Let's Talk About the Lyrical and Visual Masterpiece That Is Ariana Grande's Brighter Days Ahead

Ariana Grande has had an insanely busy year. She had every right to take a break from all the press and awards season madness and embark on a well-deserved Sunday reset. But Glinda the Good said absolutely not. Ariana Grande released her highly anticipated deluxe version of Eternal Sunshine, but she went one step further in that magical bubble of hers. She made a 30-minute short film showcasing the ethereal dreamscape and cathartic album that started out as Eternal Sunshine and has evolved into Eternal Sunshine: Brighter Days Ahead. Let’s break down the four memories Peaches revisited, callbacks we noticed, and just praise the musical and cinematic genius that is Ariana Grande.

The film opens with a recorded message from the CEO of Brighter Days Ahead, a company that specializes in preserving old memories and wiping your memory of harmful ones you’d rather not remember. The CEO is played by Grande’s real father Ed Butera, which we will go over at length later on! Any Ari fan would remember we’ve seen Brighter Days Ahead in the music video for “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” back in 2024. The video follows Ariana, who plays Peaches, as she sets up an appointment to wipe her memory of a relationship that ended. This concept might sound fairly familiar to anyone who has seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In that film, two people undergo memory erasure to forget about their time together. This is also the name of Grande’s most recent album which clearly was inspired by the film.

This film reunites audiences with Peaches, who is now an adorable elderly woman. The prosthetic makeup added to Grande is amazing. For a moment I thought they had cast a different woman to play Peaches, but no, it’s the incredibly talented Grande channeling her inner grandma. Peaches has returned to Brighter Days Ahead to relive four memories. She’s now hard of hearing, and communicates only through adorable facial expressions, and a little note that tells the nurse she wants to watch all her memories they have on file. Peaches is now wheelchair bound, and I can’t help but notice her chair is strikingly similar to Professor X’s chair in the X-Men franchise with it’s clunky wheels and futuristic design.

The device that presents Peaches with each of her memories is extremely similar to Pixar’s Inside Out films, where Riley’s memories are contained within tiny orbs that sit on a shelf and can travel back to her emotions to be played again. The first memory Peaches revisits is a montage of her father, mother, grandmother, and other family members when she was younger. This is real footage from Grande’s childhood with the deluxe version of “Intro (End of the World) {Extended}” playing over it. Grande has always showcased her strong family bond throughout her entire career, so opening the film with this montage just made sense.

The next memory brings Peaches back to a concert she put on, where we see a younger Peaches sing an stripped version of “Eternal Sunshine” before going into the full song, followed by her new deluxe song “Dandelion”. The setting around Peaches is drop-dead stunning. She seems to be performing with the galaxy behind her. Perhaps the most adorable part of this memory was elderly Peaches dancing to “Dandelion” in her chair. She knows she was and remains to be that girl!

The third memory takes audiences to an apocalyptic dreamscape where Peaches wakes up in the aftermath of a house fire. We first see the tiny teddy bear that was also featured in the music video for “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love).” This scene includes my personal favorite song from the deluxe album, “Twilight Zone” as Peaches wonders through the house that was once her home. Peaches is reminiscing on her past relationship in disbelief that it happened. The first time Peaches sings “Sometimes I just can’t believe you happened” cuts to a photo of Grande and Evan Peters from the previous “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” music video. This is a genius way to callback to the original storylines of this album, and I love that Grande extends the story past the original music videos. She truly is a visionary and expert when it comes to world building.

The themes of “Twilight Zone” are remembering the past, accepting what was, and finding hope for the future. Peaches looks back on the relationship as she moves through the house, seemingly saying goodbye before moving on for good. Once she leaves the home, the outside world is also reaping the consequences of the catastrophe that went on in the home. Peaches walks through wasteland as she sings “Supernatural.” Peaches walks up to a UFO where she willingly lets it lift her up to space. This moment gave us the gorgeous cover for the deluxe version of Grande’s album, where she’s suspended in the air.

The final memory Peaches relives is a tear-jerker. Audiences are transported to a black and white film scene, which seems like a callback to a line in “Twilight Zone” where Grande sings, “Is this a black and white scene? If so, then I’m in the grey one.” The looming tone of this memory starts out hopeless and grim, but audiences will soon learn that this memory represents the unconditional love and support from Grande’s father, who literally brings Peaches back to life after her traumatic relationship. At one point, her father is reading a newspaper that reveals his daughter was killed by a monster. It seems clear that this monster is probably a metaphor for a hostile relationship that broke the daughter’s spirit.

The story imagines Grande’s father as a Dr. Frankenstein who pieces his dead daughter’s (Peaches) limbs back together hoping to bring her back from the dead. He attempts to save Peaches in the modest, original version of the Brighter Days Ahead lab, where he tries everything he can to save his daughter but is unsuccessful. However, when the father lets music take the reins, Peaches’s lifeless body begins to move once again. He discovers an old music box playing the deluxe song “Hampstead” triggered Peaches’s hand to move. Her father then goes to a piano where he performs “Hampstead” and watches his daughter get revived by his love and the healing power of music. When Peaches finally opens her eyes, the scene is illuminated in color which literally showcases the idea of this story: No matter how dark life may seem, there are always brighter days ahead. The film ends with Peaches and her father at the same pub we found her father in, this time it’s full of warm light and happiness, as the two sing the end of “Hampstead” happily. It’s truly a beautiful ending to a gorgeous story that Grande gave her fans.

This short film seems to be a cathartic release of hardships Grande experienced, and it illuminates the idea that even in the darkest moments, we must remember that there is always light at the end of the tunnel.