Warning: Major SPOILERS for Being the Ricardos ahead!
The ending of Being the Ricardos is a rollercoaster of emotion as Lucy and Desi emerge victorious in all areas but one—the hardest one for Lucy to forgive. The Amazon Original is the latest from director Aaron Sorkin, whose steadfast attention to detail and dedication to facts brought viewers The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Molly’s Game. Now, Sorkin’s talents illuminate the lives behind one of television’s most famous couples—with an ending that explains a lot about what it was like Being the Ricardos.
Set in 1952, Being the Ricardos follows Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as they manage their lives, both private and public. Being the Ricardos condenses several years’ worth of events from the couple’s real history into a single week and focuses on two main conflicts: Lucy and her ties to communism, and Desi and his ties to other women. Meanwhile, Lucy (played by Hollywood A-lister and Big Little Lies star Nicole Kidman) is pregnant again, and rather than shut down the show, as was tradition at the time, Lucy and Desi ban together to revolutionize television by showing Lucy’s pregnancy on their hit comedy, I Love Lucy.
Being the Ricardos moves at a quick tempo, establishing Lucy and Desi as a power couple and showing the wide net cast by their authority. The sacrifices made—particularly by Lucy—in order to achieve their authority is the point, however. Indeed, beyond any other truths revealed in Being the Ricardos, the idea that the real-life union between the Arnaz’s looked anything like the Ricardos’ is definitely put to bed.
What Happens in Being the Ricardos Ending?
In the final scenes of West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos, Lucy awaits the verdict of her trial by fans as Desi addresses the show’s audience and members of the press in her defense. After FBI director J. Edgar Hoover phones into the show to clear her name, Lucy emerges from backstage relieved and victorious. Lucy then finds the courage to confront Desi about his infidelity and Desi confesses. Finally, in a simple act of forgiveness that seems wholly unwarranted, Lucy forgives Desi and goes on with the show.
Why Does Lucy Forgive Desi?
While the obvious answer is that Lucy loves Desi—hich is undoubtedly true—there are multiple layers to Lucy’s decision to forgive him. First, the decision is the only one that is truly Lucy’s to make. Nearly having I Love Lucy shut down in the Red Scare (a plight similar to that of Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston’s character in Trumbo) and the studio executives threatening to cancel the show over Lucy’s pregnancy, the decision as to whether to end the show over Desi’s infidelity lies solely with Lucy and she chooses to continue with the show.
The decision may have also had a lot to do with Lucy’s incredible business sense, however. Lucy had suffered a long reign as “Queen of the Bs” (Hollywood’s leading actress in B-level films) trying desperately to break out as a star, until her role as I Love Lucy’s Lucy Ricardo made her a household name (the flashbacks throughout Being the Ricardos show Lucy’s character’s struggles in this regard). Lucy knew that her success rested on America believing that she and Desi were a happy couple—both as the Ricardos and the Arnazs—not to mention that the couple, both on-screen and off, was expecting their second child.
Furthermore, I Love Lucy was part of her and Desi’s production company, Desilu. However justified Lucy may have been to leave Desi over his philandering, her leaving him at that moment in time would likely have ended the show and may have destroyed their company. So, in addition to Lucy’s love for Desi and her love for their family and unborn child, it may be that Lucy forgives Desi in an effort to protect her life’s work and legacy.
Why Does Lucy Walk In The Rain In Being The Ricardos?
At the end of Being the Ricardos, when Lucy finally confronts Desi (played by Javier Bardem from No Country For Old Men), she reveals a second handkerchief stained with lipstick. It can be assumed that this second handkerchief—this damning evidence—is what gave Lucy pause over her basket of laundry earlier and what leads to her walk in the rain. Lucy’s stroll through the storm is symbolic of her choice to carry on through her career despite the flaws of her marriage and her ability to weather the storm of Desi’s affairs out of love, ambition, or both.
Why Does Lucy Freeze on Camera?
Ricky’s trademark line, “Honey, I’m home!,” brings a theme in Being the Ricardos to a poetic, if not devastating, end. Hearing the line, Lucy is stunned in realizing that her life-long quest for a real “home,” is a sham. As Lucy Ricardo, Lucy is living a paradox with her perfect on-screen life only made possible by her real-life unhappiness. Furthermore, Lucy is perpetuating the deception as I Love Lucy (already an influential TV show), is broadcast into households throughout the country.
The Real Meaning of Being The Ricardos Ending
Being the Ricardos is certainly a film meant to show the real story behind the famous couple, but the true meaning behind the ending of Being the Ricardos lies in Lucy’s sacrifices. Lucy realizes that her idea of a perfect life and home only exists in the world she and Desi created as the Ricardos and she will never have the life she lives on television. Her decision to forgive Desi acts simultaneously as the death of her dreams and the birth of them, in that, by forgiving Desi, Lucy acknowledges that she will never have the home she yearns for with him, but, by staying in the marriage, she will achieve her dreams of success.
These ideas are concreted by the film’s last (unspoken) line which reveals that in 1960, the morning after Lucille Ball’s final episode of I Love Lucy—actually I Love Lucy ended in 1958 but was continued by The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour for two years—Lucy filed for divorce. Two years later, she bought Desi out of his share of Desilu Productions. In the years following her break from Desi, Lucille Ball fueled her success into several more shows like The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, and Life with Lucy, and also led Desilu Productions to great success, discovering shows like Star Trek. It is unclear, however, whether any of that would have been possible, had Lucy not forgiven Desi and gone on with the show as seen in Being the Ricardos.