Warning: Major Verity and The Housemaid spoilers ahead.
If you’re reading this, you’ve just come from watching Verity and found yourself asking, “Wait… what really happened?” Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. When I stepped out of the early screening of the Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway-helmed adaptation of the Colleen Hoover thriller, I still had a bunch of questions about what exactly went down at that creepy Vermont lake house.
You know how in the 2025 movie adaptation of Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid, Sydney Sweeney’s character Millie takes a nanny job at a wealthy couple’s house, only to discover her boss Nina (Amanda Seyfried) is hell-bent on making her life miserable, so Millie wears her clothes and sleeps with her husband (Brandon Sklenar)? But then she learns Nina wasn’t actually the villain: It was Andrew the whole time, and Nina was just pretending to lose her mind so she could escape her abuser? Verity is a lot like that…but with a far murkier twist ending.
So, what actually happened? The Verity twist ending explained, ahead.
What is the plot of Verity?
Instead of a nanny, Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) is a up-and-coming writer hired to help famed author Verity Crawford (Hathaway) finish her series of twisted psychological thrillers after a car accident left her unable to complete them on her own.
Once she accepts the ghostwriting gig, Lowen—who is being evicted from her own apartment after the death of her mother—agrees to move into Verity’s New England cottage mansion to go through her notes and collaborate on the last three books in The Noble Virtues series. However, upon arriving, she learns Verity’s accident was far more traumatic than she was led to believe, and the prolific author is completely paralyzed and unable to speak or communicate.
Regardless, Lowen starts working while bonding with Verity’s grieving husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), and their son, Crew. The pair also had a daughter, Harper, who died in a canoe accident that Verity and Crew survived. And yes, they still live on the lake where their daughter drowned because this movie is creepy like that.
Alisha Wetherill/Amazon MGM Studios
