Are you Team Manuscript or Team Letter? The twists in 'Verity,' explained.

The real twist in Verity is entirely dependent on what you see as the truth.

The latest Colleen Hoover adaptation starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett is a psychological thriller with a wild twist, one that has stirred fan debate since the book's 2018 publication. With director Michael Showalter's film sticking closely to the novel's original rug pull, theatergoers who haven't read the novel can finally choose whether they're "Team Manuscript" or "Team Letter," and fight with their friends about it on the way home.

No idea what that means, or just want a refresher? Warning: Only darkness (and major spoilers for the twist in Verity ) ahead.

Verity stars Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer who gets the opportunity of a lifetime when she's asked to ghostwrite the final books in author Verity Crawford's (Hathaway) series of thrillers. Verity can't finish the novels, which are all told from the perspective of the villain, because she was injured in a serious car accident — one that her husband Jeremy (Hartnett) has been careful to keep out of the press.

Lowen agrees to write the novels, as she needs the money after her late mother left her in debt. And because this is a psychological thriller, she also agrees to live in Verity's beautiful-but-isolated home in Vermont, with Jeremy and Verity's young son Crew (Brady Wagner), in order to have easy access to Verity's disorganized notes. When Lowen gets to the house, however, she is surprised to find that Verity's condition is worse than she was initially told: the author isn't just injured, but paralyzed — she's unable to walk, speak or move.

So, Lowen dives into Verity's files in hopes of being able to write in Verity's voice. What she discovers, however, is something far darker than she could have imagined. Hidden in Verity's cigarette box is a USB drive containing a secret manuscript the author wrote, which she claims is her raw, honest autobiography. And that's where the twist begins…

Lowen begins reading. At first, she's intrigued by Verity's titillating details of her romance with the charming and kind Jeremy. Then, however, she's disturbed by how Verity appears to have a sharp disdain for her son Crew and her daughter Harper (Sienna Kulovitz), who died in a canoe accident less than a year earlier.

But the longer Lowen lives in Verity's shadow, the more she suspects that Verity isn't actually incapacitated. Lowen is sure she sees Verity moving around the house, something that Jeremy assures her is impossible. And it's easy enough for Lowen to write this off as a manifestation of her own guilt, especially as she grows closer to — and eventually falls for — Jeremy, who seems like a doting father and loyal husband.

Everything changes, however, when Lowen gets to the end of Verity's manuscript. The autobiography details how Verity not only hated her children and resented them for stealing Jeremy's affections — she also wanted them dead. Verity, according to her own autobiography, planned the canoe trip in order to orchestrate Harper's drowning, hoping that with one less kid around, Jeremy would pay more attention to her.

Alas, Verity is disappointed to find that this master plan didn't work at all; Jeremy's too grief-stricken to show Verity affection. The autobiography ends with a disappointed Verity declaring that she plans to drive herself into a tree if Jeremy doesn't come around, which is exactly the accident that led to Verity's current physical state.

How Verity turns the tables on us yet again

Lowen is shocked and horrified. But it also gives credence to Lowen's theory that Verity is an evil, manipulative monster who is faking being incapacitated. Lowen just can't get Verity to break on her own.

So, Lowen shows Jeremy the manuscript, insisting it's proof that Verity has recovered from her car accident and is secretly capable of moving and speaking. Jeremy reads what Verity wrote and confronts his wife in her bedroom. In a shocking moment, Verity springs to action, insisting she can "explain everything" to Jeremy.

It falls on deaf ears, though. Jeremy strangles Verity, attempting to kill her — until Lowen intervenes. She tells Jeremy not to strangle Verity, as he'll get caught for her murder, and Crew wouldn't have a father to care for him. But Lowen's not being kind, just practical: She instructs Jeremy to smother Verity instead, so as not to leave a mark. He does so, and the two take Verity's body to the lake and throw it in, later lying to the police about Verity exiting the house on her own.

But wait — the twist in 'Verity' also has a twist!

After Verity's death, the film flashes forward seven months. Lowen is pregnant with Jeremy's baby and the couple is moving with Crew to North Carolina, out of the home Jeremy once shared with Verity. Lowen follows Crew into his room to get the last of his things, when she sees a floorboard popping up, revealing Crew's secret hiding place. Beneath the floorboard, Lowen finds a letter from Verity… and it changes everything.

The letter is addressed to Jeremy. Verity says that if Jeremy is reading this, she and Crew are somewhere safe. She explains how the manuscript for her autobiography — in which she claimed to hate her kids and plotted Harper's death — was an exercise introduced to her by her editor after Harper died in the canoe accident. The letter reframes Verity's manuscript not as an admission of truth, but as an example of "antagonistic journaling," in which Verity deliberately expressed the exact opposite of her real feelings.

But Verity writes that Jeremy found the manuscript and read it (even though Jeremy only read one of her previous novels.) According to the letter, Jeremy was so enraged that Verity killed Harper that he drugged her and orchestrated her car accident as punishment. Realizing Jeremy was a danger to her, Verity faked being permanently paralyzed as a way to keep herself safe until she could get herself and Crew away from Jeremy. She was sure that if Jeremy thought she was healthy again, he would turn her in to the police for killing Harper (which she insists she didn't do) or he'd attempt to murder her a second time.

The letter gives Lowen, not to mention the audience, quite a lot to consider. Was Verity telling the truth in her manuscript or in her letter? Ultimately, Lowen decides she'll never be able to know. Verity was a master at manipulating the truth, after all… it's just unclear what truth she was manipulating.

The original version of the Verity novel leaves the situation entirely ambiguous, much like the film. But in 2022, Hoover released a bonus chapter that seemed to tilt things in the favor of Team Letter — that Jeremy really did try to kill Verity, and that her letter was the truth.

This bonus chapter shows Jeremy and Lowen in their new life in North Carolina, where they've disappeared to after the tragedies in Vermont. But in their new life, a woman from Vermont recognizes Jeremy and Lowen. Jeremy freaks out and drowns her as Lowen watches it unfold. So, while it's not a definitive answer as to whether Jeremy's capable of very dark things, it's certainly a suggestion that he could have tried to kill Verity after reading her manuscript.

Of course, all of this really means nothing: Many different versions of the story are technically possible. Perhaps Jeremy did try to kill Verity, but her manuscript is also the truth. Or maybe Verity planted that letter as collateral in case Jeremy tried to kill her again, as a plot to mess with Lowen for stealing her life.

As for Hoover, she hasn't declared which twist is the real twist… meaning that it's all really up for interpretation.