The Love Hypothesis Ending Explained: Do Olive And Adam End Up Together?

These days, a lot of popular authors seem to live double lives that help inform what they write. Clare Mackintosh, an excellent British thriller author, is a former policewoman whose work helps craft thrillers like "It's Not What You Think" and "I Let You Go." Freida McFadden claims to have attended medical school at Stony Brook University, which, honestly, may or may not inform popcorn thrillers like "Never Lie" and "The Housemaid." Ali Hazelwood, though, has a background in science — no, really, she has a PhD in neuroscience — and it's pretty obvious how that informs her biggest book to date, "The Love Hypothesis."

As much as I enjoyed reading "The Love Hypothesis," its origin story is ... pretty wild. In 2018, Hazelwood, in her spare time, wrote a piece of fanfiction called "Head over Feet" about Kylo Ren and Rey, the characters from the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy played in the films by Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley, and it was a massive hit with the fandom. 2021's "The Love Hypothesis" is, in essence, that exact story, except that it's set at Stanford University and focuses on graduate student Olive Smith and biology professor Adam Carlsen, who end up fake-dating in order to trick Olive's friends and the university itself, in that order. (I will admit I have not read the original story, and I'm not entirely sure what the exact journey was from "Head over Feet" to "The Love Hypothesis," but the whole fan fiction turned movie lore is pretty interesting!!!)

Now, we've got a film version of "The Love Hypothesis" starring Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman (the latter of whom is ... Ridley's husband) as the unlikely couple Olive and Adam. So, what happens to Adam and Olive throughout Amazon Prime Video's adaptation of Hazelwood's book?

Spoilers for "The Love Hypothesis" ahead.

Directed by the excellent Claire Scanlon (who also helmed a Netflix rom-com I love, the absolutely lovely "Set It Up"), "The Love Hypothesis" opens with intrepid graduate student Olive hoping to find a cure for pancreatic cancer, beginning her time at Stanford, and immediately linking up with the girl who becomes her best friend, Anh (Rachel Marsh, a real standout on Season 2 of "Adults"). After Olive enjoys a brief flirtation with another student, Jeremy (Nicholas Duvernay), she realizes there's a definite spark between Jeremy and Anh, which Anh absolutely refuses to pursue, believing that Olive is still hung up on Jeremy. To remedy this, Olive pretends she's dating someone ... and when Anh finds her alone in the lab instead of on an alleged date, Olive solves this completely self-induced problem by kissing the very first guy she sees.

The problem? That guy is Adam, a professor that most Stanford students hate because of his brisk, judgmental manner. (One of those students is Olive's roommate and other best friend Malcolm, played by the genuinely wonderful Jaboukie Young-White.) Still, Adam is okay with the fake dating thing. Apparently, Stanford thinks he might take his research elsewhere and is holding out on a grant he needs, so he believes the appearance of a serious girlfriend like Olive might convince his superiors that he has some actual roots at the university. Hence, begrudgingly, the two start pretending they're a couple, horrifying and shocking basically everyone in their shared orbits. 

But what causes the inevitable third-act rift between Adam and Olive? A few things, with the main obstacle being another Harvard professor and Adam's longtime friend, Tom Benton (Arty Froushan).

Partway through "The Love Hypothesis," both Olive and Adam attend a conference where Olive presents her work on using biomarkers to potentially eradicate pancreatic cancer (a devastating form of cancer that led to the death of her mother when she was just 16, leaving her essentially orphaned due to her absent father). After Olive's presentation, she overhears two girls discussing the fact that they think Olive only got the opportunity to present thanks to her "relationship" with Adam, leaving her feeling bereft. Adam then tries to comfort her in their hotel room, which they're sharing to keep up appearances (and so that Anh and Jeremy, now a couple, can have some privacy), and while Olive's insistence that their room definitely won't have two beds because of romantic comedy tropes (yes, it's meta) turns out to be completely false, the two end up consummating their obvious attraction anyway ... after which they head home, and Adam seems relatively uninterested in continuing their arrangement.

There's one more issue that pops up between Adam and Olive, obviously, and again, it's Tom. After inviting Olive to work in his lab at Harvard, Tom shows up at Adam and Olive's shared hotel room while Adam is absent and sexually harasses Olive, letting her know that there are ... "conditions" to her employment. Once this is revealed to Adam (thanks to Anh), he physically threatens Tom and assures Olive that he loves her and that the relationship has been real to him for some time now.

In a short epilogue after Olive and Adam confirm their love for each other and share a big, romantic kiss, we fast-forward by two years and see that both Olive and Anh have earned their doctorates and are now leading labs of their own, and Olive is pretty intense. (When Adam asks if it's true that a student passed out from dehydration, Olive admits that one did, but it was more due to the frat party she attended the night before.)

After telling Olive to go terrorize some more young minds, Adam and Olive brush hands before they part. So, it's pretty obvious that the two have continued their relationship untroubled by issues like gossip or Tom for the past couple of years, and neither of them ultimately moved to Harvard instead of staying at Stanford.

So, here's the thing about Ali Hazelwood's pretty vast body of work. You might think that one of Hazelwood's other books, like "Love on the Brain" or "Love, Theoretically" might be follow-ups to "The Love Hypothesis." They are, however, not. Though both "Love on the Brain" and "Love, Theoretically" are indeed literary romantic comedies written by Hazelwood that take place in scientific and academic settings, "The Love Hypothesis" does not have a sequel novel.

Still, this doesn't mean that "The Love Hypothesis" won't get an on-screen sequel. For an example, look at Casey McQuiston's "Red, White & Royal Blue," a massively successful queer romance novel that was released in 2019 and got an Amazon original movie adaptation that premiered in 2023. Directed by Matthew López, the film version of "Red, White & Royal Blue" — a story that imagines the outcome of a secret relationship between a First Son of the United States, Taylor Zakhar-Perez's Alex Claremont-Diaz, and British prince Henry, played by Nicholas Galitzine — is getting a sequel, even though there's no second novel or any literary follow-ups to speak of. (McQuiston tends to write standalone books, like their other releases "One Last Stop" and "The Pairing," both of which are also really great.) Still, "Red, White & Royal Wedding," which will see Zakhar-Perez and Galitzine reunite and work with director Jamie Babbit, will release on Amazon at some point ... so, again, don't rule out another "Love Hypothesis" film installment.

There are, actually, a handful of pretty crucial differences between the book and movie versions of "The Love Hypothesis." First of all, a whole character gets cut from the film adaptation, and while it makes sense that Adam's friend and fellow professor Holden Rodrigues — who ends up dating Olive's friend Malcolm in the book, leading to a double date near the end of the story — doesn't appear in the movie, it pretty drastically changes Malcolm's trajectory, as he decides to drop out of Stanford due to his heart not being in it (as opposed to finding love at the university). There's also an interesting choice when it comes to the disruptions in Olive and Adam's relationship. In the original book, Tom harasses Olive right after her presentation, and she secretly records him, only to lie to Adam and say she overheard girls insulting her in the bathroom. In the film version, that does happen, and I'm not completely sure why the movie's creatives decided to make that lie a reality.

In general, though, "The Love Hypothesis" is a pretty faithful feature film re-imagining of Ali Hazelwood's book, and what's more? I thought it was a total delight, thanks almost entirely to Lili Reinhart's absolutely winning central performance as Olive. It's streaming on Amazon Prime Video now, so go check it out and fall in love with this sweet, funny movie.