Deep Water Ending Explained (In Detail) (2024)

The psychological thriller Deep Water's ending explained that Vic and Melinda’s dangerous mind games might not be over with. Directed by Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal), Deep Water is a twisted tale of the seemingly loveless marriage between Vic (Ben Affleck) and Melinda Van Allen (Ana de Armas). Adapted from the 1957 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith, Hulu’s Deep Water crafts a new ending to the story that adds more complex nuances to the characters’ high-stakes romance.

Deep Water, which is primarily told from the perspective of Vic, follows the manipulative couple as they raise their six-year-old daughter in a tight-knit community where gossip spreads like wildfire. Since Vic lacks a certain passion that Melinda seeks, the couple enters into an agreement where Melinda is allowed to take lovers as long as she doesn’t break up their family. Deep Water sees the couple’s arrangement take a twisted turn when Vic begins to crack. By the end of Deep Water, several people connected to Vic and Melinda’s romantic entanglements die, with the final act cementing the twisted dynamic between the main couple.

What Happens In Deep Water’s Ending

Murder Brings Vic And Melinda Closer

Deep Water ends with Vic and Melinda feeling more passionate about their marriage, albeit after he has killed two of her lovers in cold blood. Although Melinda is sure that Vic killed her lover, Charlie, she becomes more attracted to him and doesn’t immediately accuse him of involvement when she hasn’t heard from her latest paramour, Tony.

After a picnic with Melinda and Trixie, Vic returns to the river to better hide Tony's body, only for Melinda to simultaneously find Tony’s wallet inside a box of Vic’s snails. Melinda calls up Don, a neighbor who suspects Vic of killing Charlie. Don finally confronts Vic at the gorge. Following seeing Vic moving Tony’s body, Don drives his car to tell the police, with Vic hopping on his bike to stop him. When Vic rides his bike in the direct path of Don’s car, Don swerves off the road, falling to his death as he drives off a cliff.

At home, Trixie sees Melinda has packed a suitcase, so she throws it into the pool and tells Melinda that they’re not leaving. When Vic returns home, he finds Melinda sitting on the stairs with a slight smile on her face, only for the movie to cut to her burning all of Tony’s licenses she found with Vic’s snails. By the end of Deep Water, all is well for their marriage.

Why Vic Lies To Joel About Killing Martin McCrae

The Seemingly Edgy-Yet-Innocent Quip Is A Worrying Sign Of What's To Come

Deep Water's true drama begins when Vic confronts Melinda’s lover, Joel, at a party. Vic tells him he killed Martin McCrae, Melinda’s last lover who went missing, to scare Joel off. Most people take Vic’s statement as a joke, though it successfully scares off Joel and leaves screenwriter Don increasingly suspicious. Vic tells Melinda it is an innocent joke after she becomes angry, but Deep Water hints that malignance lies beneath Vic's seemingly indifferent demeanor.

Later in Deep Water, it’s revealed Vic didn’t kill McCrae. He told Joel he killed him with a hammer when he was actually murdered with a gun, and the real killer was apprehended. While Vic and his friends maintain that his lie about killing Martin McCrae is just a joke, it is really the beginning of Vic’s anger and jealousy boiling over the surface.

Since Vic went on to kill two of Melinda’s lovers, telling this lie seems to be a mistake, as he becomes the first suspect when Charlie and Tony turn up dead or missing. In reality, it appears Vic is bored with his indifference to Melinda’s affairs, but the rush from finally standing up to one of Melinda’s lovers fires a passion in their marriage he hadn’t felt in a long time. Vic knows he can get away with it, since no one feels he is capable of such a thing.

How Trixie Knows That Vic Killed Charlie

Vic And Melinda's Daughter Is Incredibly Astute

One of the most mysterious Deep Water characters is Trixie Van Allen, Vic and Melinda’s 6-year-old daughter. It’s established she’s more intelligent and mature than her age suggests, with Deep Water’s scene with Trixie and Vic discussing Charlie’s death hinting she knows much more about her parents’ marriage than they’ll let on. After Charlie dies and Vic is the main suspect, Trixie tells her dad she thinks it was him who killed Melinda's lover. Vic says he didn’t, but Trixie maintains she thinks he killed Charlie, though she’s simply upset that he won’t tell her how he killed him.

At the end of Deep Water, Trixie throws Melinda’s packed suitcase into the pool and says they’re not leaving, suggesting Trixie really knows everything that’s going on but still wants her family to stay together. Since Trixie and Vic are much closer than Trixie and Melinda, it seems Deep Water’s young character supports what Vic does, as she is just as fed up with Melinda’s affairs as Vic is.

