Evan Treborn's penultimate trip to the past resulted in Kayleigh Miller dying in the explosion which probably was not intended to end his own life but only threaten her father and destroy the explosive, and now as he is incarcerated in an asylum, he is going to use a home movie to go back to the moment when Kayleigh gave him that first kiss at a picnic. It is the second time he has traveled to a point in his past which is not connected to a blackout. It is also the last trip he makes.
The logic of it is imperfect. If Mr. Miller is really as sick as it appears, removing Evan from the equation will mean that he will make his movie using his son--unless perhaps it was the obvious attraction between his daughter and this other boy that gave him the idea for the love scene. In any case, every bad thing that happened in Kayleigh's life involved Evan, and almost every bad thing that happened in Evan's life involved Kayleigh. Most certainly, if Evan had not returned to that moment in the basement, Kayleigh would not have died.
Thus the twenty-year-old Evan in a six-year-old body threatens the girl he has loved all these years in all these timelines, telling her he will kill her and her family if she ever comes near him. She believes him, and runs away crying.
Thus ends their relationship, and with it all the horrors that were created by the connection between Evan and the Millers. There will be no porn film, no dynamite in a mailbox, no incinerated dog. Tommy will not be killed by Lenny nor by Evan. Evan and Lenny will be friends, and Tommy and Kayleigh will have to deal with whatever their father becomes, but they will not have to deal with these particular events. Evan will not kill anyone, and will not be crippled in a blast, and his mother will have only the ordinary stresses of raising her son while his father is institutionalized.
We know that this is what happened, because as he awakens now in the college dorm, his roommate and good friend Lenny has never heard of Kayleigh. Evan has managed to do what his father could not, what he had failed to do so many times before: he has made the world better.
He still had the blackouts, and he still saw Dr. Redfield. He still wrote the journals, and probably made a few trips back to discover what happened in those forgotten moments. The impact of those trips we could only guess, but he seems to have eliminated most of the most stressful events in his life, so we do not expect him to try to make any more changes--after all, Niven's Law asserts that once you've fixed the past, you will never have any need to travel to it again. Evan should be satisfied.
He also decides to destroy the journals, and along with them every other piece of memorabilia which he might use to return to his past: the home movies and some photographs are prominent in the pile. This would not prevent him from returning to some point in his past from some point in his future (there are undoubtedly photos of him in yearbooks, at least), but it will make it more difficult and thus less of a temptation to attempt to tweak anything. If nothing else, it is symbolic of a commitment to live with the past he has created.
We never know what became of the Millers--except for Kayleigh. Eight years later Evan sees her on the street, dressed in a business suit. She is not that much different from the girl she was at twenty, and so he recognizes her easily; but although her eyes are held on him for a moment, she cannot recognize the boy who broke her heart when they were six. We would like to think that now, finally, they will connect. They seemed so right for each other, and he has done so much for her. She cannot know that, though, and it is less likely that this Kayleigh will believe his stories than the drug addicted one did. If she even remembers when he broke her heart (which she might), it is unlikely that they will have much of a connection, and it is complicated by the fact that Evan knows so much of what might have happened and nothing of what did, even in his own life.
It is thus a melancholy ending, in which everyone has a good life, but the hero will never have the girl.
Comments
As I once had it explained to me because I didn't get it at the time either, this is what is supposed to have happened: When Kayleigh's parents divorced, the children were given the option of who they primarily wanted to live with. I don't know if that's normal in a divorce case or not, but that's supposedly what happened in the film. In every timeline prior to this, Kayleigh chose to live with her father, because Evan lived nearby and she wanted to see him. Tommy chose the same, because he wanted to stay with Kayleigh.
In this final timeline, however, not having the anchor of Evan to keep her with her father, Kayleigh (and Tommy) chose to live with their mother, who was apparently a much better person than their father, and so the influence of their father was much less than it was in all the timelines where Evan was around, and their childhood was better overall.
Note that this same result is achieved by Evan strangling himself in his mother's womb, but is far more depressi
Okay, the comments say they allow 1000 characters, but seem to cut off the last few anyway.
"but is far more depressing."
I've bumped into the character limit a few times myself; it's annoying and I apologize for it.
Strangled himself in utero? Did he use a sonogram to travel to the past? I'm sorry, it snaps my disbelief suspenders--infants do not have sufficient muscular control to do something like that, and even though umbilical cords do sometimes (rarely) strangle children, they're not that reliable a weapon.
As to the notion that Kayleigh and Tommy live with their mother absent Evan's presence in Kayleigh's life, I don't recall any hint even that their mother was alive, never mind that there was a custody question. On that point, "best interest of the child is the test", but it's unlikely that children as young as Tommy and Kayleigh in the Robin Hood scene would be expected to know their own best interest, so I don't see that as terribly plausible either. Usually young children are thought to be best served by mothers, unless fathers are recognized primary care givers.
--M. J. Young
Continuing from previous post (anticipated character shortage), it is unlikely that Kayleigh's interest in Evan would have been a factor in a court's decision as to which parent would get the children. The court would attempt to determine which parent had been responsible for basic child care--meals, clothing, attending to their other immediate needs. Mothers are presumptively the better caregiver for the very young. The opinion of the child probably would not be significant until he or she was at least ten, more likely fourteen, beyond that the court would consider whether there was an evident attachment of a child to one parent. Girls, particularly, are more likely to be placed with mothers, absent some indication that the mother is not a fit parent. It does happen otherwise, but not because a young child says so.
They could have joint custody, though, and Kayleigh then would choose to be near Evan in an informal way. She could also choose to leave, at will.
--M. J. Young
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