The One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson and lead star Leonardo DiCaprio talk about how they had to redo the ending. The comedy thriller came to theaters on September 26. DiCaprio plays a father and a former core member of a vigilante activist group called the French 57, who went underground with his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), after his then partner ratted the group out.

Jumping forward to decades later, after their location became exposed, DiCaprio’s Bob struggled to exit, while Willa, who went with a group member, started to discover the truth about her parentage. A confrontation with Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw revealed that she was truly Lockjaw’s daughter.

After making a deal to keep her safe, Lockjaw found himself targeted by Tim, a member of the Christmas Adventures club. In the final chase scene, Willa faced Tim’s ᴀssᴀssination attempt before Bob showed up.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, DiCaprio and Anderson revealed when they filmed the chase scene and how the ending changed in the process. The particular scene in which Willa tried to outrun Tim took place from the “northernmost tip to the southernmost tip of California.” Check out their comments below:

Anderson: We moved from the northernmost tip to the southernmost tip of California; those hills are near the Arizona border. We knew we had to get our bumbling hero to get to our real hero, who is Willa. We’re on the road, there’s a car chase with a third person in pursuit, and we have those dynamics. And it was simply through the luck of the movie gods that we found these incredible rolling hills. If you put your phone on the dashboard of your car, you realize just how scary that point of view becomes — you’re driving 85 miles per hour and you can’t see what’s over that hill, nor can you see what’s behind you for most of the time. So this kind of revealed us to ourselves via a location scout, and it was a great idea.

While there were many discussions about the reunion between Bob and Willa, they “didn’t have that in place” until the actual filming. Anderson revealed that in an early version, the father and daughter hugged as soon as they saw each other, but he changed his mind because he believed “there’s more.” Read their comment below:

DiCaprio: We had a lot of discussions about what was going to happen at that moment at the end. There were a mulтιтude of options we put out there.

Anderson: Yeah, well, I was wildly skipping over that particular part of the story. [Laughs.] I think that we had done a version where as soon as they see each other, they hugged, and we watched it the next day in dailies. And it occurred to me, hang on, there’s more here.

DiCaprio: Did we redo it?

Anderson: We did. We reshoot it, and I think what we got is much stronger. Coming up with the situation for Willa, where she is finally able to take agency over a situation — to turn the tables, be the aggressor, take the high ground — this became very exciting to us. Then the next part is simply: Who kills who, and how? Somebody’s gotta shoot somebody else, and somebody’s gotta get outta there! [Laughs.] Through the scouting and rehearsing, we really discovered that the biggest moment was Chase being put into the position of having to pay for the sins of her mom and her dad. And the next thing that came to us was, “Well, if she knows who she is, the biggest question [to Bob] is: Who the hell are you?” And the answer to that is…

DiCaprio: “I’m your dad.”

Anderson: “I’m your dad.” These kinds of things came from being out there, and practicing and playing and discovering stuff with them. It’s embarrᴀssing to admit, but as we got on the road to make this film, we didn’t really have that in place. But we’d filmed enough and knew these people well enough that we knew something had to happen, and we were lucky enough to find what I think is a terrific solution to the whole thing.

Anderson also admitted that a darker version of the ending also existed at one point, but “it didn’t sit well” with them.

DiCaprio: It’s that openness to asking questions and coming up with new things that made shooting this such a different experience. That’s why when Benicio came in…. Look, Paul had been working on this a long time, there were a lot of moving parts and a lot of layers here. We were something like three months in when Benicio showed up, and he immediately had all of these ideas. The energy changed. It was suddenly like [del Toro] and I were in a Cheech & Chong road movie for like a week. [Laughs.] Some sets, it would be like, “We’ve already been at this for a while.” With Paul, it was like, “OK, you guys understand these characters. Let’s see what happens.”

Anderson: There was the sense that the film might have gone in a darker direction, and it didn’t sit well with either of us. And then when Benicio came in, and I saw how their characters interacted, it was like, there’s another option here. It felt better. It made more sense.

What This Means For Bob And Willa In One Battle After Another

Even though Bob was right after Willa and Tim, he couldn’t get there in time to rescue her. Willa had to take care of Tim herself. The steep hills in the chase scene worked both against her and in her favor while adding intensity to the scene. Meanwhile, the desert highway also became the main obstacle between Bob and Willa.

One Battle After Another‘s ending took viewers to Borrego Springs and Anza Borrego. The series of dips are known as the Texas Dip, where the iconic scene between Willa and Tim took place. Lockjaw’s car flipped in Borrego Springs, and the road where Lockjaw dropped Avanti off is in Ocotillo Wells.

Our Take On Bob And Willa’s Epic Reunion In One Battle After Another

Willa went through a lot in the highly rated One Battle After Another after she was picked up by a member of the revolutionary group. She first learned about her mother’s betrayal and realized the man who her dad said was responsible for killing her mother was her biological father.

After being abducted and traded off to someone she had never met in her life and taking care of an ᴀssᴀssin, the reunion with Bob would see a flicker of emotions from the teen. Anderson and DiCaprio’s comments broke down the creative approach they took to capture the reunion and brought viewers’ attention to the range of emotions and thoughts that went through Willa’s mind during the scene.