Dead to Me fans have an interesting theory about Judy’s season 3 fate

Dead to Me fans have shared an intriguing theory regarding Judy’s (Linda Cardellini) season three fate.

The third and final season of the Netflix dark comedy – released on 17 November – picks up right after the series two cliffhanger, which saw James Marsden’s Ben Wood drive off after t-boning love interest Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) and his twin brother’s ex-fiancée Judy Hale (Cardellini).

While Judy’s shown conscious and awake, Jen’s future is left ambiguous.

Warning, potential spoilers to follow

In season three’s debut episode, Judy rides along with Jen as the latter is rushed to the hospital and eventually wakes up in stable condition.

After the two undergo routine scans to ensure there’s no internal bleeding or broken bones, the doctor mistakes Jen for Judy and informs her that he’s found a potentially cancerous mass.

“Again, I’m so sorry, Miss Hale,” he says to Jen, who gasps, realising it’s Judy whose scan he’s referring to.

Judy later receives the unexpected cervical cancer diagnosis, and in the final episode, during a brief Mexico getaway with Jen, Jen gazes longingly out at sea and notices a sailboat.

The scene – which is a nod to Jen’s dream sequence in the season’s first episode – is supposed to imply Judy’s unfortunate demise.

However, fans have interpreted the ambiguous ending in other ways.

“What if Judy isn’t really dead but Jen believes she is hence the show being called Dead to ME…. or?” one tweeted.

“Breaking news: season 3 of Dead to Me was all a dream Jen had while in a coma of things she didn’t want to happen (to lose Judy and be with Ben/raise his child). She is now out of the hospital and her and Judy are living it up together in Mexico,” another suggested.

While there will be no way of confirming Judy’s fate, as the newest season marked the last, Cardellini explained in an earlier interview with Entertainment Weekly that that’s how the writers’ intended for it to land.

“It’s up for grabs. They really leave it open-ended. I do think that there are different versions of how the story ends for people,” she shared. And with Judy, Cardellini clarified: “You never know if she’s totally telling the truth.”

“[Judy’s] mother [played by Katey Sagal] always alludes to that. And I think what you see in her mother, there is a piece of that in Judy as well.”

Cardellini admitted that she was “excited, but also sad” about the ending.

“I kept sort of vying for like, ‘Okay, maybe there’s a time capsule buried so that if we ever wanna come back to this, you could see something.’ We kept joking about this time capsule idea so that Judy could sort of live forever,” she added.

“I think there is a part of it where you’re like, ‘Well she could have gone, I don’t know, anywhere,’” Cardellini lamented. “Is she gonna be in San Francisco? You know what I mean? There is an open-endedness to it that I think allows for people to make their own sort of choose-their-own adventure there.”

Dead to Me is available to stream on Netflix.