Greta Gerwig discusses the “mic drop” final line in Barbie
Gerwig at least partially credits the "cinema gods" with giving her the movie's ending
Everyone loves Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, or at least everyone loved seeing it this weekend, but if you ask Gerwig how she pulled off such an impressive feat—balancing the demands of Mattel and Warner Bros. with her desire to tell a thoughtful story around one of the biggest toy brands in the world—she might chalk a surprising amount of it up to the “cinema gods” and the “gifts” they grant you as a filmmaker. In other words, some of what she thinks of as the movie’s best ideas just kind of popped into her head, and she thought it would be a waste to ignore them. One of those “gifts” is the movie big final line, a joke that Gerwig referred to as a “mic drop.”
[The following contains spoilers for Barbie.]
At the end of the movie, Margot Robbie’s Barbie has made the decision to leave Barbieland and stay in the real world as a human, with America Ferrera’s character Gloria dropping her off at what appears to be a human job interview. Instead, Barbie walks into an office, confidently approaches a receptionist, and says: “I’m here to see my gynecologist.”
Gerwig told Indiewire that the line “sort of” came to her in a dream and she realized that there was no other way she wanted the movie to end, and while there were “some discussions” about it, she ultimately decided that some “gifts” from the “cinema gods” shouldn’t really be “down to you.” So she chose to embrace it and stick with that ending.
Going a little deeper with USA Today, Gerwig said that she wanted this to be a “mic drop kind of joke” that still has some emotional weight to it. “When I was a teenage girl,” she explained, “I remember growing up and being embarrassed about my body, and just feeling ashamed in a way that I couldn’t even describe. It felt like everything had to be hidden.” So, by showing Barbie not only going to a gynecologist but doing it with “this big old smile on her face” and going in with “such happiness and joy,” Gerwig hoped she could give other girls a chance to see that “Barbie does it too.” She also noted that she wanted everything in the movie to operate “on at least two levels,” and that final line was all about saying something with both “the levity and the heart.”