The Great Lillian Hall Ending Explained: What Happens To Jessica Lange's Lillian? (2024)

While the movie is quite explicit about the turn of events that decide Lillian’s tragic fate, it ends with a dramatic portrayal of Lillian fading away into thin air as she dances with her husband.

Jessica Lange in The Great Lillian Hall (PC: YouTube/HBO)

Two-time Academy Award winner Jessica Lange wows as the titular Lillian Hall in HBO’s The Great Lillian Hall. Within a day of its May 31 premiere, the film was adorned with stellar reviews and wide critical acclaim. Directed by the Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Christofer, The Great Lillian Hall follows a legendary Broadway star who’d know nothing but to act, grappling with dementia that will also threaten her beloved passion.

While the movie is quite explicit about the turn of events that decide Lillian’s tragic fate, it ends with a rather dramatic portrayal of Lillian fading away into thin air as she dances with her husband. It is symbolic of a deeper storyline that says much about Lillian’s character arc.

The Great Lillian Hall ending explained

Jessica Lange’s Lillian Hall is diagnosed with dementia, but the show must go on. She is starring in the Broadway show, The Cherry Orchard, and despite all odds, she gives her final performance and departs.

Ironically, The Cherry Orchard becomes a mirrored depiction of her own life – the iconic stage star who’d lost herself. The ending presents Lillian taking a bow after performing her final show while her husband joins in. They dance away into fadedness as the viewers, in the movie and in real, stare at an empty stage.

Lillian’s late husband is shown as a hallucination that she sees everywhere, following her dementia diagnosis. They had a deeper love formed on the brink of theatre. Thus, as the mental disorder takes a toll on her, she finds her husband closer and clearer to her. In her final days, viewers see a blurred line between reality and her hallucinations that elucidate that Lillian Hall has passed away in the place she had dedicated her life to. The depiction of her husband symbolizes that the legendary actress will be safely escorted to the afterlife where he resides, for a happily ever after.

What happens in The Great Lillian Hall?

Life takes a fateful turn while theatre veteranLillian Hall rehearses for The Cherry Orchard, days away from its opening night on Broadway. As the star of the show, Hall is determined to bring her starring role to perfection but what she hadn’t imagined in the worst of her nightmarescome to life.

Despite decades of experience, Lange’s Lillian Hall is suddenly overwhelmed with confusion. She faces difficulty memorizing her lines and continuously. The incident sets off a series of concerns, within herself and among the show’s cast and crew. At the behest of the director, Hall sees a doctor and learns she has dementia. Yet, her love for theatre precedes all andkeeps the diagnosis hidden.

Two journalists piqued by Hall and the Broadway show, step in to make a story. They followed up by conducting interviews with her and other stage actors. However, the journalists don’t get a hint of Hall’s condition as she appears explicit in her answers.

Regardless, suspicion follows in the theatre, and her dear ones are eventually worried about Hall’s health. Whereas, on the professional front, the show makers contemplate a replacement for the great Lillian Hall. She also doesn’t tell her only daughter Lily Rabe’s Margaret, who had been deprived of Lillian’s time all her life. Sadly, Hall realizes time is scarce now as her memory pieces away in bits.

The Great Lillian Hall is available to stream on Max.

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