Big oops, Netflix. You can’t just go and change the ending to a blockbuster romantic drama—in this case, The Notebook—and not tell anyone. But that they did.
In case it’s been a while since you’ve seen the 2004 tearjerker starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, here’s a basic synopsis (spoilers ahead, obv):
In the present-day, elderly “Duke” narrates the story of lovers Noah (Gosling) and Allie (McAdams) to a fellow nursing home resident. Plot twist, “Duke” is Noah and he’s telling the story to Allie who can’t remember because she has dementia. She eventually remembers, they embrace, then they both die. It is not uplifting.
But when Netflix started streaming the film in the U.K., everyone who’d seen it before (aka everyone) noticed a slight difference in the ending: Instead of the whole “embracing and dying”thing, the final shot of them in bed together was replaced with a shot of birds. Birds flying over a lake.
