How the Final Scene of The Drama Sheds Light on the Meaning of Its Big Twist

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Drama, now in theaters.

It only takes around 20 minutes for The Drama to deliver its big reveal. Following an opening montage in which we’re introduced to soon-to-be-married couple Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) as they write wedding speeches reflecting on pivotal moments from their relationship—from a sham coffee shop meet-cute to a first date on which that relatively harmless deception was divulged—we accompany them to a tasting dinner for the big day where they’re joined by Charlie’s best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and his wife Rachel (Alana Haim), Emma’s Maid of Honor.

There, Rachel proposes an exercise she and Mike took part in before their own wedding: sharing with each other the worst thing they ever did. Mike, Rachel, and Charlie go first, rattling off stories involving Mike using an ex-girlfriend as a human shield against an attacking dog, Charlie cyber-bullying a peer so badly his family was forced to move away, and the arguably most alarming admission of the three, Rachel locking and deserting a “slow” childhood friend in a closet inside an abandoned RV (but don’t worry, she assures everyone, he survived). Then, it’s Emma’s turn. Visibly anxious and more than a little drunk, Emma proceeds to offer up a confession that marks the point of no return in writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s divisive squirm comedy.

What’s the twist in The Drama?

As Emma herself describes it, when she was a lonely and awkward 15-year-old who didn’t have any friends, she planned and almost went through with a school shooting. In fact, the reason she’s deaf in one ear—a quirk that played an important role in the aforementioned meet-cute story—is that she blew out her eardrum while practicing shooting her father’s rifle in preparation for the intended killing spree. This admission is met with varying levels of shock and dismay from her three companions, ranging from nervous equivocation from her fiancé to self-righteous anger from Rachel.

It’s clear Emma immediately regrets her drunken word vomiting, which is quickly followed by an unfortunate bout of actual drunken vomiting. But there’s no undoing her misstep. And with just a few days to go before the wedding, Charlie is left to spiral out over whether he actually knows—or can trust—the person he’s about to marry.

The Drama intercuts scenes of a young Emma (played by Jordyn Curet) plotting the shooting with the present timeline, making Charlie’s dilemma all the more visceral. But with the exception of some commentary about how school shootings are a uniquely American tragedy, Norwegian filmmaker Borgli (Dream Scenario, Sick of Myself) doesn’t take any particular political stance on the issue. Instead, he plays teen Emma’s intense angst and disturbing lack of empathy for uncomfortable laughs.

We also learn the reason Emma ultimately didn’t go through with her plan is that there was another shooting at a local mall that resulted in the death of a classmate the same week she was plotting to do the horrifying deed. In the aftermath, Emma was drawn into a gun control advocacy group at school, made friends, and dropped the whole idea. In her mind, she didn’t actually do anything. Charlie, on the other hand, is desperate to find a way to reconcile both the woman he thought he knew with the person she once was and his love for her with their inner circle's perception of her past. 

By the time their wedding day rolls around, neither Charlie nor Emma are in a good place—to put it mildly. While Emma is attempting to fend off Rachel’s open hostility, Charlie has committed his own relationship sin. After laying the situation out as a hypothetical to his coworker Misha (Hailey Gates) during lunch at the office the day before, Charlie made a panicked pass at Misha that led to them almost sleeping together.

So when the reception goes completely off the rails, culminating in Misha’s boyfriend Blake (Michael Abbott Jr.) headbutting Charlie and Emma fleeing the scene, it doesn’t come as too big of a surprise. However, the movie’s final scene, in which a battered Charlie and rain-soaked Emma reconvene at their favorite diner and reference an inside joke that signals they’re going to try and start fresh, seems to shed some light on the point Borgli may have been trying to make about the whole ordeal.

Dark, satirical comedies that are a bit (or more than a bit) twisted are becoming Borgli’s speciality. And in an interview with the Popcorn Podcast, he explained the questions The Drama asks about love, honesty, and where our moral lines actually lie are not intended as a statement about cancel culture, but rather our individual outlook on romantic commitment.

“This is a very personal story. It doesn’t look at the societal level of deciding where your lines are, where the line for unconditional love is,” he said. “The movie’s exploring more your personal limit and more the limits of how honest and how flawed you can be in your most private life. Publicly is a very different sort of discussion. It’s one that’s too big for me.”

Ultimately, Borgli seems uninterested in drawing clear lines between right and wrong, preferring instead to let audiences make up their own minds about what is irredeemable and what’s not. But if you’re wondering whether Borgli thinks of The Drama as a love story, the filmmaker hinted that he, for one, sees Emma and Charlie’s relationship working out.