I Have One Gripe About the Ending of Twisters

Show us the kiss. We know it was filmed!

You may think you know where the end of Twisters is going: Our heroes — Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Tyler (Glen Powell), and Javi (Anthony Ramos) — have successfully saved a small town from a giant twister by using Kate’s new invention that sucks chemicals up into the tornado to make it collapse. They pack up their things. Kate’s going back to New York City. Javi is going back to doing good in the world. Tyler is going back to getting those clicks and views (link-in-bio vibes). Javi drops off Kate at the airport; despite his obvious lingering crush, these two have agreed to be just friends. Kate’s already wending her way through the terminal when Tyler shows up, enduring a heated back-and-forth with a parking attendant (Paul Scheer — hi!), before literally chasing Kate into the airport to stop her before she gets on the plane. You’ve seen this movie before; you’ve seen it 100 times. People chase each other into the airport and then they kiss, right?

No! After all that buildup, after all those twisters, after all that bonding at Kate’s mom’s (Maura Tierney) house over barbecue, there is no smooch at the end of Twisters. What are we doing here? Why can’t our beautiful young meteorologists smooch anymore? It’s one thing when superhero movies with characters in CGI spandex do a passionless, closed-mouth kiss in the ruins of Unnamed American City; it’s quite another when a movie with real humans and palpable sexual tension — Tyler walks through the rain in a white T-shirt in one scene — teases its kiss right up until the credits roll, leaving us high and dry.

Sure, maybe it’s not fair to hold Twisters to the standard that its predecessor, Twister, set. The smooch between Bill Paxton’s Bill and Helen Hunt’s Jo arrives after a film full of bickering and tension over how much these science weirdos love the thrill of the chase. Kate is much more burdened with guilt than Jo — saddled with the trauma of losing three friends to a twister of the past — but that’s an even better reason for her to get a kiss at the end of the film. She has been through the worst of it. Let her do something besides bat her eyes and smile.

WHY DID THEY CUT THE KISS pic.twitter.com/is7XhI9iu9

— zara ????????️ TWISTERS SPOILERS (@seresinbradshaw) July 18, 2024

What’s most frustrating about the end of Twisters is that they literally shot a kiss. There is a world in which Kate, having dealt with her past and friend-zoned Javi, and Tyler, with his rough edges now sanded down, kiss at the end of the movie as a celebration of their newfound mutual admiration. He brings her a pizza at one point! And they don’t kiss? He helps her redo her specs! And they don’t kiss! Minutes and minutes of this movie are dedicated to long, intimate staring between the two of them, and for what? More science? If Twisters doesn’t want any of its characters to utter the words climate change, that’s its prerogative. But to withhold kissing? That’s a step too far.