After Ever Happy is now out in the UK – and it’s not going to be the end of Tessa and Hardin’s love story as we thought.
In August 2022, Hero Fiennes Tiffin surprised fans with the unexpected announcement that they had already filmed another After movie called After Everything. We expect that movie will now bring an end to their story, but who knows.
After Ever Happy picks up from the shocking After We Fell cliffhanger in which Hardin discovered who his real father is. Spoiler alert, it looks like he has not taken it well which could spell trouble for his relationship with Tessa.
We always knew that there were two more movies planned, but expected them to be a prequel and a future-set sequel, instead of a direct continuation. What does this mean for After Ever Happy? We don’t know, but at least the wait is over.
Here’s everything you need to know about After Ever Happy.
After 4 release date: When will After Ever Happy be released?
As mentioned above, After Ever Happy is now available to watch on Prime Video in the UK, following its earlier release in the US on September 7.
The fourth movie was filmed back-to-back with After We Fell in September to December 2020.
After 4 trailer: Watch the After Ever Happy trailers here!
We got the teaser trailer for After Ever Happy as an early festive treat on Christmas Eve no less, December 24, 2021. But there were no festivities to be found in it.
“We’re just a bomb waiting to explode,” Tessa tells Hardin. “I’m sorry I couldn’t fix you.”
As mentioned above, the full trailer arrived on April 8, 2022, and promised that the “final chapter is just the beginning”.
The dramatic footage (would it be anything else) teases a Tessa and Hardin break-up, Hardin getting together with somebody else and plenty of steamy sex scenes between the two.
And that wasn’t all as we got another trailer for After Ever Happy on July 14, 2022.
Perhaps the biggest reveal in this trailer is that it looks like the movie is going meta as Hardin is shown to be writing a novel called After, based on his on-off relationship with Tessa.
That sounds familiar…
After 4 cast: Who’s coming back for After Ever Happy?
It wouldn’t be an After movie without Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Tessa and Hardin, so they are obviously back in the fourth movie.
Given that it was filmed back-to-back with the third movie, you’ll see a lot of the same cast back, including Chance Perdomo as Landon Gibson, Louise Lombard as Trish Daniels, Frances Turner as Karen Scott, Rob Estes as Ken Scott and Kiana Madeira as Nora.
We’ll also be seeing Anton Kottas as Smith Vance, Arielle Kebbel as Kimberly, Stephen Moyer as Christian Vance and Mira Sorvino as Carol Young.
The filming schedule also meant that the third and fourth movies had to recast characters, such as Landon and Frances, due to the original actors not being able to return as a result of scheduling conflicts.
We thought that After Ever Happy would mark the final appearance for Langford and Tiffin, but now we know that there’s another movie coming with the central pair.
After 4 plot: What’s After Ever Happy about?
The arrival of Tessa’s father in After We Collided threw more drama into Tessa and Hardin’s relationship as she wanted to get to know him, while Hardin wasn’t particularly pleased by the idea.
Hardin did some questionable stuff in order to keep Tessa around and stop her from moving to Seattle for her dream job. Eventually, though, he realised that he shouldn’t stop Tessa from using this opportunity and they agree to a long-distance relationship.
However, that’s not the end of the drama as Hardin discovered that his father isn’t Ken and is actually Christian Vance, the boss of Vance Publishing where Tessa works. Awkward.
This happened after Hardin takes Tessa to London for his mother’s wedding and it’s here that Hardin saw her with Christian. What’s worse, it seems like everyone involved – including Christian’s wife – knew, but will it bring Tessa and Hardin closer together?
The synopsis for After Ever Happy confirms that it will pick up from this revelation – and that won’t be the only bad news ahead for the couple.
“Hardin and Tessa are growing up and they may never be the same. Although they have defied all the odds, their next chapter will bring either a fairy tale ending or finally destroy their passionate yet toxic relationship,” it reads.
“When a revelation about the past shakes Hardin’s impenetrable façade to the core – and Tessa suffers a tragedy – will they stick together or be torn apart? Life will never be the same for Hessa.”
Don’t expect as definitive an ending as in the book, which features several time jumps as it follows Tessa and Hardin’s relationship over several years. With another movie on the way, we could be left hanging yet again about the couple’s fate.
Before the surprise announcement of a fifth After movie, it had been confirmed in April 2021 that we were getting a prequel to the series and a sequel to the fourth movie.
The sequel was going to pick up from the book’s epilogue where – spoiler alert – they have two children Emery and Auden. This movie has potentially been merged into the fifth After movie or replaced by it, but we don’t know anything yet.
“Emery, Auden and [cousin] Addy are quite beloved by the fans. We’ve all gotten a lot of inquiries about what happens with the kids,” director Castille Landon told Teen Vogue.
“It’s really amazing actually to see how interested the fanbase is in those characters, even though they are really only superficially introduced in the books. People have latched onto them because of their love for Hardin and Tessa.”
The prequel movie will be loosely based on Todd’s Before book which explored Hardin’s life before Tessa and gave his perspective on events post-After. Landon is set to write and direct both movies, but it’s unclear when they will arrive.
And again, it’s unknown if the prequel movie is still happening after the main series has been extended by one movie.
