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‘The Last Sunrise’ Ending: Does Ry Forget Julian? Stars & Director Explain
What To Know
- The Last Sunrise ends with Ry getting surgery that puts her memory at risk.
- She may not remember Julián, whom she has a summer romance with.
- The film diverges from Anna Todd’s book.
In The Last Sunrise, Maia Reficco‘s Ry arrives in Mallorca, Spain, ready to make her summer one to remember. Local Julián (Fernando Lindez) certainly helps her achieve that, as the two fall in love — on a cellular level, according to Ry — and explore the island together. However, Ry may very well remember none of it by the movie’s end.
Based on a book by After author Anna Todd, Prime Video’s latest romantic drama sees Ry manage a severe medical condition: Tuberous Sclerosis, or epilepsy. She can prevent her seizures with medication, but early on during her vacation, she stops taking it. It made her feel numb, and she doesn’t want to experience life like that. She could get surgery to remove the tubers, but she decides against it, not wanting to risk losing her memory from it. Meanwhile, she hides her condition from Julián until an accident makes it come to light.
When Ry’s choice to not take her medication puts her life in danger, the decision to get surgery is taken away from her. Does Ry forget Julián in the end? Keep reading for The Last Sunrise ending breakdown, with insights from the two leads and director Carlson Young.
Does Ry forget Julián in The Last Sunrise?
After Ry has a seizure and falls into the pool at her hotel, she leaves the hospital and asks Julián to meet her at the beach. After telling the truth about her condition and sharing her reluctance to get surgery, Ry falls asleep with Julián on the sand, but she doesn’t wake up. Her condition has progressed, and now the doctors recommend surgery. Her mom (Eva Longoria) promised Ry she’d never have to get surgery, but Julián convinces her to go against Ry’s wishes. “Her favorite memories will be the ones ahead of her,” Julián says.
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When the surgery’s successful, Ry wakes up and Julián bursts into the room, saying her name. She looks at him, and it cuts away before we see her full reaction. It switches to Ry some time later, swimming at the beach. “My memories come back to me one by one,” says Ry’s voiceover. “I feel like I could touch him. Someone I used to know. I wonder, will fate keep following me here? What I once thought would be my last summer, my first and last sunrise, ending up being the beginning of my life.”
As she gets out of the water, Julián approaches her and stares. She smiles, and we hear him introduce himself: “Holà, I’m Julián.”
Reficco told Swooon that she shot several different endings in addition to the final version. She didn’t know what the team landed on until the movie had already gone through the editing process. “I don’t want to get in trouble, but I shot reactions, and… I didn’t know he was gonna talk,” Reficco told Swooon. “There was so many parts of that that I wasn’t even aware of, because those were things that were obviously chosen during post and during editing, and so it was really fun to watch because I did not know how the movie ended.”
In a separate interview, Young said that the scene didn’t necessarily change, but the monologue shifted. On whether Ry fully remembers Julián, the director said that viewers aren’t supposed to know for certain. “It’s up for the debate,” she said.
Reficco also played coy when asked about Ry’s reaction to potentially finding out that Julián went against her wishes. “I think we’re gonna have to wait and see,” she said. Either way, Ry is seemingly staying in Spain. Her mom is investing in Julián’s father’s business and finding a new plot of land for her hotel. They intend to start working together.
How does The Last Sunrise book end?
The first book has a much happier and clearer ending. Ry remembers Julián immediately after waking up, and Ry and Julián are happy and still together in the epilogue set a year later.
But the movie and the book are slightly different entities, since the movie was written and greenlit before the book. “The book had not come out yet, and so it was a very interesting process,” Young said. “It was reverse engineered where Anna sold it as a feature and then wrote the book. And so I read the script, and I loved it, and I totally saw a way, and then had this unique situation of having the book after, which I feel like provided a really good foundation of understanding the characters’ inner monologue more than anything.
She continued, “From the page to the screen, there’s so many changes, and so many things that we did slightly differently, but our priority was maintaining the essence of the characters.”
Will there be a Last Sunrise 2?
Several sources told Deadline in June that Prime Video was eyeing a sequel, though it had not been officially greenlit. Upon the release of the film, Swooon asked Reficco what aspects she hoped to explore in Ry and Julián’s relationship next. “I hope we explore something,” she said. “I hope there’s another one.”
The sequel script is being written as of June 2026. “Baby’s first franchise!” screenwriter Anna Klassen wrote on Instagram. “Beyond excited to be writing the sequel to THE LAST SUNRISE before the first film has even hit screens. So grateful to spend more time with these characters, the island of Mallorca, and this incredible team. And most of all, I’m happy to report that it is, in fact, not the last sunrise after all.”
The Last Sunrise, Streaming Now, Prime Video
