A Simple Favor 2, aka Another Simple Favor, is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and it’s even wilder than the first movie.
Directed by Paul Feig, with a script written by Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis, Another Simple Favor is a sequel to the 2018 dark comedy thriller, A Simple Favor. Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick are back, as fellow moms and former best friends—until the sweet-tempered mommy vlogger Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick) uncovered the dark, murderous truth about the glamorous Emily Nelson (Lively). Now, Emily shows up back in Stephanie’s life. For revenge? Well, it’s complicated.
Like the first movie, the strenths of Another Simple Favor lies in the movie’s fabulous costumes, strong lead performances, and gorgeous location shoot. The Another Simple Favor plot, however, is complicated and confusing. (The first movie was based on a book, this sequel is not.) But don’t worry, Decider is here to help. Read on for a breakdown of the Another Simple Favor plot and Another Simple Favor ending explaining, as well as a refresher on the first Simple Favor movie plot.
Warning: Major Another Simple Favor spoilers ahead. Duh!
A Simple Favor plot summary:
Before we dive into the sequel, let’s do a quick refresher on what you’ll need to remember from the first movie. Lively’s character, Emily, is a life-long con artist whose real name is Hope. Hope was born as a triplet, but one of her sisters, Charity, was a stillborn.
So Hope grew up with her twin sister, Faith. Faith was a wild child who frequently pissed off their physically abusive father. As teenagers, Faith convinced Hope to help her kill their father by lighting their mansion on fire. With the cops out looking for twin girls who committed arson, the sisters agreed to part ways. But first, they got matching fire tattoos, with a heart in honor of their late triplet Charity.
Hope changed her name—eventually to Emily—and conned her way into money and eventually landed a successful job, at a high-end PR firm. She married a dreamy English professor, Sean (Henry Golding) and had a child with him, Nicky. Nicky became her world. She never wanted her picture taken for fear of being tracked down by the police for the murder of her father.
But one day, Faith contacts Emily. Faith did not have a good life. She’s a heroin addict, and out of money. She threatens to go to the cops and blow up Emily’s life, unless Emily gives her $1 million. In response, Emily kills Faith by drowning her in a lake. Because they have identical DNA and matching tattoos, she’s able to fake her own death. By coincidence (really!) she was recently inspired by her new friend Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) to take out a $4 million dollar life insurance policy. This makes Sean—who would get that insurance money, and who started sleeping with Stephanie after Emily’s “death”—look suspicious.
Emily tries to frame Sean by claiming to the authorities that he abused her and forced her to fake her death. But Stephanie and Sean team up, and manage to get Emily’s confession—as well as her attempted murder of Sean—on camera, via a livestream to Stephanie’s mommy vlogger channel. The movie ends with Emily being arrested by police. She is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for killing her father, her sister, and for her attempted murder of Sean.
Another Simple Favor plot summary:
Another Simple Favor picks up seven years after the events of the first movie. Stephanie still runs her mommy vlog, which is now a combination of a cooking show and a detective show, in which she solves cold cases. However, she’s recently taken a step back from her vlog and her detective work, after a suspect in a pedophile case killed himself in front of her. This is bad timing, because Stephanie has a new true-crime book out about the Emily case, and it’s not selling well. She needs to get back on the vlog for book promo!
The opportunity for Stephanie to boost her sales comes when Emily unexpectedly shows up at one of Stephanie’s readings. Emily announces that she’s engaged to a wealthy Italian man, and that his powerful lawyers got her out of prison so that they can have a lavish wedding in Capri. Emily wants Stephanie to come too, as her maid of honor.
Stephanie is naturally suspicious that Emily might try to murder her, again, but her book agent Vicky (Alex Newell) convinces her that it will be great for book sales, as well as a possible successful sequel. Plus, Emily threatens to sue Stephanie for using her likeness without permission if she doesn’t go. As Stephanie puts it: “Little emotional blackmail, potential lawsuit, just sort of dangling my livelihood over my head… just girlfriend stuff!” So, she and Emily fly off to Capri.
Stephanie learns that Emily’s soon-to-be-husband, Dante Versano, (Michele Morrone) is a powerful member of the Italian mafia. His family insists that nothing be filmed, as part of a tentative truce between the Versano family and their rivals, the Bartolo family. That’s going to make it difficult for Stephanie to update her followers.
Dante’s mother, Portia Versano (Elena Sofia Ricci) hates her new daughter-in-law, and vice versa. In an attempt to upset Emily, Portia invites Emily’s real mother, Margaret McLanden (now played by Elizabeth Perkins, and played by Jean Smart in the first movie), to the wedding. Margaret, whose cognitive abilities are much worse than they were seven years earlier, is accompanied by Emily’s aunt Linda (Allison). Linda embraces Emily with job, and tells her that she was the one who delivered Emily/Hope, her sister Faith, and the still-born triplet Charity.
