this isn’t a competition… well, it sort of is.
“Eternity,” directed by David Freyne, was released in 2025, and it was nothing less than a hit. Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, and Callum Turner, “Eternity” is a sci-fi romance where, after Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) dies, she must decide where to spend her eternity and who to spend it with. Joan married her first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), right before the Korean War, where he ended up being killed in action. Joan then married Larry (Miles Teller), a simple and sometimes complicated man who Joan loved deeply.
The movie starts with Larry dying and entering a waiting area called “Junction,” where he is told he must pick an eternity to spend the rest of his life in. There are thousands of eternities he could choose, like sandy beaches or snowy mountains or even a smoker’s eternity. But from the beginning, Larry insists he wait for his wife Joan. Lucky for him, Joan dies soon after Larry, and they reconnect in the “Junction.” But right as everything appears to be perfect, Joan locks eyes with Luke, her first love. He runs towards her, and they embrace. Larry realizes that it might not be as simple as he thought to spend eternity with Joan.
Throughout the movie, we see Larry and Luke fighting to win over Joan and convince her to spend eternity with them. Joan is obviously overwhelmed and struggles throughout the entire movie to choose who she wants to spend eternity with. Eventually, Joan decides to spend eternity with Luke because their time on Earth was so short. But even as Luke and Joan start their eternity together, Joan seems off.
As they spend eternity together, Joan starts to realize that the connection she has with Luke is nothing like her connection with Larry, and she starts reflecting on the life she and Larry had. She reflects on her most difficult times where Larry was always by her side. Even though Luke may be more attractive and even more likable, Joan can only love Larry.
Joan realizes that she must return to Larry, so with the help of Luke, she escapes their eternity and returns to the “Junction” to find Larry. Together, they choose the eternity they’ve always wanted, and they spend their eternities in each other’s arms.
Love isn’t just one happy moment…
When Joan decides to spend her eternity with Luke, we see these beautiful montages of them together in this mountain landscape. Everything seems perfect; Luke is the perfect husband, he has great friends, and he’s athletic and talented. But Joan can’t help but struggle to spend eternity with him. The little things that Larry used to do are absent in Luke’s character, which makes it difficult for Joan to love him. She thought that since she didn’t have the opportunity to spend a lifetime with him in the real world, they would be completely in love and be able to spend eternity together. But she realizes that, in a way, Luke’s death was meant to happen because she finds things about Luke that she hates, and slowly Luke finds things he hates about Joan, things that Larry loved about Joan. When Joan confronts Luke and tells him she wants to go back, she delivers a monologue that I have often reflected on.
“Love isn’t just one happy moment, right? It’s a million. And it’s bickering in the car, and supporting someone when they need it, and it’s growing together, and looking after each other.”
Here, Joan is saying that even though she loves Luke, they never experienced real struggles or real joys with him because he died so early in their relationship. But with Larry, she experienced all of that, and because of it, her soul is tied to him. It doesn’t matter that Joan’s first love was Luke or that Luke is better than Larry in all the ways that modern society tells us. Joan and Larry did life together, real life, not just the romance and the love, but the fighting and the ignoring of each other. And because of that, Joan and Larry are meant to spend eternity together.
Where do you want to go?
When Joan escapes eternity with Luke, she finds Larry working as a bartender in the “Junction,” almost as though he was waiting for her to come back. When she finds him, it feels as if no time has passed. While watching the movie, you can see the color visibly come back into Joan’s appearance. Larry asks Joan, “Where do you want to go?” He is asking her where she wants to spend eternity with him. They chose the one place where they had the most joy and pain: a small house in a quiet neighborhood, out of all the paradises they could have picked. They didn’t need a fantastical place to spend eternity; they just needed each other. In modern times, we often seek out the most extravagant things to capture our attention, but in “Eternity,” Joan and Larry chose a place that might seem boring to us; however, to them, it was their entire world.
romance in the mundane
This whole movie centers on romance in the mundane. From the second Luke appears, he looks like all love interests in romcoms do. He’s walking in slow motion, with perfect hair and a perfect face, and he’s absolutely in love with Joan. He is a walking definition of what modern society says is perfect. Surrounding Joan are all these beautiful places she can spend eternity. Everything she has ever wanted is right in front of her.
So many romcoms stress the idea of your first love being your only love, but I don’t believe that. Larry found Joan in one of the darkest times of her life as she was facing the grief of losing Luke, and he taught Joan how to love again. He showed her more about life than Luke ever did. And even though Larry has flaws and isn’t perfect like Luke, he’s home to Joan. And home isn’t supposed to be this wild, whirlwind romance or loud and exotic place. Home is supposed to feel comforting, calm, and supportive, everything that Larry was to Joan.
So Joan’s choice to be with Larry wasn’t to settle or to give up on her first love. It was a decision to return to the warmth of the love of her life. And that’s something that isn’t brought up in rom-coms often, just the simple, easy ending where everyone lives, maybe not happily ever after because happiness is never guaranteed, but blissfully ever after.