Twisters ending explained: The alternate shot you didn't see — and why (exclusive)

Warning: This article contains spoilers about the final scene of Twisters.

To kiss or not to kiss, that is the question.

Social media was all atwitter (aXed?? sigh.) when fans captured footage of Twisters stars  Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones kissing while filming a scene at an airport last year. But the final scene of the blockbuster includes no lip lock. Powell's Tyler chases after Daisy Edgar-Jones' Kate through the airport, but instead of kissing, the two head off to chase more storms. (A post-credit scene shows Kate out in the field with Tyler and Brandon Perea's Boone.)

The entire denouement at the airport is a diversion from the tone of most of the rest of the action-adventure flick — an intentional shift, says Powell.

"For some reason, and I'm not really sure why, people think that movies need to be binary in genre, and it doesn't need to be that way," the actor tells Entertainment Weekly. "And what I find to be really fun about this movie is that you can feel the ebbs and flows of all these different colors and textures and almost musical styles. This movie plays in all these different ways."

But why don't Kate and Tyler kiss?

"I'm taking a little offense that they didn't want to use it. Maybe it's just my abilities, I don't know," Powell jokes of shooting the kiss before director Lee Isaac Chung ultimately chose not to include it. (The director also almost didn't include that shot of Powell walking through the rain in a wet T-shirt.)

"I feel like audiences are in a different place now in terms of wanting a kiss or not wanting a kiss," Chung says of the trend of younger generations grimacing at public displays of affection both on screen and in real life. "I actually tried the kiss, and it was very polarizing — and it's not because of their performance of the kiss." (Hear that, Glen?)

"This [no-kiss shot] was the other option that I had filmed on the day, and I got to say, I like it better," continues Chung. "I think it's a better ending. And I think that people who want a kiss within it, they can probably assume that these guys will kiss someday. And maybe we can give them privacy for that. In a way, this ending is a means to make sure that we really wrap things up with it in a celebratory, good way."

"It felt nice and refreshing to not have to end up on that beat because what you're ending it on is two individuals who are so equal in their love and interest and intelligence and understanding of weather," Edgar-Jones says of skipping the romantic moment. Adds Chung: "If it ends on the kiss, then it makes it seem as though that's what Kate's journey was all about, to end up with a kiss. But instead, it's better that it ends with her being able to continue doing what she's doing with a smile on her face."

Why end Twisters at an airport?

Chung pitched the airport ending — a divergence from Mark L. Smith's draft of the script — in his initial meeting when discussing taking on directing the "standalone sequel" (meaning none of the original Twister cast returns, but the film takes place in the same world).

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"I thought the airport would be a great location where Daisy and Glen and [Anthony Ramos]' characters could all come together in some way, and we see that their relationships have been changed," Chung explains. "I looked at Kate, in some ways, as a tornado. We don't know where she's going to go and what's going to happen to her. And I thought that Tyler should have to chase her — because he's a storm chaser. That idea is what ended up leading to this idea of the airport, and also the joke with the truck, the augers, and all that stuff."

Powell observes that even without the kiss, that final moment is still the most intimate between Tyler and Kate: "Most of this movie, they're looking towards the weather — towards the science — and they're facing the same direction. Or they're driving facing forward. And this is one moment in the movie where they're facing each other, just two people without any weather to look at, wondering if they are more than just the weather around them. The beautiful part about the ending is you hear the [severe weather announcement on the airport loudspeaker], and you see two people...[chasing storms] is their love language. That is what brings them together. And the chase is really what their relationship's about. I think it's a beautiful ending."

"I think there was something kind of magic about it being this level partnership without it passing into something else," adds Edgar-Jones. "It felt like the perfect balance where they nearly kiss, which is just as sort of exciting, but the fact that they don’t leaves you wanting more."

Will there be a Twisters sequel?

Speaking of wanting more, Chung and his cast all feel there is potentially more story to tell beyond this film.

"What's going to happen between the three of them?" Ramos poses of Kate, Tyler, and his own character, Javi. "She's going back to New York. And if Tyler is going with her and I'm staying behind, but I'm talking to them about 'Now we got to put the lab together, and we got to figure out how we're going to make this work and what the new setup is going to be....' I think that leaves the story open to what are the new challenges they're going to face. What's the next chapter of this story? What's the thing that they don't see yet that's coming? That gets me excited. How are Tyler and Javi going to work together? How's that going to happen? Hopefully, we get another one, and we continue to grow in this world because it's such a big world and it's such a big community. These storm chasers go through so much. The stories are never-ending, man."

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