Romance Movie
‘The History of Sound’ Ending Explained: Do Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor End Up Together?
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The History of Sound.]
The moment we’ve all been waiting for is here! We can finally watch Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor fall in love on screen.
In Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound, the actors play a musically-inclined couple in the early 1900s. Mescal’s Lionel leaves his home in the Kentucky countryside to study singing at the Boston Music Conservatory. O’Connor’s David is a music-composing student there, and they click instantly. Things take a turn when David is drafted into World War I (Lionel isn’t due to poor eyesight), but he returns and invites Lionel to Maine to document folk songs.
During the movie‘s promotion, it became obvious that Lionel and David drift apart. In a May 2025 Deadline article, Mescal revealed, “It doesn’t say: I should have done this. It was, what if I didn’t meet him? But instead, I did meet him. It’s a sadness, but it’s also an acceptance.”
Do Lionel and David find their way back to each other, or do they simply find themselves on different paths? Or does The History of Sound end on a more tragic note? We don’t blame you if you want to emotionally prepare yourself before watching the movie, so Swooon is breaking down the romantic fate of the couple.
Do Lionel and David end up together in The History of Sound?
You would be correct if you assumed The History of Sound has a sad ending, similar in many ways to Brokeback Mountain, but not quite as melancholic. After their Maine trip, Lionel and David part ways, though Lionel sends letters. When they go unanswered, he stops writing. So, the two actually wind up spending a good portion of the movie apart.
In the years that follow, Lionel sings in a prestigious choir in Italy and teaches in London, building a successful career and taking men and women as lovers. He’s on the verge of getting serious with a woman, but he realizes he’s never been as happy as he was with David in Maine. He breaks it off when he finds out his mom is sick.
After going home to Kentucky and discovering his mom died, Lionel sets out to reconnect with David in Boston at long last. However, he’s devastated by what he finds. David didn’t escape the war unscathed, and he died by suicide shortly after they returned from Maine. Lionel also finds out that their song collecting trip wasn’t university-approved, and that David was engaged to a woman at the time.
How does The History of Sound end?
The History of Sound may not escape the “bury your gays” trope, but it wraps up on a bittersweet note. The movie ends by flashing forward to Lionel’s life as a successful musician in the 1980s. (His older self is played by Chris Cooper.) He’s written a book about the history of folk music, and he’s interviewed about it on TV.
It’s what sparks an unnamed someone to send him a lost relic that was gathering dust in their attic: the folk song recordings from Lionel and David’s time in Maine. David left a message for his lover, which overwhelms Lionel with emotion even after so many years. It gives the story (and likely Lionel) a sense of closure.
What do you think about The History of Sound’s ending? Let us know in the comments!
The History of Sound, In Theaters Now
