For seven seasons Younger focuses on the on-again, off-again romance between Liza (Sutton Foster) and Josh (Nico Tortorella), but the series leaves their final relationship status up for debate.
This hit TV comedy follows an aging divorcee (Liza), who pretends to be in her 20s to advance in her fledgling publishing career.
The show ran for seven seasons on TV Land and Paramount+ but is back in the conversation as it arrives in its entirety on Netflix. This has prompted calls from fans for more episodes of Younger, something which may or may not ever happen.
Who Does Liza End Up With In Younger?
Younger Season 7 provides some sort of closure on the final relationship status of its central characters, Liza and Josh, but it does not go as some may have thought.
As a part of the show's final season, Liza and Josh reunite (after some carnal affairs apart from each other), but it is not the definitive happy ending that many had expected.
Season 7 sees Liza's then-boyfriend Charles (played by Blue Bloods' Peter Hermann) finally propose to her. She however declines leading to their break up.
Liza and Charles' romance has its ups and downs throughout Season 7, with the two of them eventually getting back together at the end of Episode 11. It is for naught though, as the pair call it off one last time.
The series ends with Liza running into Josh again at a bar. The pair strike up a conversation, but the show cuts to black before anything more can be explored.
This ambiguous ending leaves the future of the show's central will-they-won't-they couple up in the air, never revealing if this chance meeting leads to them getting back together again or if it is just a one-time coincidence that resulted in no further conversation.
Who Does Josh End Up With In Younger?
Josh, on the other hand, has a different round-about way of arriving at Younger's series finale.
For a while, the series had distanced Josh from Liza romantically. In Season 4, Nico Tortorella gets together with Hillary Duff's Kelsey, first kissing in Episode 7, before marrying Phoebe Dynevor's Clare later in the season.
Clare and Josh eventually divorce not long after, leading to Josh's romance with KT (Ana Villafañe) in Season 7. This relationship, again, goes nowhere for Josh leading him to the chance meeting with Liza at the end of the series.
From Josh's point of view, things are left just as ambiguously, as it is never made clear if the drink was the beginning of something bigger.
In the wake of the series finale, Liza star Sutton Foster told Variety she really thought her character could have ended up with either Josh or her Season 7 flame Charles:
"I blame the writers and I blame Nico and Peter because both roads were viable and both roads made sense. It’s not like they gave me one horrible person and one great person. I totally get why there were teams. For me, I ultimately just had to be in love with both of them. They’re so different. It was interesting because it could have ended either way."
This insinuates she saw her character ending up with Josh, positing "I think it ended the right way. But if it ended with Liza and Charles, that would have felt right, too:"
"I think it ended the right way. But if it ended with Liza and Charles, that would have felt right, too. It was amazing because I think that’s why it was able to sustain for so long. Both options made sense, but I think for the truth of the show, I think Josh — that’s what the show is ultimately all about."
"Even now, I can’t look back and pick a team. I believe that it ended the way that it should have," Foster remarked, adding "I think she always truly loved Josh:"
"But it’s hard. Even now, I can’t look back and pick a team. I believe that it ended the way that it should have. It sounds like I’m copping out, but truly, that’s how I navigated playing the character — she was just as confused as I was as an actress. She truly, I think, loved both men. It was hard for her to choose. Although she ultimately does choose Charles for a while, I think she always truly loved Josh. It’s very complicated. But it was fun to play."
But the ending does little to declaratively portray that. Instead of culminating in this epic 'happily ever after,' fans were left with what felt like the start of picking up the pieces between Josh and Liza.
On the idea of what that final scene meant, Foster teased, "We’ll have to see when we do the reunion in five years:"
"We’ll have to see when we do the reunion in five years! [Laughs] Nico and I have so much love and respect for one another, and it was Nico’s last scene so he was a bawling mess."
"I think [showrunner Darren Star] intentionally left it open-ended," the Younger star continued, admitting there was a sense of "familiarity, affection and possibility" in the way she played the show's final scene:
"I would be lying if I said that as we were playing the scene, there wasn’t a hint of familiarity, affection and possibility. I don’t know. I love the line where he says, 'I’ve been here all along.' Like, yeah! He has. He’s been there the whole time. So, I don’t know. I think Darren intentionally left it open-ended, which I love. It really is up to the viewer to decide what they think. I don’t know what Darren’s intention was. I think he really purposely wanted it to be left as a possibility."
Younger is now streaming on Netflix.
