than one.
Verity wasn’t done with the mind games yet. Just as the movie is about to conclude, a clip from an interview with Verity is shown, in which she explains that, as an author, she basically loves to manipulate the truth and have the readers questioning everything. With that in mind, Lowen’s narration concludes that it’s impossible to know what exactly was true about Verity and/or what she did and ends on that mysterious note, with viewers needing to decide for themselves what they believe.
Do Lowen And Jeremy Stay Together At The End Of Verity?
In the end, Lowen and Jeremy are still in a romantic relationship many months after Verity’s death, and Lowen is actually revealed to be pregnant. Up until Lowen finds the letter, it also seems like the two are happily together and ready to start a new life; they are moving out of the creepy house in Vermont and all the way down to South Carolina with Crew, and clearly, they are growing their family. Once Lowen finds the note, though, she begins to call things into question, and it’s obvious that she doesn’t trust Jeremy as much anymore.
Nevertheless, the movie ends with the trio in the car, riding off to their new life together, and Lowen’s final voice-over does seem to suggest that, at least for Lowen, she leans towards the opinion that Verity was actually evil and just a manipulative liar, hinting that maybe she really does stay with Jeremy, have the baby together, and pretend that they never murdered Crew’s mother because of a manuscript. That’s really anyone’s guess.
How Verity Sets Up A Possible Sequel
Despite the fact that Verity’s conclusion is incredibly ambiguous, it does actually set up the possibility of another movie. For one, as mentioned, Lowen is currently pregnant and has just read this letter suggesting that Jeremy viciously drugged his wife and sent her flying into a tree. Learning what happens after this, especially in terms of whether she ever confronts Jeremy about this or tries to learn the truth, could be a movie in and of itself, as could the next phase of their life with this new baby.
Notably, there is no sequel novel to Hoover’s Verity, so there isn’t currently source material there, but that doesn’t mean a sequel novel will never be written or that a sequel movie couldn’t be made without the book. Whether that would actually happen is another matter entirely, but at least in terms of the story itself, there would be plenty of places for a Verity sequel to go—and, hopefully, it would answer the numerous questions that viewers still have by the end of this film.
- Release Date
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October 2, 2026
- Runtime
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117 minutes
- Director
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Michael Showalter
- Writers
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Nick Antosca, Colleen Hoover
- Producers
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Alex Hedlund, Anne Hathaway, Colleen Hoover, Jordana Mollick, Michael Showalter, Nick Antosca, Stacey Sher
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
