Summary
After refurbishing Jenny's home, Edward shares an awkward moment with her, and they almost kiss, but Edward stops her. "I'm in love with my wife," says Edward, and Jenny is embarrassed. As he goes to leave, Jenny hands him a piece of paper, a deed to her land, so that he can officially buy the town. He leaves Spectre for good.
We see vines covering Jenny's house as time transports us to the present, with Jenny telling her story to Will. She tells Will that she was always make-believe to Edward, while he thought of his family as his real life.
Will drives back home, where he finds no one home. He goes to the hospital, where Josephine tells him his father had a stroke, and he's with Sandra and Dr. Bennett. Will offers to stay the night so that Josephine and Sandra can go home, and Sandra is grateful for it. She then goes in to talk to Edward, who is sleeping in a hospital bed.
Later that evening, Will tells Dr. Bennett that he and Edward never talk. Bennett asks Will if Edward ever told him about the day he was born. "He caught an uncatchable fish," Will says, dismissively, but Bennett wants to tell it his way. He tells Will that he was born a week early, but there were no complications, and that his father wasn't there. "Not very exciting, is it? I suppose if I had to choose between the true version and an elaborate one involving fish and a wedding ring, I might choose the fancy version," says Dr. Bennett.
In the middle of the night, Edward begins to stir, and says, "The river...Tell me how it happens...How I go...." Will doesn't know what to do, but knows that his father wants him to tell the story of when he saw his death in the witch's eye. Will doesn't know that story, and so agrees to tell it with his father's help. Will begins his own story, in which he wakes up in the middle of the night in the hospital and Edward is miraculously better and tells him, "Let's get out of here." Will puts him in a wheelchair and they escape the hospital running away from orderlies.
Will's story continues. Outside, they get in Edward's old red Charger. Edward pours water on his head and orders Will to bring him to the river, which he does, recklessly and quickly. On the way, they run into Karl, who overturns a car, so they can make it to the river. When they arrive, everyone is already at the river, and Will carries Edward to the water, where Sandra is standing up to her knees. Edward hands her his ring and lowers his father into the water, where Edward becomes a big catfish and swims away. When Will finishes the story, Edward says, "Exactly," and dies.
At Edward's funeral, many of the characters from his story arrive to mourn his death. After Edward sees Amos and Karl, Josephine notices Norther and the conjoined twins. After the funeral, we see various characters speaking fondly about Edward in small groups. We see Will's son swimming in a pool with his friends several years later, and Will narrates in voiceover, "A man tells his stories so many times, that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way, he becomes immortal." We see a giant catfish jump out of the water.
Analysis
Jenny introduces us to yet another way that one's life can be a "fairy tale," when she describes her unrequited love for Edward. She tells Will, "I was in love with a man who would never love me back," and we can see that she has grappled with her own fantasies, and found them crushing when they brushed up against the reality of her situation. For the first time in the film, we see the ways that one's fantasies can lead to disappointment.
Jenny's relation to Edward involves not just her own fantasy, but also Edward's. She tells Will that while she was just "make believe" to Edward, his family was the real part of his life. Thus, we see that while Will has been searching for the real story of his father's life, his relationship with him—Edward's family life—is in fact the realest part. There is a pointed tension between reality and fantasy, and everyone affected by it feels like they have been deprived of reality to some extent, whether it is the woman who loves him, or his son.
The fantasy of the film is given a stark reality check when Edward ends up in the hospital having had a stroke. While every hardship and conflict has seemed to get swallowed up in some fantastical event hitherto, the inevitability of Edward's death seems like a cold stroke of reality that no one can deny. In spite of his unsinkable spirit and love of life, Edward now finds himself helpless, confronted with the sobering and unglamorous hold of illness.
By the end of the film, Will, ever the skeptic, gives his father the ultimate gift by participating in Edward's mythmaking. When Edward wakes up in the middle of the night asking to be taken to the river, Will spins the tale of his father's death, a jubilant and triumphant affair in which Edward turns into a large catfish. Instead of getting bogged down by the reality of grief and loss, Will follows his whimsical father's instructions and finds a way to make it exciting and magical. In this way, Will undergoes a transformation of sorts, finally able to see his father's perspective, and show his father that he understands, right before his father's passing.
The final takeaway of the film is that stories and fantasy can become reality if one believes in them, and that this belief can contribute to a person's legacy. In Will's eyes, Edward's belief in his tall tales makes them real, and allows him to become "immortal." The mythology of the film seems like the stuff of children's stories for so much of the film, but by the end, we realize that it has been for Edward a finely crafted spiritual practice, a way of merging himself with the primordial, ineffable, and everlasting.
