Sumith Prasad
Directed by Azazel Jacobs, Netflix’s drama film ‘His Three Daughters’ ends with several nuanced developments concerning the relationship between Rachel, Christina, and Katie, three sisters who reunite to be there for their dying father, Vincent. Their efforts to tolerate each other take a turn when a fight breaks out among them. Christina convinces the other two to talk the lingering issues out so that they can co-exist peacefully for their father. Their decision to spend more time with their dad together paves the way for an ambiguous scene. As the moving drama concludes, the feelings in the three sisters for each other change drastically! SPOILERS AHEAD.
His Three Daughters Plot Synopsis
‘His Three Daughters’ begins with Katie talking about the reunion of her and her two sisters, Rachel and Christina, as they prepare for the death of their father, Vincent. They are guided by Angel, a medical personnel who explains to them the benefits of hospice care. Katie is annoyed by Rachel’s actions. She cannot tolerate the latter smoking marijuana inside the house. As far as she is concerned, her sister is awaiting their father’s death to acquire the apartment in New York City since her name is on the lease. It is revealed that Rachel is the daughter who had been looking after Vincent for years by living with him in the same apartment while the other two are away with their families.
Katie and Christina take turns to care for Vincent while Rachel hesitates to enter her father’s room. The two married women are also highly involved in their respective family members’ lives through calls. When Benjy, seemingly Rachel’s boyfriend, comes over, he is hurt by how she is treated. He confronts Katie and Christina about not being there for Vincent and giving a hard time to Rachel, the only daughter who has been with their father. The confrontation ends with Katie banishing Benjy from the apartment, who leaves the place after embracing Rachel. The elder one tries to apologize to her sister, but they end up fighting with Christina in the middle.
Christina separates Katie and Rachel by screaming. The next day, she brings the other two for a conversation together. Rachel makes it clear that Vincent is the only father she knows and that she is his daughter no matter what, even though her biological father is a man who disappeared from her life when she was four. When she was a child, Vincent married her mother and has cared for her ever since. She also adds that she does not want the apartment after his death as she is not there for the place but for her father. Rachel eventually enters her father’s room briefly and lets him know about the results of her parlay.
His Three Daughters Ending: How Does Vincent Come Out of the Coma? Are the Sisters Dreaming Him?
Towards the end of ‘His Three Daughters,’ Angel tells Rachel, Christina, and Katie that Vincent won’t most likely regain his consciousness again. The sisters, especially the two who have been fighting ever since they reunited, bond over the medical personnel’s changing calculations concerning their father’s potential death. Christina takes advantage of the other two’s truce and decides to spend their time with Vincent together. They bring him out of his room and make him sit on his favorite chair. Meanwhile, he regains consciousness and frees himself from the medical equipment attached to him. He then takes a beer from the refrigerator and talks to his three daughters.
Vincent’s conversation with Rachel, Christina, and Katie is not real. Rather than the three sisters dreaming of him, we can say that it is an unreal manifestation of what he wanted to say to his daughters, possibly for decades, but couldn’t because they were never with him together. Vincent may not have ended up in a coma, as Angel believes. Considering his incorrect and often fluctuating predictions about the old man’s health and death, his words about the father never regaining consciousness cannot be outrightly trusted. Furthermore, he only states it as a possibility rather than a definite observation. Vincent must be on the edge of consciousness, with his mind aware of what’s happening around him, especially the sisters’ fights and struggles.
With that last bit of consciousness, or even subconsciously, for that matter, Vincent must be mentally voicing out what he wants to say to his daughters. As a father, he gets hurt when Katie tries to establish that Rachel is not his daughter and her sister. He puts an end to that line of thought by stating that he is her father, and the biological relation does not determine the role. As someone who struggled with an abusive father, Vincent knows about it all too well. Similarly, he apologizes to Christina for not being there for her when her mother died and for moving on with his life by finding love again without bothering to care for her.
Vincent must have held these thoughts, clarifications, and apologies for long. Since Katie and Christina never visited him frequently, he never had the chance to express the same before his health worsened. Now, after meeting death at a short distance, he must have realized he wouldn’t get another chance to pour his heart out. His mind’s efforts to express himself are depicted as a conversation that never materializes in reality. Through this conversation, the film showcases the loose ends every parent carries regarding one’s children and how one desperately tries to tie them together before dying.
Does Vincent Die? What is the Meaning of Christina’s Song?
Vincent dies soon after Rachel, Christina, and Katie help him sit on his favorite chair. His death has always been inevitable. Considering the severity of his cancer and his worsening health, there hasn’t been any hope left for him. Unfortunately, he has to die before he can express himself to his daughters concerning their relationships with him and within themselves. Christina then commemorates the occasion by singing “Five Little Ducks,” a traditional children’s song. The song, which chronicles the disappearances of four little ducks, reflects what happens in Vincent’s life. In the song, the mother duck waits for all of her children but one to vanish to find them.
Similarly, Vincent lost all of his children but Rachel, like the mother duck, as they grew up. As the bird in the song, he didn’t do anything when Katie and Christina disappeared from his life. Eventually, only his stepdaughter was with him when he got older. When Christina finishes singing the song, Rachel intervenes and sings the line, “Daddy duck said, “beep, beep, beeeeeep,’” imitating the flatline caused by his death. The line conveys how his imminent death, which is symbolized by the “beep” sound, brought the disappeared ducks/daughters back together.
Even though Vincent fails to pour his heart out to his daughters before dying to mend their relationship, his death on the horizon does the job for him. The ducks/daughters listen to the “beep” sound and reunite for him, which is exactly why he wants to express himself to his children.
Do Rachel, Christina, and Katie Reconnect?
When Katie and Rachel’s fight reaches a culminating point, Christina observes that they are all different people. The eldest moved out of the apartment when her stepsister was a child who hadn’t grown enough to express her sadness concerning the same. Christina struggled with her mother’s death in the absence of her sister, witnessing another woman replacing the late woman with another girl. These intricacies have existed since they united as a family, and the same may not ever evaporate from their lives. Even when ‘His Three Daughters’ concludes, we can’t say the three sisters reconnect entirely.
However, the degree of their reconnection may not matter. What Rachel, Christina, and Katie do is find a common field where they can bond, irrespective of their differences. They understand that their father’s demise and the apartment where they all once lived with him carry similar emotional significance in their lives, which is enough for them to accept one another. When it comes to their father, they become three daughters sharing a common grief, and it reconnects them. Vincent has known the impact of his death on his children all along. That’s why he tells them in the unreal conversation that they will be together because of his death.
After Vincent’s death, Rachel, Christina, and Katie have a reason to remain together. Nobody can understand their grief concerning their father’s absence like themselves. This reality is emotionally powerful enough for Katie and Christina to forget that the third sister was born to another woman or that woman replaced their dead mother in their father’s lives. When their identities are limited to Vincent’s “three daughters,” as the film’s title conveys, the differences and conflicts between them cease to exist. They reconnect as his three daughters, who have their own individual lives. The film concludes without promising that the sisters will forever be together.
Christina and Katie even leave Rachel and the apartment soon after Vincent’s death. Azazel Jacobs’ screenplay acknowledges that their priority will always be their individual lives. However, now they have an apartment where they can return and become just daughters. When they are in this shared space, they are together for good. That’s the reason why Katie hopes Rachel will never leave the apartment. When she says that she wants the place to remain within the family, she means the family of the three sisters. The acceptance of such a family is what changes between the sisters. They reconnect enough to recognize each other as their family. Ultimately, that’s all that matters.
Read More: His Three Daughters: Is the Netflix Film Based on a True Story?
