Elizabeth Olsen explains why 'Eternity' ending is 'the right decision'

• The afterlife rom-com "Eternity" arrives in theaters Wednesday, Nov. 26.
• Elizabeth Olsen stars as a woman who must choose between her two husbands (played by Miles Teller and Callum Turner) in purgatory.
• Does she pick Luke or Larry?

Spoilers! We're breaking down the ending of "Eternity" with Elizabeth Olsen, so stop reading now if you haven't seen the film and don't want to know what happens.

In "Eternity," Elizabeth Olsen plays a character wrestling with an agonizing decision. But for the actress, the right choice was always clear.

Olsen stars in the new romantic comedy (in theaters now) as Joan, a woman who dies and goes to the afterlife. She must pick whether to spend eternity with one of two men: Larry (Miles Teller), her husband of 65 years, or Luke (Callum Turner), her first husband who died in the Korean War and has been waiting for her ever since.

Although Joan wavers on who to choose all through the movie, Olsen was certain which husband she wanted Joan to end up with when she read the script.

"I thought she needed to be with Larry," she says.

So does she? The short answer is yes, but not before the film walks through just about every conceivable outcome.

Does Elizabeth Olsen pick Miles Teller or Callum Turner in 'Eternity'?

Joan's initial decision is to simply not choose at all. Realizing she will be devastated either way, she picks neither Larry nor Luke, deciding she'll go to her eternity without a man, accompanied by her friend Karen (Olga Merediz).

But Larry won't stand for this. Just before Joan departs, he has an epiphany that Joan was happiest when she was with Luke and declares she should go with him to get a chance at the life she missed out on. With Larry's blessing, Joan and Luke head off to their eternity together.

The end, right? Not quite.

Joan and Luke settle down at a cabin in the mountains, but she can't stop looking back on her memories with Larry and realizes she made a mistake. While it may be true that Joan was happiest when she was with Luke, she explains this is because she was experiencing young love without the burden of adult responsibilities, and love is about more than just one happy moment together.

So Joan violates the rules of the afterlife by sneaking back into the Junction to find Larry, who is luckily still in the purgatory realm working as a bartender. The pair reunite, with Joan proclaiming that she wants to be with him. They head off to their eternity together in a peaceful suburban environment reminiscent of the life they had before they died. Roll credits.

Elizabeth Olsen explains why Joan made the right choice

So, yes, Joan winds up with Larry in the end. But Olsen believes it was best for the character that she initially went off with Luke.

"Her exploring different options was the right decision, because I don't think she really understood," Olsen says. "She didn't realize that she was such a different person now than she was when she was with Luke until she actually explored it with him."

For Joan, the fact that Luke was taken from her at a young age means she never got to see what the rest of her life would have looked like with him. So the draw to Luke is also the draw to finding out what could have been after a lifetime of wondering about it.

While discussing this idea of pondering how our lives might have gone had events in our past played out differently, Olsen reluctantly draws a connection to her Marvel work, particularly in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," which dealt with alternate timelines.

"I don't mean to bring it to this, but it's kind of like the idea of the multiverse," she says. "All the different versions of ourselves existing simultaneously had we done one thing differently, or had the history of the world gone differently. Like, if one war was won differently, where would we be now? It's a natural thing to think about. I think about it even with work and career, not just in my personal life."

Ultimately, though, Joan coming to appreciate what she had in the familiar but happy life she had with Larry felt like the right outcome to Olsen.

"That might be the hopeless romantic in me that [believes] there can be someone out there that you want to spend infinity with, even if that person drives you absolutely insane," she says. "You didn't leave them for a reason, so there's some comfort in the insanity they provide your life with. I've always thought that she made the right decision."