“Verity” Ending Explained: Is the Manuscript or the Letter Real?
“Verity” Ending Explained: Is the Manuscript or the Letter Real?
Caroline BlairSat, October 3, 2026 at 11:32 AM UTC
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Anne Hathaway as Verity Crawford and Josh Hartnett as Jeremy Crawford in ‘Verity’.Credit: Alisha Wetherill/Amazon MGM Studios -
Verity revolves around a mysterious bestselling author (Anne Hathaway) who appears to be in a coma
The movie, which is based on Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name, also features a complicated dynamic between Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett’s characters
While the film took some creative liberties, much of it stayed true to the book
Verity takes viewers on a twisted journey from the very beginning until the final moments.
The movie, which hit theaters on Oct. 2, is based on Colleen Hoover‘s thriller novel of the same name and follows three characters in the ultimate game of whodunit.
The psychological thriller stars Anne Hathaway as Verity Crawford, a bestselling author stuck in a coma following a tragic car accident. Meanwhile, her husband, Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett) hires up-and-coming author Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) to stay in their remote home to finish Verity’s bestselling thriller series, Noble Virtues.
Although Lowen starts by looking through Verity’s notes about the novel, her perspective quickly becomes skewed when she discovers a manuscript that appears to be Verity’s disturbing autobiography. At the same time that Lowen is seemingly gaining a deeper understanding of Verity, she’s also falling for Jeremy and appears to be taking Verity’s place.
As events unfold, Lowen and Jeremy seem to finally learn the dark truth about Verity, but nothing is ever as it seems, and she must question who the real villain is.
Here’s everything to know about how Verity ends.
Warning: Verity spoilers below!
How does Verity end?
Anne Hathaway in ‘Verity’.Credit: Verity/Instagram
After Lowen (Johnson) agrees to finish Verity’s (Hathaway) unfinished psychological thriller novel series, she moves to Verity’s New England home with Verity’s husband, Jeremy (Hartnett), and their son Crew (Brady Wagner) and steps into her life in more ways than one.
Once there, Lowen meets Verity and learns that she’s completely paralyzed and unresponsive after she crashed her car into a tree. Lowen also discovers the devastating truth that Crew’s twin sister, Harper, died in a canoe accident with Verity and Crew.
While working on Verity’s unfinished novel, Lowen searches through her notes and finds a shocking manuscript that appears to be the author’s memoir. In the disturbing autobiography, Verity writes that she only had children out of her love for her husband and resented them for taking Jeremy’s attention from her.
Verity ultimately took her anger out on her twins and intentionally tried to drown them in the lake, which resulted in Harper’s seemingly accidental death. However, Jeremy still didn’t focus all his love on her, so she crashed her car into a tree.
At the same time that Lowen believes she knows the truth about Verity’s troubling past, she’s also starting to question Verity’s health status, as well. Crew tells Lowen that he speaks with his mother, and Lowen also has visions of Verity conscious.
Lowen — who has fallen in love with Jeremy — finally confesses to Jeremy that she found the memoir and that Verity was actually responsible for Harper’s murder. In a fit of rage, Jeremy confronts Verity, who confirms Lowen’s suspicion that she has been faking her illness and has recovered.
Jeremy, who now believes his beloved wife killed his daughter, strangles Verity and kills her by smothering her and throwing her body into the lake. Lowen covers for Jeremy, and the two lie to the police that Verity wandered into the lake.
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Was Verity’s manuscript the truth?
Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh in ‘Verity’.Credit: Alisha Wetherill/Amazon MGM Studios
Just when Lowen appears to have put her chapter about Verity to rest, she returns to the cottage while preparing to move out with Jeremy. While there, she finds a loose floorboard with a shocking letter from Verity to Jeremy.
In the letter, Verity claims that her autobiography was actually a work of fiction that she had written in an attempt to come to terms with her grief, which she called “antagonistic journaling.” Verity writes that she genuinely loved her children and was not responsible for her daughter’s death — contrary to what her husband thinks.
As it turns out, Verity alleges that Jeremy had actually found the memoir earlier and believed it was real. He subsequently drugged Verity and was the person who drove her car into a tree in an attempt to kill her. To protect herself and Crew from Jeremy, Verity prolonged her coma by faking her illness to find a way to flee with Crew and write the letter.
Lowen is left with the shocking realization that she may have fallen in love with a man who tried to kill his wife once before succeeding a second time.
However, neither Lowen nor the viewers fully know the truth when the film comes to an end. Whether or not Verity’s memoir or her letter is the truth is up for debate and results in an ambiguous ending. While some details — including the drowning or the red dress she wore the night she met Jeremy — add up to making the memoir appear real, others could have been elaborated, as Verity is used to writing from the villain’s point of view in her other fictional novels.
“Verity was a master at manipulating the truth,” Lowen concludes.
Even Hoover herself said that she’s not totally sure if Verity is telling the truth about her memoir being fiction, because she was focused on telling the story from Lowen’s perspective.
“Writing the book, I wasn’t sure who did it,” Hoover told Entertainment Weekly in September 2026. “I wasn’t sure about the truth the whole time I was writing. I didn’t even know how I was gonna end it until about two weeks before I finished writing the book. Then, I came up with the ending. So, I did kinda go back and foreshadow some things.”
What happens to Lowen and Jeremy?
Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh in ‘Verity’.Credit: Alisha Wetherill/Amazon MGM Studios
Months after Lowen and Jeremy kill Verity, they move out of the New England house and reveal that Lowen is pregnant with Jeremy’s baby.
However, Lowen’s world is turned upside down when she finds the letter and comes to the realization that Jeremy may have been lying to her from the moment he met her.
Regardless of her conflicted feelings, Lowen burns the letter to hide it from Jeremy and instead gets in the car to continue her new life with Jeremy. She appears to be focused on raising Crew and releasing her new book, which is the same one she was hired to write for Verity.
How does the movie’s ending differ from the book’s ending?
Verity by Colleen Hoover.Credit: Grand Central Publishing
The Verity film stayed fairly faithful to Hoover’s 2018 book with the exception of a few details.
For instance, while the book says that Jeremy and Verity had three children, the film only includes two children to save time and keep the plot moving. In addition, Lowen’s chilling sleepwalking routine also got the axe for a similar reason.
However, the ambiguous ending and confusing letter remain the same in both the book and the movie. The only significant difference takes place after Jeremy kills Verity when he throws her body in the lake to stage the murder as an accident. In the book, Jeremy also smothered Verity, but he left her body in the bed and claimed that she died in her sleep.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
