Who does Joan end up with in Eternity? Explained

Eternity answers its central question by having Joan choose Larry, the second husband she actually lived a full life with, rather than Luke, the first love she lost to war. The film, directed by David Freyne and co-written with Pat Cunnane, frames the choice inside a busy afterlife transfer station where newly dead souls have one week to pick their forever destination and, in Joan’s unusual case, their forever partner.

Elizabeth Olsen plays Joan opposite Miles Teller’s Larry and Callum Turner’s Luke, with Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early as the afterlife coordinators guiding and nudging the decision.

What starts as a high concept romantic dilemma becomes a film about memory, regret, and what “the one” means when one relationship stayed frozen in time and the other had decades to change.

By the end, Eternity lands on lived love over imagined perfection, and it closes without adding any extra button during or after the credits.

Eternity plot recap: Why Joan has to choose between Luke and Larry

Eternity opens with older versions of Joan and Larry on an ordinary outing that underlines their long history, the kind built on routine disagreements and shared years.

Larry dies first in sudden, darkly comic fashion, and wakes up in the afterlife as a younger version of himself.

He finds himself at the Junction, a crowded waystation that blends a grand station vibe with the churn of a convention floor, where vendors sell endless themed “eternities” to the newly dead.

The rules arrive quickly. Souls have one week to decide where to spend eternity, and once they commit, they cannot switch.

The film treats that as a real threat rather than a joke, since trying to undo a choice can mean being sent to a permanent black void.

Larry is assigned an afterlife coordinator, Anna, who walks him through the process while he focuses on one goal, reuniting with Joan.

Joan dies shortly after and arrives physically reset as well, only to learn that her decision is different from everyone else’s. She must choose who to spend forever with.

Her first husband Luke, killed in the Korean War, never selected his own eternity.

He waited in the Junction for decades and took a job there, often shown as bartending, so he would be there when she arrived.

Joan’s coordinator Ryan becomes a steady, sometimes pushy counterweight as Luke and Larry each plead their case.

Who does Joan end up with in Eternity? The ending decision, scene by scene

Joan ends up with Larry in Eternity. The final stretch is built to make that choice feel earned, not automatic. Luke’s pitch is romance preserved in amber, because he died young and never had the chance to become complicated.

In his first big reentry into Joan’s life, he sells the scale of his waiting as proof that the feelings never faded. Luke said,

“When eternity's on the line, seems like nothing.”

Joan is visibly shaken by how intact Luke feels, because he is the version of him she remembers. Joan said,

“I've never dreamt you this clearly,”

and Luke replied,

“You're exactly how I dreamt you.”

Larry’s counterpitch is less mythic and more grounded. He and Joan built a shared life, which includes caregiving, compromise, boredom, and the private language that only shows up after years together.

The film keeps putting him in the position of watching Luke’s perfect memory perform well in the room, while Larry has to argue for a relationship that was real enough to get messy. Larry said,

“I don't care where we end up, just as long as we're together,”

which becomes the cleanest statement of what he is offering. To dramatize the difference between fantasy and lived history, Eternity repeatedly sends the trio into the Archives, a long hallway of diorama like memory spaces where moments from their lives exist as walkable exhibits.

Joan uses those spaces like a test, not to rank romantic speeches, but to face what each relationship actually contained.

The film then escalates into its romantic climax, a transport toward the chosen eternity that turns into a desperate race through memory itself, pushing Joan to commit before the system locks her out of a second chance.

That commitment is the ending’s pivot. Joan chooses Larry, and the final beats are staged as acceptance of the life she lived over the life she imagines she might have lived.

The credits roll without any added mid credits or post credits material.

Why Joan chooses Larry?

Eternity frames Luke as the most seductive kind of love story, the one that never had to survive ordinary time. Because Luke died young, the relationship stays permanently intense and permanently unfinished.

That makes it easy for Joan to project a complete future onto him, since the real future never happened.

Larry represents a different math. He is the person Joan grew with, argued with, and aged with, which means their love includes friction. The film treats that friction as evidence, not failure.

In the Archives, the point is not that Larry and Joan were perfect together. The point is that they became real together, and the “real” parts are what carry into the last decision.

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