‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’ Ending, Explained
When you call a show Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, well… you don’t have to guess where things are going. As the title promises, something very bad does happen in this Netflix horror–thriller series, which comes from creator and showrunner Haley Z. Boston and is produced by Stranger Things masterminds The Duffer Brothers. But finding out what that bad thing is, and who it happens to, is part of the show’s twisty ride—one that marries relationship anxieties, family drama, and supernatural curses. Oh, and there’s a wedding in there, too!
You’re cordially invited to attend our breakdown of all the biggest and most surprising things that happen across Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’s eight episodes, including the ending. We’ll consider this your RSVP.
Rachel (Camila Morrone) as she tries to break the curse during the rehearsal dinner in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.
(Image credit: Netflix)
What’s the very bad thing that’s going to happen in ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?’
Are we stopping at just one? The leadup to Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky’s (Adam DiMarco) wedding is filled with all sorts of ominous issues—from the creepy man Rachel encounters at a roadside bar that asks if she’s sure she’s marrying the right person, to the not-exactly-warm welcome she receives from Nicky’s family and their strange behavior in the days leading up to the ceremony.
Article continues below
The biggest looming “bad” though, as it were, is that a curse has plagued Rachel’s family for generations—a fact she only finds out in the days before the wedding. If Nicky is truly her soulmate, there’s nothing to worry about; the wedding will go off without a hitch, at least not any of the supernatural kind. But if he’s not, she’ll die that same day at sundown. And if she bolts, the curse passes to Nicky’s entire bloodline. The only way to escape the curse altogether is never getting engaged because once you do, there’s no turning back.
So, Rachel has some soul searching to do: Is Nicky truly her perfect match? And how sure is she?
It’s not until their big day that Nicky (Adam DiMarco) and Rachel learn whether they were supposed to be together.
(Image credit: Netflix)
Do Rachel and Nicky get married in ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?’
After trying to calculate how she is down to a percentage point, contacting a deceased ancestor via a seance, and concocting a magic potion (more on that later), Rachel decides to put her faith in Nicky and go through with the wedding. After all, she did love him enough to say yes in the first place when he proposed.
But after the walk down the aisle and sharing their handwritten vows, it’s Nicky who pulls the plug. Rocked by the events of the past week, including learning about the curse, that his mother is dying, and that his parents’s marriage isn’t as picture-perfect as he’d always been led to believe, he’s the one who doesn’t think they should go through with it.
The ceremony goes on hold, and guests enjoy the reception while the two of them go off separately to talk it out. Rachel initially hadn’t wanted to get married, Nicky reminds her, and by calling off the wedding, he thinks he’s saving them from the “curses” of their families’s respective traumas. Rachel, meanwhile, reminds him of the very real curse hanging over them, but also that she agreed to get married because she knew what that meant for him. Nicky was the only person who could have gotten her up the aisle, and she went through a lot over the past week (to put it lightly!) to meet him at the altar with confidence.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is he doesn’t believe her about the curse, or that she’ll die if they’re not soulmates—and because he doesn’t believe her, then he never was her soulmate. As Rachel comes to this heartbreaking revelation, the sun goes down, and the curse begins taking hold of Nicky’s family: his mother, Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh), begins hemorrhaging, as does his sister, Portia (Gus Birney), who had an impulsive Vegas wedding.
Now that guests are collapsing all over the reception, Nicky suddenly believes her (no kidding!) and, in a last-ditch effort to save himself and his family, shoves a ring on her finger as his father (Ted Levine) pronounces them husband and wife. Does this rebound the curse back to her? Initially, it seems that way—she begins bleeding profusely in the same way the others did, and collapses in the house’s snowy courtyard, covered in blood. But the next morning, she comes back to life as the new immortal “witness” who will watch over Nicky’s family, warn them about marrying the wrong person, and attend all their future weddings.
Rachel’s mom faced a similar fate—and had a strange connection to the Cunningham family.
(Image credit: Netflix)
What happened to Rachel’s mother in ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?’
Rachel always knew her mother, Alexandra (Victoria Pedretti), died when she was a baby—but the violent circumstances of it were unknown to her until the days leading up to her own wedding, thanks to an old home video. It turns out her mother and father (played by Logan Miller in the past and Josh Hamilton in the present) got married in the same snowy countryside where Nicky’s family lives, and it also turned out that her husband was, in fact, not her true soulmate.
On their wedding night, as they’re celebrating back at a rented cabin, a very pregnant Alexandra begins to bleed and convulse, falling victim to the curse on her new husband’s family. As she bleeds out, her distraught husband decides to cut the baby—Rachel—out of her dying mother’s body.
