[There are spoilers ahead for The Drama. You’ve been warned!]
The interesting thing about The Dramais that the “twist” is not really a twist ending; it’s a twist beginning. Or… a twist a third of the way through. By the time the movie ends, it actually feels kind of tame compared to what you see throughout the rest of the movie. So where does the crazy secret revealed at the beginning of the movie leave our two main characters, Emma and Charlie? Let’s break it down.
The “secret” that Emma, as a young adult, planned a school shooting, sends shockwaves through not only her own relationship but through their group of friends. The week before their wedding is a mess of doubts, arguments, tears, and, weirdly, a lot of vomit? All this brings us to the wedding day itself.
The wedding, as you can imagine if you’ve watched the first hour of the film, devolves into total chaos. Emma finds out that Charlie hooked up with Misha because Misha inadvertently spills the beans. Rachel gives a drunken toast and makes little attempt to contain her hatred of Emma (and by extension, Charlie). Charlie stands up to give his own toast (bad call), and basically confesses everything in front of all their loved ones, including cheating on Emma with Misha. When Misha’s boyfriend finds out that Charlie and Misha hooked up (if you can even call it that?? maybe more accurate to say when Charlie tried to force something with Misha), he immediately comes and punches Charlie in the face.
While all of this is happening, Emma, who just watched her life go up in flames, runs away from the wedding. No one sees her the rest of the night.
Charlie makes his way home, bloody and already bruising, to try to figure out what to do next. He can’t seem to track down where Emma is. But he finally has an idea: what about the diner that she wanted to go to after their wedding? He thought the idea was lame, but maybe she’d end up there without him.
He goes to the diner, sits down, and after a few minutes, Emma shows up, still in her wedding dress and orange puffer jacket.
She sits down with him and says, “Do you live around here?” recalling an inside joke they have whenever they have a fight. At first, he doesn’t seem to believe she is extending him this olive branch. But they start to laugh, and the credits roll shortly after.
So while the movie doesn’t explicitly say they got back together, they do end the movie on a moment of grace for one another. What happens afterward is anyone’s guess. But the film seems to want us to believe that Charlie’s cheating is, in some ways, equal to Emma’s confession. The ending of the movie implies that they both committed relationship “crimes,” and now they are somehow even. At least, that’s how I interpreted it. Whether you think that’s reasonable or not is up to you. Is cheating on your fiancé in the wake of a confession like that the same as your fiancée almost committing a school shooting? In real life, probably not. But in real life, women very, very rarely commit mass shootings in the first place. So the whole idea that someone like Emma would plan something like that strains credulity anyway.
But if these two characters can overlook what would be huge deal breakers for literally anyone else, maybe they are actually meant to be. Who am I to judge?
