WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Lost Daughter, now streaming on Netflix.
In The Lost Daughter, Leda (Olivia Colman) turned out to be just as toxic as the other guests at a Greek beach resort. She initially seemed like a fly on the wall, watching Nina's family tear itself apart with sins, lies and debauchery, but Leda's flashbacks revealed she was a terrible mother as well, entrenched in her own infidelity after abandoning her daughters for three years. However, while the movie stuck mostly to writer Elena Ferrante's ending from the novel, there was one massive change.
In the Lost Daughter film's finale, Leda wandered into a party and danced with Lyle, having a great time, only for Nina's family to show up. Lyle sent Leda home in a shocking turn, though, leading to Leda meeting Will, the Irish student who worked part-time there. Seeing as Leda knew Nina was having an affair with him, he asked if they could use Leda's apartment to sleep together.
Leda asked for Nina to speak to her, and Nina showed up the next day, confessing that she was depressed because of her unhappy marriage and having a child, Elena, too early. Leda tried to assure her that the resentment would pass, and after allaying her fears, she gave Nina back the doll she stole from Elena. This left Nina shocked and confused, as Elena was a brat after it went missing. Thus, Leda was the source of most of her suffering on the holiday and the reason why she almost lost Elena's love.
Leda tried to explain her twisted actions as part of her inadequacy from a bad motherhood experience. She even attempted to come off as a savior, but an angry Nina stabbed Leda in the stomach with the hatpin Leda got her earlier in the film. She left Leda bleeding, and The Lost Daughter concluded with Leda driving off that night, wrecking the car.
The severity of the crash wasn't shown, but she wandered down to a beach where she collapsed, reflecting the opening. She woke up the next morning and phoned her daughters, Bianca and Martha. They joked that they thought she was dead, to which she replied, "Dead? No, I'm alive actually." Leda then suddenly had an orange in her hand, which she peeled "like a snake," as she did for the girls when they were younger. As they chat, the credits roll.
Seeing as Leda had this fruit as a token of happier times, it seems to imply that she's dead. After all, she didn't appear to have anything on her when she left the car. Plus, the fact that the fruit is so ripe and she just happens to have a dry phone in her possession seems ludicrous. Admittedly, it's up to interpretation, but it would be fitting payback for Leda for manipulating Nina, as well as cheating and abandoning her kids decades before.
In the Lost Daughter book, Elena woke up in the hospital after her car crash, not on the beach. When she spoke to her daughters, she said, "I'm dead, but I'm fine," which had readers thinking she died there but was at peace because this was her comeuppance. Others felt that she was alive but admitting she was dead inside to the girls she lost with her selfish actions, which tied into acceptance being a big part of Leda's heartbreaking story.
Now, re-applying the latter interpretation to the Lost Daughter movie's end, it could be that Leda had the items with her and was just injured. If that's the case, then it'd seem like she finally felt alive again, accepting her flaws and feeling inspired to be a proper mother at last, following her turmoil-laden experiences with Nina and Elena.
See how both endings stack up in The Lost Daughter, now streaming on Netflix.