Here's one aspect of the Last Christmas twist you may have missed
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Last Christmas.
From the moment the trailer hit the web, audiences have been speculating about a twist in the film Last Christmas.
Now that it’s finally out, the film does reward the sleuths who were able to figure out how the relationship between Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding‘s characters would end before it even starts due to the film being inspired by the classic Wham! song “Last Christmas.” Yes, it turns out Golding’s Tom is the donor who literally gave Clarke’s Katarina his heart.
What was less predictable is the galaxy brain way the film’s writers, Emma Thompson and her husband Greg Wise, took the song’s story and ran with it.
The film’s 2017 setting is used to bring in narratives around Brexit, the United Kingdom’s choice to exit the European Union, but what is unclear is exactly how George Michael fits into all of it — though Thompson told EW another one of the late artist’s song’s “Heal the Pain” is “central to the ethos of the movie.”
Besides all the ways the film and Katarina fit in the seasonal Michael tune, the singer seemingly holds little significance to the plot. But eagle-eyed audience members will notice during the final performance of “Last Christmas,” as a part of a homeless shelter benefit, the camera shows Micheal’s Wham! bandmate Andrew Ridgeley.
And that may not be the only Michael easter egg. Universal Pictures confirmed to EW that the film does not specify exactly when Katarina is given the heart transplant, but if the lyrics “Last Christmas I gave you my heart” are to be taken literally, and the film is set in 2017, then that makes the day Tom died and donated his heart Christmas 2016.
What else happened Christmas Day 2016? The death of George Michael.
We don’t know for sure whether Thompson intended this as an additional tribute to Michael, but we gotta have faith.
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