Do Jamie and Anna Go on Their Grand Tour?

My Oxford Year takes viewers on an emotional rollercoaster.

In the Netflix film, which is based on the 2018 book of the same name by Julia Whelan, Sofia Carson plays Anna De La Vega, a New York City-based student getting her master’s degree in poetry at Oxford University. Along the way, she develops a relationship with her teacher, Jamie Davenport (Corey Mylchreest).

Even though they were committed to keeping things “fun,” Anna and Jamie fall in love. The future seems to be a challenge for the couple, as Anna has a job back in N.Y.C. at the end of the school year, and Jamie is a local Oxford resident dedicated to teaching poetry.

However, their lives turn upside down after Anna learns a devastating truth about Jamie, and both of their lives change forever. In addition to Carson and Davenport, the film also stars Dougray Scott, Catherine McCormack, Harry Trevaldwyn, Esmé Kingdom, Nikhil Parmar, Poppy Gilbert, Romina Cocca, Yadier Fernández, Nia Anisah and Hugh Coles.

“I hope that when people watch this film, that’s what they take away, that life is too short to not live it in love and to not live it in joy, and to not live it in complete and utter fulfillment,” Carson told PEOPLE in June 2025.

So, how does My Oxford Year end? Here’s everything to know about the emotional final scenes.

Warning: My Oxford Year spoilers ahead!

How does My Oxford Year end?

Although My Oxford Year initially feels like a love story between two people with different approaches to life, the film takes a turn when Anna discovers the real reason why her professor Jamie won’t commit to her. After the two fall in love, Jamie becomes distant from Anna and tells her that he’s busy working in the library. However, Anna later finds out that he hasn’t been studying and becomes convinced that he’s seeing another woman.

Anna angrily storms into Jamie’s home to see if he is cheating, but when she finds him, she learns a more devastating truth. Upon entering his bedroom, she sees that he is connected to chemotherapy IVs and is undergoing treatment for cancer.

Jamie later explains to Anna that he has been diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of cancer — the same one that his brother, Eddie, died from. After seeing his brother fight for his life with several treatments over the years, Jamie decided that he didn’t want to prolong his life with treatments he knew wouldn’t cure him.

Jamie begs Anna to leave him and move on with her life, but instead, she turns down her Goldman Sachs job in N.Y.C. and dedicates her time to caring for him and creating more memories together amid his devastating diagnosis. The two continue to fall in love and imagine their life outside of the hospital, including planning for a “grand tour” across Europe.

Unfortunately, Jamie ultimately suffers an extreme case of pneumonia that his weakened immune system cannot recover from and dies with Anna by his side.

Although Anna loses Jamie, she honors his legacy by embarking on the “grand tour” by herself and taking over his role as a poetry professor at Oxford University. The final scene of the film shows Anna bringing a pound cake to her first class — the same thing Jamie did when he was a professor and she was his student.

What happens to Jamie?

After he was diagnosed with the rare form of cancer, Jamie made the decision to live every day to its fullest rather than undergoing dozens of treatments like his brother, Eddie, did. His decision comes as a great disappointment to his father, William Davenport (Scott).

However, after coming down with a critical case of pneumonia, William finally respects his son’s wishes and tells the doctors that his son would want “nature to take its course.”

In his final scene in the film, Jamie is lying in a bed with Anna by his side as they discuss all the destinations they’ll venture to in their European “grand tour.”

While they’re speaking about the dream, the movie cuts to a montage of Jamie and Anna galavanting around Paris, Amsterdam and Venice. In the middle of the montage, Anna gets left alone on a beach, signifying that Jamie has succumbed to his illness and died.

What happens to Anna?

After Anna decides to stay with Jamie, she continues standing by his side until he dies. Although Jamie’s death is devastating for Anna, she decides to honor his legacy by going on the European “grand tour” by herself.

The final montage, which originally showed Jamie and Anna travelling across Europe, then pans to Anna hitting all the spots by herself. The emotional montage includes Anna drinking wine by the Seine, sleeping in a gondola in Venice and admiring a church in Amsterdam — all the things she and Jamie planned to do together.

In the midst of the montage, she narrates a quote inspired by Henry David Thoreau and says, “We would live deliberately, sucking out all the marrow of life, no matter how messy it gets.”

After going on her European vacation, Anna returns to her new place in Oxford. She takes over Jamie’s role as a poetry professor and holds her first class where she continues honoring his legacy. She presents her students with the symbolic pound cake and tells them, “Poetry can be taught, but really it should be lived. Let it in, and allow it to change your life.”

What has the cast said about the emotional ending?

After the film was released on Aug. 1, many fans noticed that the film’s ending is different from the book’s. In the book, Whelan chose to give Jamie a successful medical trial after the pneumonia that allowed him to travel to Europe with Anna, after all. However, in the film, Jamie does not get that trial and dies before the trip.

Both Carson and Mylchreest have defended the different ending for their characters and argued that Anna living out Jamie’s legacy is “more powerful.”

“It’s better like that,” Mylchreest said, per Entertainment Weekly. “It’s more powerful. That is the direction that the book is heading in, and it would feel like hypocrisy for Jamie to speak all these things and for Anna to be understanding that philosophy of life [and not end there].”

Carson echoed her costar’s sentiment and said, “Even though it’s clear Anna’s alone at the end, we left it a little bit ambiguous because we wanted the film to end with hope and with light. Which is why we wanted to show them living all those things together. And then when he disappears and when he’s gone and you assume she’s lost him, that element of hope and the idea of life after love and life after loss is a really powerful thing.”

However, Carson, who also served as a producer on the film, clarified that they still played around with the different endings and were having “conversations up until the very last minute of locking the cut,” but they ultimately decided that Jamie’s message was more significant than their romance.

In addition, Mylchreest also credited the film with allowing his character to die on his own terms rather than continuing his treatment into the unknown.

“I was playing someone who is directly facing that question themselves with regard to their own life, and body,” Mylchreest said. “You get a greater understanding of where Jamie comes from, why he is the way that he is, and why he has the strength to think the things that he thinks.”