Life After Life: BBC drama ending explained

Life After Life concluded on BBC Two on Tuesday night, and saw Ursula Todd's tale come to a conclusion - with the viewers at least. So what was the ending all about? See our explanation here and warning, major spoilers ahead for those who have yet to finish the show or read the novel…

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The series follows Ursula Todd, a young woman who relives her life over and over, remembering nothing except a strange sense of deja vu, or an unexplainable urge to do certain things - like push her maid down the stairs so she won’t be able to go to London, contract influenza and spread it to members of the household - in order to survive. 

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Ursula eventually lives into adulthood, where her fate is tied to World War II. As her life take place over and over again, she eventually lives again with a determination to kill Hitler and stop the war before it happens. However, she is killed immediately afterwards, leaving the audience in the dark about whether her actions stopped the war as she hoped they would.

Ursula manages to kill Hitler

Instead, the ending follows another one of Ursula’s lives, where she lives happily with her family and manages to tell her brother Teddy, who is doomed to die during the war, that she loves him (in previous reincarnations, he doesn't hear her calling him back). 

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The final moments of the episode see the family discussing resurrection before Ursula’s father walks her to the train station as she returns to London. Once again, Ursula refuses to stay in the countryside during the war, and her father waves her away as she looks towards an uncertain future.

Will Ursula live her life over again?

The series certainly ends on an ambiguous note, as it appears to suggest that there is no solid conclusion, and that Ursula’s lives will keep happening over and over again. But, as she revealed to her family, she once agreed with Teddy that she would be happy to go back and do her life all over again, and the smile on her face during the final train ride hints that she is at peace with whatever her future holds.

The book’s ending is somewhat different. Although in every version of Ursula's life where she lives until the war, Teddy’s plane is always shot down and he is killed, by the end Ursula lives a life where Teddy actually survives the war and comes home, which makes her realise that this is the reality that is "real".

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