Spoilers: The 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen' Ending Explained

I thought Netflix’s Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen was an addictive blast. But I’ll also concede that the ending was a little confusing. Here’s the rundown:

The Premise — Rachel Harkin (Camila Morrone) is set to marry Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco) at the cabin of the wealthy Cunningham family. In the days leading up to the wedding, she has a number of creepy encounters, including a run-in with a 200-year-old man, The Witness (Zlatko Burić), who asks Rachel whether she’s truly sure she wants to marry Nicky.

At the cabin, Nicky’s sister, Portia (Gus Birney), recounts a scary story to Rachel about a Sorry Man that she thought Nicky’s brother, Jules (Jeff Wilbusch), had made up — only for us to discover midway through the series that the story Jules recounted was true. When Jules was very young, he hid under the bed of a neighboring cabin where Rachel’s mother and father stayed after their wedding. He was too young to understand what he was witnessing, but he watched Rachel’s pregnant mother suffer a brain hemorrhage. After Rachel’s mother died, her father cut open her womb and pulled Rachel out. He kept repeating “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” to his dead wife — hence why Jules referred to him as the Sorry Man.

The Curse — As Rachel learns from The Witness, her bloodline is cursed. Two hundred years ago, two people were deeply in love. The husband died in a tragic hunting accident, and his wife struck a deal with Death to bring him back. Death agreed — but only on the condition that he was her true soulmate. That pact then passed to the rest of her bloodline: all children born of that union would be required to find their true soulmate in marriage, or pay Death what he was owed.

Eventually, the curse passed down to The Witness himself. He had met his beloved, Marianne, and on the day he was to marry her, a man appeared and warned him that he must wed his soulmate before sundown or die. He left Marianne at the altar. The curse then spread to her. Marianne married a man named Thomas Harkin, and the curse traveled through their bloodline until it finally arrived with Rachel.

As punishment for abandoning Marianne at the altar, The Witness was cursed by Death not only with immortality, but with the obligation to bear witness to every wedding in Marianne’s bloodline. His only role is to watch.

For Rachel, the curse means she must marry Nicky. If he’s her soulmate, she lives. If he’s not, she dies. If she backs out of the wedding entirely, she survives — but the curse transfers to Nicky’s family, and everyone in his bloodline must then find their soulmate or die. The implication is also that walking away would condemn Rachel to immortality, forcing her to witness every wedding in Nicky’s bloodline for eternity.

The Conclusion — After days of wavering and doubting whether the curse is even real, Rachel pulls marriage and death certificates and discovers that nearly every person in her bloodline who married died on their wedding day. There was apparently one exception. Rachel learns — through communion with the dead — that she can guarantee herself as Nicky’s soulmate by brewing a concoction from specific ingredients: something living from the groom (his semen), something dead from the bride (she opts to chop off her toe), something stolen from the mother-in-law (her hair), and something red from an adversary (blood from her soon-to-be sister-in-law). The potion would seal their bond, but Rachel fears what it might do to her, so she ultimately decides not to drink it and instead puts her faith in Nicky being her soulmate naturally.

Then comes the twist: at the altar, after Rachel finishes her vows, Nicky hesitates. He’s been shaken by revelations about his parents’ deeply flawed marriage, and during a heated argument, he admits to Rachel that he never truly believed the curse was real. That admission is the back-breaker. Rachel realizes that a man who never believed her could never really be her soulmate — and she refuses to go through with it. As the sun sets, the curse spreads to Nicky’s bloodline, and wedding guests who share his blood begin collapsing with brain hemorrhages, including his mother.

In a desperate bid to stop the carnage, Nicky slips a ring on Rachel’s finger and says, “I do,” completing the vows. Rachel suffers a brain hemorrhage and dies.

But it doesn’t work. It’s too late. The curse has already spread to his bloodline. The Witness — finally, mercifully — feels the sweet release of death. And Rachel is resurrected as the new Witness, condemned to immortality and forced to observe every wedding in Nicky’s bloodline for the rest of time.

As for the rest of the Cunningham family: Portia does die of a hemorrhage — she had a quickie Vegas wedding to a man who wasn’t her soulmate. But Nicky’s brother Jules survives. He and his wife, Nell, had been on the verge of divorce, only to discover that they were, in fact, soulmates all along.

Before Rachel departs to begin her eternal vigil, she pulls aside Jude — Jules’ young son — and tells him to be very careful about who he marries when the time comes, and to choose wisely. The implication is that she will be there to bear witness to whether Jude marries his soulmate or dies.