Spoiler warning: this page explains the full ending of Past Lives (2023).
Past Lives is the feature directorial debut of Celine Song, who also wrote it. Greta Lee plays Nora, Teo Yoo plays Hae Sung and John Magaro plays Arthur. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2023, and A24 released it in the United States in June 2023. It was nominated for two Academy Awards at the 96th ceremony, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, and won neither.
The story in short
In 1999 in Seoul, two twelve-year-old classmates, Na Young and Hae Sung, develop feelings for each other. Na Young’s family emigrates to Canada and they lose touch. In 2011, Hae Sung finds Nora, as she is now called, on Facebook, and they talk by video call. Their schedules keep them apart, and Nora asks them to stop so she can focus on her life and writing in New York. She meets and marries Arthur. In 2023, Hae Sung visits New York.
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The ending
The three spend an evening together. Hae Sung and Nora gradually slip into speaking only Korean, which leaves Arthur on the outside, and Arthur tells Hae Sung he is glad to have met him. When Hae Sung calls a car, he and Nora wait together in a long silence. He suggests they may be in a past life of their own right now, and asks what they will be to each other in the next one. She says she does not know. He says, “I’ll see you then,†and leaves. Nora walks back to her apartment and cries in Arthur’s arms.
What in-yun (inyeon) means
The film repeatedly refers to inyeon, a Korean idea with Buddhist roots. In this idea, a relationship between two people in this life is shaped by their connections across many earlier lives. Even a brief encounter, such as passing someone in the street, is treated as significant for that reason. The film uses the idea to frame Nora and Hae Sung’s bond without making it a contest with Arthur.
How to read the final scene
These are interpretations. The film does not state one answer.
- Nora’s tears can be read as grief for the version of her life that stayed in Korea, and for the childhood self Hae Sung remembers.
- Her choice to go home to Arthur shows that the present life matters as much as the one imagined.
- Hae Sung’s question about the next life suggests he can accept that this one belongs to someone else.
Arthur is written as a full character with his own worries about the cultural distance between himself and Nora, not as an obstacle. The ending lets all three characters leave with some dignity, which is part of why it lands so quietly.
