Spoilers for One Night Only are ahead! You can catch this rom-com that just came out on the 2026 movie schedule in theaters now.
One Night Only’s premise is comparable to The Purge movies, but instead of all crime being legal for one night, premarital sex is only legal for one night per year. So, you’d think the primary romance would focus on two people both finding a connection and hooking up in the same night. However, that’s not how this film starring Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner ended, and I can’t help but be both charmed and infuriated by this unsexy conclusion.
How One Night Only Ended
So, after following Barbaro’s Allie and Turner’s Owen on their night in New York City, they both finally realize they want to be together. In the final moments of the time when it’s legal for anyone to have sex, they both show up at the red lighthouse Allie had described earlier in the movie and choose to be together.
Now, you’d think they’d use the final minutes of the mandate-less night to have sex before they have to wait a whole year to do it again. However, they don’t. They almost do. But as they’re about to potentially use the condom Allie had spent a lot of the movie finding and protecting, they stop and talk about how they’d rather get to know each other and wait.
Then, one year later, we see them hanging out in Allie’s apartment (which Owen seems to live in now), and the second the mandate drops, they go into their bedroom to have sex. And that’s where the movie ends.
Why One Night Only’s End Was Charming
To an extent, this choice is sweet. Allie and Owen wanted to develop a real connection before they took their relationship to the next level. I mean, Barbaro’s character did make a whole point about the build-up being the best part of sex. And they got a whole year of it…and I do like that they didn't let the physical side of their relationship fully define it.
Part of me loves knowing that during that year between the day they met and the next day they could have legal sex, they really got to know each other and developed a very strong relationship. Then, when they could finally take things to the next level, it was all the more meaningful, because they had known each other for a year instead of one night only.
However, the ending also left me fuming.
I Also Can’t Help But Be Infuriated By This Ending
So, why did this ending infuriate me? Well, for a movie all about sex, there’s very little of it in this movie. There’s lots of talk about it, there are lots of attempts at it, but there’s not much of it (especially for our main characters). So, when Allie and Owen finally get the chance to have sex, and they actually have time to do it legally, their choice not to made me mad.
It’s a shockingly chaste way to end a movie all about two people trying to both find a real connection and get laid, and that bothered me. While there are plenty of great rom-coms that are about sex but don’t feature much of it (like When Harry Met Sally), this can’t be considered one because it spent its entire runtime building up to something that never really happened.
Yes, they had sex a year after they got together; however, it didn’t have the payoff I wanted, and I didn’t feel like it was satisfying. That’s because having them show up at that lighthouse, almost hook up, and then say “actually, never mind, let’s wait” was remarkably disappointing, counterintuitive, and, for lack of a better term, anticlimactic.
Ultimately, this left me with very mixed feelings about One Night Only (which doesn’t have great reviews). On the one hand, I’m happy Allie and Owen lived happily ever after and eventually got to have sex. However, when it comes to the one night they spent together, it was infuriating that they didn’t hook up while they had the chance.