Why Melinda Helped Cover Up Tony’s Murder

Vic's Actions Made Melinda Value Her Family Much More Than Before

Although Melinda tips off Don about Vic having something to do with the disappearance of Tony, Deep Water’s ending sees Melinda burn his licenses just moments later. This occurs after Trixie throws Melinda’s suitcase in the pool and tells her they’re not leaving, suggesting Melinda now sees that keeping her family together is more important. Melinda spent Deep Water maintaining that Vic had no passion nor did he even love her, but his violent urges towards her two lovers restore the spark in their marriage.

Melinda repeatedly tells Vic she loves him, though his inability to convincingly return the sentiment sends her astray – until she realizes that killing and threatening these men is his sick way of showing love. Melinda had been utterly bored with their marriage, but Vic’s unhinged behavior proved that he was no longer boring to her. At the same time, Melinda had only just asked Vic why he was the only one who stayed with her, suggesting that even though his passion was demonstrated by murder, he’d do anything to stay with her, so she returned the gesture by helping cover up Tony’s death.

What’s Next For Melinda And Vic After Deep Water

The Couple In Deep Water Are Destined For A Deadly Yet Passionate Marriage

Melinda and Vic’s toxic marriage sees the deaths of at least three people in their town, but Deep Water ends with their relationship stronger than ever. Since Don wasn’t able to send his text to Kelly about being right about Vic before he died, there’s nobody aside from Vic, Melinda, and Trixie who could provide evidence that Vic murdered anyone.

With Melinda choosing to keep their family together, the couple returns to their masks as a typical suburban couple. It’s unclear whether their marriage continues to see more lovers or murders, but Melinda and Vic’s returning passion hints they’ll keep playing twisted mind games as long as it keeps their family together.

What Deep Water’s Ending Really Means

The Movie's Core Theme Is About The Lengths Some Couples Go To For A Functional Marriage

Deep Water’s roller-coaster ride of a story is about the facades that suburban couples put on after becoming bored in their marriages, and the lengths they may go to stay together and maintain their “picture-perfect” charade. It is an extreme example of this phenomenon but takes from many real-life marital struggles around infidelity, maintaining a family, and reduced passion over time.

The uncertainty of Vic's kill count and the larger story portrays the idea that every relationship looks different to those inside them, as the projection of Vic’s mild-mannered, indifferent persona is truly a mask he puts on when, in reality, he’s a ticking time-bomb of anger and violence. In the end, Deep Water is a twisted tale of a toxic marriage in which they finally demonstrate their love, renew their passion, and reach a climactic, unifying agreement wherein the core couple is complicit in each other's immorality: Vic by Melinda’s infidelity, and Melinda by Vic’s murders.

While the majority of Adrian Lyne’s erotic thrillers end in madness, concluding once the pair are brought closer together or resolve their conflicts, Deep Water’s ending provides a different explanation. The Deep Water ending suggests Vic and Melinda's back-and-forth turmoil will continue, and it makes them a stronger couple through their complicity.

What The Deep Water Ending Song Means

The Song Trixie Sings Has Sinister Undertones

Deep Water's soundtrack takes a sinister turn in its conclusion. At the very end of the movie, Trixie is shown to be singing the song "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" by Leo Sayer. While it may seem like a sweet moment as a six-year-old is singing the tune, it's actually a rather sinister way to wrap up the film. Throughout the movie, both Vic and Melinda continue to make increasingly dangerous choices at each other's expense. What's worse is that their young daughter is privy to everything that's going on in their relationship, including Melinda's affairs and Vic's murders.

Trixie sees what's going on between her parents, as they hardly try to hide their abysmal choices. Rather than being repulsed by her parents, what makes Deep Water's ending disturbing is that Trixie loves them nonetheless, identifies with the family, and even chooses understanding when singing "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing." The song is about total romantic devotion. The tune not only represents Trixie's relationship with her parents but also Melinda and Vic's relationship. In actuality, the song is representative of the family as a whole.

Vic is driven to kill for the sake of jealousy as Melinda continues her mounting list of affairs. When Melinda finds out about Vic's actions, rather than being horrified or fearful, she claims she's not afraid of him because he did the killing "for her." In the end, Melinda helps Vic cover up his crimes, and she does this out of total devotion.

Trixie and Vic have a more meaningful relationship than she does with her mother, which could play a part in how she has a similar reaction to Melinda upon the revelation of Vic's murders. The only thing she's mad about is that he wouldn't say how he did it. The family chooses to stay together out of the sick codependent love that they share for one another.

