Adaline Bowman’s aging (or lack thereof) in The Age of Adaline provides a key part of the framework for the movie. Adaline Bowman was born near the beginning of the 20th century, but finds herself in the early 21st century looking as young as ever, having stopped aging many decades earlier in Lee Toland Krieger’s 2015 romantic fantasy.

Narrator Hugh Ross ascribes her extraordinary physical condition despite having lived for more than a hundred years to “something almost magical” that occurred in 1937. In fact, throughout her life “there was absolutely no scientific explanation for her condition.” If that were the sum total of the exposition in The Age of Adaline, which ropes Harrison Ford into the realm of fantasy as well as Lively, our imaginations could have done the rest. Nevertheless, it was decided that a full science-based theory was in order.

Adaline Stopped Aging After Dying In A Car Accident And Being Revived By A Lightning Strike

The Lightning Bolt Was Quite The Shock To Her System

The movie’s premise is set up through a full six-and-a-half minutes of voiceover from Ross, in which he expounds the science behind what happened to Adaline one night in December when “snow fell in Sonoma County, California.” Due to the bad weather, Lively’s character lost control of her car while driving and crashed into a ravine. This car accident should have ended her life, as the shock of plunging into the icy water soon caused her heart to stop.

At this point, however, a lightning strike hit the partially submerged vehicle, which Ross tells us discharged “half a billion volts of electricity” through Adaline. The lightning bolt served as a natural defibrillator, bringing her back to life. It had another, more unlikely effect, too. The enormously powerful electric current that pᴀssed through her halted the process of cellular aging, the natural decline in the human body’s ability to repair and replace its cells over time. This freak occurrence, explained by a fictional scientific theory The Age of Adaline calls “Von Lehman’s principle of electron compression and deoxyribonucleic acid,” effectively stopped her getting older, at least in the physical sense.

How Old Adaline Really Was During The Age Of Adaline

She Looked Much Younger Than She Was For Most Of The Movie

Adaline was born on New Year’s Day 1908, as the narration seven minutes into the film explains. Therefore, she was less than one month short of her 30th birthday when she had her accident. Her body was effectively frozen in its physical state at that point, meaning she retained the appearance and conditioning she had at 29 years old for the rest of The Age of Adaline. In the first years after her accident, it wasn’t clear that there was anything unusual about her appearance. But by the age of 45, she had to admit to herself that there was something strange going on. Old friends were reacting in mild horror when they saw that she now looked younger than her own daughter, and police officers were hauling her in because they thought the age shown on her driving license was fake.

On the other hand, Adaline lived up to the real age of 108 during the course of the movie. Although she continued to look as she did in 1937, another 78 years of her life pᴀssed before her body began the process of cellular aging, in 2015.

Why Adaline Finally Started Aging Again In The Age Of Adaline’s Ending

Another Car Accident Led To The Second Shock Her Body Needed

Since Adaline stopped aging as a result of a powerful electric shock, it took a similar event to restore the natural course of aging to her body. Ironically, another fatal car accident provides the context for a second electric shock to be administered, as paramedics defibrillated Adaline’s heart after she stopped breathing.

It’s only fitting that the resumption of the aging process is explained via another piece of pseudo-scientific exposition, ending The Age of Adaline where it started. “The instant Adaline’s heart was struck by the defibrillator paddles,” Ross reveals, “the telomere structures in her genes regained their pliability.” Her genes were able to fulfill their natural role once more, meaning cellular repair and reproduction entered into a state of decline. Finally, Adaline began to get older.

In The Age of Adaline’s closing moments, she noticed a grey hair in the mirror and plucked it out as a sense of overwhelming relief washed over her. For the first time in 78 years, a life of relative normality, rather than immortality, lay ahead of her.