The Cunningham men, from left: Boris (Ted Levine), Jules (Jeff Wilbusch), and Nicky.
(Image credit: Netflix)
And who was the “Sorry Man” in ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?’
Nicky’s family lore included the “Sorry Man,” a depraved killer that his older brother, Jules (Jeff Wilbusch), apparently encountered as a young boy after wandering off into the woods. But it’s not a ghost, nor is it a roaming serial killer targeting brides: the gruesome scene the young boy witnessed was actually the death of Rachel’s mother on her wedding night. He was hiding under the bed in the cabin as the chaos started, and the “I’m sorry” he heard over and over was Rachel’s father apologizing as he cut open his dying wife to save their child
Alexandra noticed the young boy under the bed, and with her dying breaths, made him promise to look after the baby, which is why present-day Jules tries to keep Rachel safe, at least until the curse threatens his own family and the future of his young son, Jude (Sawyer Fraser).
Nicky’s impulsive decisions make his and Rachel’s wedding—and the curse—go awry.
(Image credit: Netflix)
And who was that mysterious man at the bar in ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?’
That old man (Zlatko Burić) who asked Rachel if she was sure she was marrying the right person wasn’t just being a creep—he had a vested interest in warning her. And it turns out he’s the reason Rachel is in this whole crazy situation in the first place.
His family was the one initially cursed with this matrimonial burden: all descendants must find their soulmate in marriage, or they’ll die. On the day of his own wedding, a mysterious man came to him and told him this same story—and, like a coward, he left his wife-to-be at the altar. The curse then spread to Marianne, who married a man named Thomas Harkin, and their children—Rachel’s ancestors—all faced the same fate.
And because he didn’t marry Marianne, he became immortal. His only job now is to witness all the weddings in her bloodline—including that of her parents—but he likes to throw a little warning in for good measure. It’s also why he’s at Rachel’s wedding, and signs the marriage certificate as soon as Nicky tries to trap her in their cursed union.
Rachel undergoes immense pain to try to break the curse.
(Image credit: Netflix)
How does Rachel try to break the curse in ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?’
Part detective work, part magic, part magical thinking. After researching her doomed family tree at the county clerk’s office with Jules’s wife, Nell (Karla Crome), Rachel discovers one ancestor who did apparently marry her soulmate—or, at the very least, this bride didn’t die on her wedding night. She tries to summon this woman with a makeshift Ouija board during her bachelorette party, and it actually works: Portia becomes possessed and recites a haunted version of the famous rhyme about what brides wear to weddings: “something living, something dead, something stolen, something red.”
It turns out that rhyme is also a recipe in a mysterious book of rituals Portia had in her room: something living from the groom, something dead from the bride, something stolen from the mother-in-law, something red from an adversary. Mix those things, drink it up, and Nicky will become her soulmate, if he wasn’t already. So Rachel collects the ingredients: blood from the witness, hair stolen from Victoria, semen from Nicky, and…her own pinky toe, cut off by Jules in the final hours before the ceremony.
She drops them all into a glass of champagne, but we don’t find out until later that she never actually drank the concoction (which also means she cut off a toe for nothing). Rachel ultimately decided to trust in her own faith in Nicky, thinking her belief that he was her soulmate would be enough—and it might have been, but then he ruined it.
The Cunningham family is now plagued by Rachel’s curse.
(Image credit: Netflix)
What happens at the end of ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?’
The last-ditch “I do” that Nicky’s family tries to pull off fails, so now his family is the one bearing the curse. This, hopefully, means Nicky will choose his next partner very carefully. It also means a large portion of his family, the ones who didn’t marry their soulmates, died at the wedding once the sun went down. Despite talking about divorce, Jules and Nell survive the night, meaning they’re better suited for one another than they might have initially realized.
The witness begins taking items of value off the dead, but stops when he feels an invisible presence: It’s Death, finally coming for him this time, because Rachel has taken his place to watch over Nicky’s family.
And Rachel comes to in the courtyard, immediately understanding her new role as a forever wedding guest. When she sees young Jude in the hallway, she tells him she’s sorry this happened to him, but not to forget that it did happen. She then gives him a well-placed warning: He should be very careful who he chooses to marry. And whenever he does get married, she’ll be there to witness it.
With that out of the way, she has no more business at the family home—at least until there’s another wedding to attend. So she swaps her blood-soaked bridal gown for a suit, takes her mother’s bracelet off the dead witness’s wrist, and drives off in a pickup truck with “Just Married” painted on the back.