Deep Water Book To Movie Changes

Melinda Doesn't Survive In The Deep Water Novel

The Deep Water ending explains that this toxic relationship grew stronger the more depraved the couple became. However, this was just about the movie, and the book had a very different ending. In the novel, the murders and dishonesty don't result in a better relationship between Vic and Melinda. That is because the two work to keep their family intact in both, but in the movie, they seem to actually somewhat like each other and Vic loves Melinda.

However, in the book, they actively despise each other. While Melinda often makes sexual advances on Vic, often in a dominatrix fashion, that is nonexistent in the book. Vic considers his wife to be selfish and spoiled, and who only seeks attention in any way possible. This leads to a very different ending in the Deep Water book.

Vic doesn't love Melinda, and he isn't killing these men "for her." Vic lives his life in emasculation, and after he realizes Melinda knows what he has done, he takes one last drastic measure. In the Deep Water book, Melinda isn't going to cover for him like she does in the movie, which causes Vic to commit one more murder as he strangles Melinda to death at the end. He also doesn't kill Don, who arrives with the police to arrest Vic. In the movie, no one is punished, but in the Deep Water book, Melinda pays with her life and Vic goes to prison.

How Deep Water's Ending Compares To Adrian Lyne's Other Endings

The Deep Water Director Is Known For Mixing Death And Infidelity

Deep Water director Adrian Lyne is known for movies about couples entering twisted arrangements, incredibly unconventional relationships and romances, and movies where the central characters have an ever-loosening grip on their sanity. With this in mind, Deep Water is almost a textbook Adrian Lyne movie (and his first in two decades after 2002's Unfaithful). However, while Deep Water shares many similarities to Adrian Lyne's other films, it also deviates from them too.

One of the clearest comparisons to Deep Water is 1987's Fatal Attraction, a psychological thriller that became a cult classic. Michael Douglas and Glenn Close starred in the film, which sees Douglas as Dan Gallagher, a lawyer who has an affair with Close's Alex Forrest. However, while Dan sees the brief spark of romance as a fling, Alex does not. She descends into increasingly stalker-like behavior, including kidnapping Dan's daughter and breaking into their family home.

Fatal Attraction mixes murder and adultery just like Deep Water. A key similarity too is that murder brings a married couple closer, though in this instance it's because both Dan and his wife, Beth (Annie Archer), must eventually kill Alex in self-defense. It's a different take on similar themes — while the psychotic behavior in Deep Water becomes integral to the central couple's relationship, in Fatal Attraction it's the fear of the same sort of unstable personality that cements a previously troubled marriage.

Another Adrian Lyne movie that resembles Deep Water is the 2002 erotic thriller Unfaithful. Unfaithful stars Richard Gere, Diane Lane, and Olivier Martinez, and the plot has some stark similarities to Deep Water. As the title suggests, Unfaithful also deals with adultery, with Diane Lane's Connie cheating on Gere's Edward with Martinez's Paul. Edward, like Ben Affleck's Vic in Deep Water, reacts to his wife's infidelity with violence, though it's not a premeditated act.

Edward kills Paul in Unfaithful in a fit of rage. He also confesses to Connie that he'd initially wanted to kill her, and not her lover, but his emotions got the better of him. This is a key difference to Deep Water, despite the similarities in the plot. What's more, while Connie in Unfaithful eventually decides to help Edward cover up for his crimes, the movie ends with the insinuation that Edward is going to turn himself in. This is a stark difference from Vic and Melinda in Deep Water, who show more-or-less no guilt for the deaths they've caused, and instead use them as a catalyst for a new spark in their marriage.

Deep Water

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Based on the celebrated novel by popular mystery writer Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Deep Water takes us inside the marriage of a seemingly perfect couple, Vic and Melinda Van Allen, to discover the dangerous mind games they play and what happens to the people that get caught up in them. Revealing to various lovers that they have an open relationship, their neighbors begin to talk, and bodies begin to appear in perceived acts of passion.

Release Date

March 18, 2022

Director

Adrian Lyne

Cast

Ana De Armas , Lil Rel Howery , Michael Braun , Dash Mihok , Brendan C. Miller , Kristen Connolly , Jeff Pope , Rachel Blanchard , Finn Wittrock , Devyn Tyler , Grace Jenkins , Tracy Letts , Jacob Elordi , Ben Affleck , Jade Fernandez

Runtime

153 minutes

Distributor(s)

Hulu , Amazon Studios

Writers

Zach Helm , Sam Levinson