It doesn’t take long for people to start dying. The first victim is Sean, who came to the wedding with his and Emily’s son, Nicky, because of a court order. Sean, now a bitter, angry alcoholic, gets way too drunk at the pre-wedding garden lunch. He informs Emily he’s going to sue her in court for full custody of Nicky. That night, while in the shower, someone breaks into Sean’s hotel room, injects with him a drug, and kills him. We don’t see who does it, but we do see that Sean recognizes the person.
Stephanie immediately suspects Emily killed Sean. But the authorities, under the influence of the powerful Versano family, insist it was an accident with no foul play. Stephanie tails Emily the next day, but instead ends up following a mysterious stranger she’s seen following her, both back home in Connecticut and now in Italy. The stranger reveals she is FBI agent Irene Walker (Taylor Ortega), and she’s working on a case about Emily’s Aunt Linda. Apparently, Aunt Linda is a known con woman, and her suspected accomplice has the same tattoo as Emily.
Emily marries Dante. That night at the reception, Dante burns his prenup papers, as a gesture to prove that his love for Emily is true. Later, at the reception, Stephanie witnesses Dante being shot to death, but she doesn’t see who was holding the gun. Aunt Linda insists Emily could not have done it, because she was with Emily at the time of the shooting. Because Stephanie was the one who witnessed the death, she becomes the No. 1 suspect of Dante’s murder.
Stephanie is placed on house arrest in her hotel room, without her phone. Emily visits her, acting very strange. She reveals she told the police that Stephanie killed both Sean and Dante, and urges Stephanie to confess. Stephanie realizes the tattoo on Emily’s arm is very similar, but not quite, the tattoo that Emily has. This isn’t Emily at all!
Stephanie pays a visit to Emily’s addled mother, Margaret. In her conversation with Margaret, Stephanie realizes that Emily’s supposedly still-born triplet, Charity, did not die. Instead, Aunt Linda stole the baby and raised Charity herself. Linda groomed Charity to be the perfect accomplice in her con jobs.
Stephanie tries to relay all of this information to FBI agent Irene, but Charity kills Irene before she can, and once again frames Stephanie. Stephanie is drugged by the mafia boss Portia, who wants Stephanie to confess to killing her son. But she’s rescued by the real Emily. Emily explains everything: Dante is gay and in love with the son of the rival mob family. Emily, an old friend of Dante, agreed to marry him so that he could orchestrate a truce between the mob families, and be with his love. In exchange, Dante’s lawyers got Emily out of jail.
Linda knew about all of this, and tried to blackmail Emily and Dante for $20 million. That’s why she showed up at the wedding. And she brought Charity, because, apparently, she brings Charity everywhere. The day after Sean died, Charity showed up in Emily’s room. It was Charity that killed Sean, and Dante. Why? Because she grew up in total isolation, is totally off her rocker, and is obsessed with the idea of Emily as her sister. Though it’s not stated explicitly, we can assume that Charity somehow found out about her sisters’ tattoos, and got a similar tattoo in order to feel closer to them. It was her in the shop in Warsaw with Aunt Linda, not Emily. Charity drugs Emily, and tells her that she has a plan to “fix everything” for the two of them to stay together forever. Charity kept Emily drugged in her hotel room, and posed as Emily for the wedding and the reception, where she killed Dante.
Emily also reveals that she brought Stephanie to the wedding because she assumed that, if anything went south, Stephanie would investigate and figure out what happened. Aww! Emily thinks Stephanie’s a good detective!
Another Simple Favor ending explained:
Charity, using Stephanie’s phone, livestreams on Stephanie’s account, with a thinly veiled threat: give up Emily, or Charity will kill Emily’s son Miles. Stephanie and Emily race to the Tiberius cliffside, where Charity and Aunt Linda are holding a drug-out Miles. Linda, with a gun to Miles’s head, informs them that Charity will continue to impersonate Emily, as Dante’s widow. And because Dante burned his prenup, they will have access to all the mafia’s money. As Emily, Charity will take over the mob. Dante’s mother will be so grateful that Emily murdered Dante’s killer, Stephanie, that she will reward her with a mob boss job.
However, Charity stops Aunt Linda when she realizes that her aunt intends to kill her precious sister as part of the plan. Emily and Stephanie are able to get Miles to safety, and with an assist from Miles’s toy drone, Linda drops the gun. Charity picks it up, and shoots and kills Linda. Emily convinces Charity to let Stephanie live, and she also convinces Charity to take the fall for the murders, as “Emily.” Charity goes to jail, and Emily goes back into hiding.
At the end of the movie, it’s revealed that Stephanie is now raising Nicky alongside her son Miles. Emily is still in hiding in Italy, but she’s in regular communication with Stephanie. In the very last scene of the movie, Portia pays a visit to Emily. She tells Emily she knows everything. Portia tells Emily she is family now, and that she has very high expectations for family. Then she hands Emily an envelope, and asks her for “a simple favor.” Emily asks how simple, and with that movie ends.
So what does it mean? Well, the implication is that Portia is about to ask Emily to help her run the family business, aka the mafia. So will there be A Simple Favor 3 starring Blake Lively as an Italian mafia mamma? God, I hope so.
Read the full article here
