“Nobody Wants This” is sweeping Netflix viewers away in a love story. But does that love story have a happy ending?
Kristen Bell and Adam Brody play characters tied up in a star-crossed lovers scenario. Joanne (Bell) is an agnostic and set-in-her ways Los Angeles podcaster. Noah (Brody) is a rabbi hoping to become head of his synagogue. They’re drawn to each other despite their pairing’s challenges, immediately apparent to them both.
The series is inspired by creator Erin Foster’s real life love-story. Her husband, Simon Tikhman, practices Judaism. Before they got married, Foster converted to Judaism. The two now share a daughter.
Does Joanne make the same decision in her relationship with Noah? Does art truly imitate life? We break the show’s ending down with the cast and creator.
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What happens at the end of ‘Nobody Wants This’?
Noah asks Joanne if she would consider converting for him. After weighing the decision, she ultimately decides she will and excitedly shares the news with Noah.
Then, after a tense run-in at a bat mitzvah with Noah’s ex Rebecca, Joanne realizes that she might not be converting for the right reasons. Until then, she didn’t fully grasp the seriousness of conversion within the Jewish faith.
After Noah finds out that he’s a shoe-in for the head rabbi job, he tells Joanne that he loves her. Joanne says that she loves him too. “But because I love you, I can’t convert,” she says.
“If I’m being honest, I was only doing it for you, and there’s so many beautiful things about Judaism, and I’m just not there yet, and I ... I don’t know if I ever will be,” she says.
The relationship seems to end with haunting words from Joanne. “I see what’s at stake now. You need me to be something that I can’t promise that I can be, and if I falter even a little bit, your whole life blows up. That’s not fair to you,” Joanne says. “You can’t have both. And I would never make you choose.”
She leaves on the party bus back. Just when we think our hearts are shattered for Noah and Joanne, there he is, in all his adorabbi (adorable rabbi) glory. Noah is leaning against the car and walks up to her.
“Well, you were right, I can’t have both,” he says, seeming to say that of both options, he picks her.
They then kiss in a way that only two people in a rom-com can. Cut to the credits.
What's next for Joanne and Noah? Erin Foster shares Season 2 plans
What does the ending mean for Joanne and Noah’s future? Does he pursue his career without her converting? Does he defy the expectations of his family and congregation? Does Joanne come around to converting, but for herself and not for him?
While no second season has been confirmed yet, creator Erin Foster says that she hopes one will happen.
“There’s so much more story to tell,” Foster says.
Foster says Noah and Joanne “take their time” with their love story in Season 1. “You just get to ‘I love you’ right at the end of the season? That’s a slow trajectory,” she says.
“So if there was a Season 2, I would want to pick up where we leave off and kind of continue to take it slow,” she continues.
When asked what’s next for the characters, Brody says he thinks Noah and Joanne will “meet in the middle.”
“It’s such an open ended ending,” Brody says. “I think that we get the impression that they’re going to try to make it work and be together. And so what that looks like? I don’t think they know.”
"If I had an answer for you, we would not be able to do a second season.”
Kristen Bell on "nobody Wants This"
Bell says that the mystery of the characters' futures is what makes the show so compelling.
“The reason you watch a show is to decide will they or won’t they,” she says. “I’m happy with the beautiful way this particular story ended, and I feel like there is so much real estate to play (with) when you are writing about the challenges of navigating different outlooks on life and meddling family members and settling down and compromising and lust and love and all those things. And if I had an answer for you, we would not be able to do a second season.”
Odeya Pinkus
Odeya is an Associate Producer at The Kelly Clarkson Show, as well as contributing writer forTODAY.com. When she isn't producing or writing, she might be performing in a comedy show, hanging out with her cat named Pepperoni, or frantically trying to catch up on 10 seasons of Vanderpump Rules. Odeya graduated from Binghamton University with a Bachelor's degree in English Rhetoric. She also has a Master's degree in Broadcast & Digital Journalism from the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. She does not have a PhD, but she did spend a lot of time in improv classes.