If you manage to make through the first 90 minutes of His Three Daughters without crying, don’t worry: The final scene will get you. Because the His Three Daughters ending features Elizabeth Olsen singing the most heart-breaking, most beautiful lullaby you’ve ever heard. You simply can’t hear it and not cry.
This new Netflix family drama, which began streaming on Friday, was written, directed, and edited by filmmaker Azazel Jacobs (French Exit, The Lovers). It tells the story of three estranged sisters (played by Olsen, Carrie Coon, and Natasha Lyonne) who are brought back together by their dying father. Olsen plays Christina, the sweet one; Coon plays Katie, the practical one; and Lyonne plays Rachel, the chill one. Though different in temperament, they share one very important thing: the strange, excruciating, and at times mundane anticipatory grief over their soon-to-be dead father.
The movie opens when Katie and Christina temporarily move back in with Rachel and their father, to their childhood apartment. There, Dad receives at-home, end-of-life, hospice care after a battle with cancer. The sisters are told by their nurse itâs likely a matter of days. But thatâs plenty of time for old wounds to be clawed open. The conflict-avoidant Christina tries in vain to keep the peace between her other two sisters. But the grief-fueled anger boils over, again and again. There are passive-aggressive comments, screaming matches and hurt feelings.
None of that matters by the end of the film, when the sisters must finally say goodbye to their father. Jacobs conceptualizes the moment by having the father (played by Jay O. Sanders), suddenly wake up, rip off his medical equipment, and deliver a rousing monologue to his daughters about how much he loves them and wants them to get along.
Obviously, that’s not realistic, nor is the audience meant to believe that moment “really” happened in the movie. It’s simply a way to visualize what these three women wantâand imagineâthey might hear from their father, if were he able to communicate. Jacobs makes this clear when he shows Sanders watching his daughters crowd around another version of himselfâone that has just died, in his favorite chair.
The His Three Daughters ending finds our three lead actors sitting on a couch in their childhood home, contending with the earth-shattering reality that their father is now down. They each take turns sitting in his favorite chair. Then, they hold each other. Olsen begins to sing a traditional children’s song, “Five Little Ducks,” about children who slowly leave their parents.
“Five little ducks went out one day, / Over the hills and far away. / Mummy duck said, ‘quack quack quack quack,’ / But only four little ducks came back.”
We continue to hear Olsen singing as we watch the sisters pack up, hug, and say their goodbyes. Then, as Olsen begins the final verse, Rachel cuts in with her own improvised line: “Daddy duck said beep, beep, beeeeeeeep.”
Katie laughs, and adds, “And all his crazy little ducks came back.”
Rachel, sitting by herself after her sisters have left, laughs to herself, remembering this moment. And with that, the movie ends.
Oof. If you’re not crying by now, I don’t know what to say. That’s one of the most poignant, heart-wrenching movie scenes of 2024. Elizabeth Olsen softly singing a tragic lullaby got to me, OK? The ducks eventually did come back, which is beautiful, but they were too late to really say goodbye to their father, which is tragic. Ack!
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