WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Half of It, now streaming on Netflix.
Alice Wu's coming of age rom-com The Half of It is the endearing story of Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) in the remote town of Squahamish as she hides her queer nature. In a modern Cyrano de Bergerac story, Ellie takes money from the dimwitted jock Paul (Daniel Diemer) to write love letters to woo Aster (Alexxis Lemire) before their high-school tenure ends.
However, Ellie and Aster develop feelings for each other, which leaves Paul bitter. When Aster finds out the truth, the finale finds all these teens trying to understand that their journeys of self-discover have just begun. As a result, Aster's pick between Ellie and Paul in the end is super heartbreaking, yet it's perfect given how understandable and relatable everyone's situation is.
Aster ends up picking no one. Well, in a sense she picks herself because she realizes she doesn't fully grasp if she's queer, bisexual or curious. She know she's too young to be with anyone, as she still has to understand her own identity without anyone as a crutch.
This decision did tick off some hopeful romantics and idealists who expect these love stories to have a definitive answer, but Aster shows that, just like love, it's all fluid. Honestly, there's no right or wrong, and nothing is set in stone at such a young age, so even though fans want Aster to pick the protagonist, they empathize with her final choice.
It's foreshadowed early on when Ellie narrates that this is "a different kind of love story" and doesn't have the typical ending. She's right because these kids have to learn to love themselves first. As Ellie and Paul become besties, while it complicates things, it helps them unlock dreams and ambitions of their own, placing romantic aspirations on the back burner.
Ellie realizes she can't stay in the fictional Podunk town anymore and has to go study at Grinnell to become a better writer and poet, and she comes to terms with her mother's death as a kid and how it rocked her dad. Paul also grows and, with Ellie's help, works up the courage to take over his family's sausage business and evolve it into the modern artisanal style. Lastly, Aster wants to go to art school while still ironing out kinks with her super-Christian family and a boyfriend that just proposed in church.
Each protagonists has much bigger things to worry about than romance, and the ending doesn't force a decision because there is so much more outside the bubble they live in, so that toxic trend of entitlement in old movies where everyone's owed a romance or feels like someone's property is thrown out the window. An incomplete ending is still be a happy ending, and while audiences thought Ellie indicating this story finishes on a different note meant she wouldn't get the girl, little did they know it was a finale in which Aster picks no one that leads to everyone winning.
They have freedom to discover themselves, whether it's in town or at college, dating and meeting new people, and in turn they will develop a better understanding of who they are. It's a brave strategy because this genre usually wants apples and oranges clearly defined, but Wu is about the kids finding themselves before they think about completing the big picture. Their identities are the first half and only after embracing it should they seek out a soulmate, which would be the other half needed to complete the bigger picture in the game of love.
The Half of It, written and directed by Alice Wu, stars Leah Lewis, Daniel Diemer, Alexxis Lemire, Colin Chou and Becky Ann Baker. It is currently available to stream on Netflix.