“Divergent” Author Says Film Franchise 'Feels Complete to Me' Despite Final Movie Never Getting Made (Exclusive)

The author says the film series is "its own thing" and "feels complete to me" despite part two of 'Allegiant' never making it to the big screen

Author Veronica Roth has made peace with the final Divergent movie never coming to fruition.

It's been over seven years since Allegiant, the third movie in the franchise, debuted in theaters, adapting one half of Roth's book. Like the Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games finales before it, Allegiant was split in two parts, though the second part (to be titled Ascendant) was never made due to diminishing box office returns.

Roth tells PEOPLE she's okay with how the film franchise concluded.

"I mean, breaking things in two was all the rage at the time. That was why that decision was made," says Roth, 35. "But at that point, I think I always felt peace about it just because I knew the movies were taking a different track than the books, and if you change the lead up, you change the ending. So I kind of felt like at that point ... I feel like that third movie, I don't know — there's a lot we could talk about with it. But it's its own thing."

"It feels complete to me, relatively speaking, because what does that even mean at that point?" she adds.

About separating books into multiple movies, Roth says, "I just feel like it's got to be a big, long book in order for that to make sense."

Related: Hunger Games Director Admits He 'Totally Regrets' Splitting Mockingjay Into 2 Parts (Exclusive)

Ten years ago, when Allegiant was published in 2013, Roth took a lot of heat from fans over her decision to have her hero Tris die at the end. Some readers went as far as wishing the author dead on social media, which Roth wrote about in a 2021 Salon essay.

Roth says now she's no longer "afraid of the internet" like she was at that time — and since revisiting the Divergent books, she has a new understanding for why people were upset by the direction she took the protagonist's story.

"I listened to the series again on audiobook recently, and this was the first time I had re-experienced any of the books pretty much since Allegiant came out, because for a while it just reminded me of the internet, intense stress. I'm obviously a lot older, and I think reading Allegiant again I understand better why there was such a strong reaction to this, just because of having that time and perspective," she explains. "It's interesting to reflect."

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"You can always see things you could have done better with the benefit of time, when you've grown as a writer. That's how I feel about it," says Roth. "But I can also have a little bit of fun with it now. It doesn't feel as scary. At the time I was afraid of the internet and now I joke about it with readers and I think we've all kind of processed it a little better at this point."

Roth says she "chose the ending that I thought would be best at the time" and "it was the best one that I could come up with."

"It's hard to look back and think about... there's a thousand things I would've written differently because I'm older now and more experienced and that was my first series," she says.

Fans never got to see the book's fatal conclusion play out onscreen. (Shailene Woodley starred as Tris in the films opposite Theo James as her love interest, Four.) Were the movies going to employ the same controversial conclusion?

Roth says, "I don't think they had a really clear outline for me. I think they were maybe a little worried about telling me one way or the other because maybe they were concerned about what I would say or setting expectations or something like that."

The author has written several books since the Divergent series, including Poster Girl, now in paperback, and, coming in May, When Among Crows. Roth says, though, her Divergent characters continue to live on in her imagination.

"I'll be like, 'What if that person had lived? What if a completely different plot point had happened or a different perspective?' But I don't think about it that often," she says.

"I've got a lot of characters living in my head now, but every so often. I think they were the strongest point of the series, the characters, so they're the part that lives on the most for me."

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