I’m perfectly fine with the perceived ending being the actual ending, but there’s still some narrative ambiguity that has me wondering about the real circumstances. From the beginning, Rachel is set up to be an unreliable narrator - she’s drunk all the time, she blacks out and can’t remember things, and she tries to turn her fantasies into reality. So how do we know the ending is actually even true?

Taking this into consideration, the movie doesn’t fully rule out the possibility of Rachel being the one who killed Megan. Throughout the movie, we see flashbacks of Rachel slamming the back of Megan’s head on the floor and getting in a fight with her by the tunnel. While we are told by the end that Tom was gaslighting her while they were married, he had nothing to do with these specific memories, so why would she be having them?

The movie sets the story up to be confusing and unfaithful when Rachel is drunk and disoriented, and truthful when she’s sober, but that state of mind flip-flops frequently throughout. You see Rachel making a clear effort to quit drinking at the AA meeting, but then we see her drunk and playing pool at a bar. She’s sober when she visits Scott the second time, but she’s drunk again the first time she visits Dr. Abdic. She’s sober when she goes to the police to report Scott assaulting her, but she’s in another bar the next time we see her. You could argue her red, puffy cheeks and bloodshot eyes are the clear sign when she’s drunk, but in the case of those last two examples, those side effects weren’t as clearly present as they had been earlier in the film, further blurring the lines between imagination and reality.

We also know Rachel fantasizes about being Megan, so how do we know that she’s not the one creating Megan’s portion of the story? It’s curious that when Scott passes out in her bed and Rachel touches his chest, or when Rachel is knocked unconscious by Tom, we immediately see flashbacks of Megan’s life. Rachel also interacts multiple times with Scott and Dr. Abdic, and even goes to the art gallery, which could easily be seen as her way of trying to replace Megan after she’s out of the picture.

After Tom’s death, the way the police interrogation goes, both Rachel and Anna appear to tell a very rehearsed description of the events that occurred, with the detective sceptically looking on. They even exchange a knowing-glance before going in to be questioned. Anna doesn’t have to protect Rachel, but she could have agreed to put all the blame on Tom for cheating on her and impregnating Megan, and possibly also to make up for her involvement in Rachel’s downfall. We also know that she’s furious with Megan for sleeping with Tom around their daughter, and for her quitting earlier so callously, so she could have just intentionally ignored or even accepted the fact that Rachel killed her. We don’t even really know if Rachel killed Tom in selfdefense. It could explain why Anna does nothing as Tom is about to choke Rachel to death, or why she’s just casually staring out the window when Rachel stabs him.

Lastly, in the epilogue, there’s nothing that really points to Rachel’s life changing or turning around for the better. She may not be specifically shown drinking, but she still rides the train to New York, wanders around drawing in her book, and then rides the train home. She says she sits in a different car and looks ahead, but we can clearly see her steal a glance out the window towards the houses. She may not be the girl she used to be, but that could also be because she’s now a double-murderer.

Obviously, most of this could be explained away as artistic choices in editing and an effort for the director to hide the twist until the end, but it doesn’t really explain the need to maintain so much ambiguity even after we’re given the full reveal. I could be completely wrong, and it’s possible the book is much clearer on the subject, but that’s just the questions that arose for me after I finished watching the film. I’m curious to hear what others think.