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Hulu has released all episodes of Normal People, the BBC's adaptation of Sally Rooney's best-selling book. Since the series' release date, many viewers have made it to the end of the 12 episodes, and seen where the show leaves Marianne (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal). While the novel leaves the ending open, the BBC Three version has a slightly more concrete end–though the future of the pair's relationship still hangs in the balance.
How Normal People ended
By Episode 12 of Normal People on Hulu, Marianne and Connell are finally able to be together after many episodes of on-again, off-again romance between the pair. However, as soon as they can be together, Connell gets news that would take him across the Atlantic for a year.
After finding a love of writing over the series' 12 episodes, Connell is offered a creative writing course place in New York, which would take him away from Marianne for at least a year, and possibly indefinitely if he starts to gain roots in America.
Though he cannot decide whether to take the place, Marianne encourages him to do it, as she does not want to be the reason he does not follow his dreams. This leads to an emotional scene between Marianne and Connell that sees them together in her bedroom again, where he tells her that he is leaving.
By the end of Normal People, the pair have not broken up, but they have also not committed to trying a long distance relationship, leaving their future in doubt.
This scene, however, takes fans slightly further than the novel, in which we do not know whether Connell decides to leave Ireland to pursue his writing. The book, however, has a slightly different reason while Connell goes to New York. After becoming the editor of Trinity College Dublin's literary magazine, he is offered the chance to do a Masters degree at New York's Cornell University.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the ending of the show, director Lenny Abrahamson said: "I would say one difference was in how we present the end. A scene that was one scene in the novel becomes two scenes separated by a passage of time at the end of the adaptation.
"That was something we decided to do that felt like, from a screen storytelling point of view, probably was a way of getting into what's happening in the novel in a way which is more native to our medium."
Fans hoping to one day see whether Marianne and Connell ended up together may be disappointed, as neither Rooney nor the makers of the Normal People series have any plans to return to these characters. Executive producer Ed Guiney told THR: "It feels like we tell a very complete story about these characters' lives, and so it's not something we're moving to do."
Normal People is streaming on Hulu in the U.S. and on BBC iPlayer in the U.K.
