Mean Girls 2024 Ending Explained

20 years after the original film, a musical movie adaptation of Mean Girls was released, providing a new twist to the 2004 classic and making some ending changes. Mean Girls was first adapted into a popular musical for the Broadway stage in 2017. This has translated into positive reviews for the Mean Girls musical film due to the fun musical numbers, popular source material, and strong performances. Though some changes were made between all three versions of Mean Girls, it remains a faithful adaptation full of familiar jokes that are still laugh-out-loud funny two decades later.

Mean Girls was originally meant to be released solely for streaming on Paramount+ but was given a theatrical release. Mean Girls can be streamed on the service, and The Mean Girls soundtrack is available on all major music streaming platforms. Mean Girls modernizes both the 2004 movie and 2017 stage production, utilizing new developments in social media and trends that will eventually make it just as nostalgic as the original. Though the slogan for Mean Girls 2024 is “not your mother’s Mean Girls,” the movie musical can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages.

How Mean Girls 2024's Ending Is Different From The 2004 Movie

Mean Girls 2024 Makes Numerous Changes To The Original Movie's Ending

The big ending scene of both Mean Girls (2004) and Mean Girls (2024) took place at the Spring Fling dance. Before the Spring Fling Queen was announced in the musical movie, Regina and Cady spoke in the bathroom where Cady apologized, and Regina (high on painkillers) forgave her former friend. It’s a nice moment added to the 2024 film that further acknowledges that Regina wasn’t the only villain in Mean Girls.

When Cady is named Spring Fling Queen in Mean Girls, it’s against different competition. In the original movie, Damian snuck Janis into the group of nominees, whereas in the musical, Karen is nominated alongside her fellow Plastics. This wasn’t the only change made to Janis’ character in Mean Girls 2024. While she was bullied in the original movie after Regina spread a (likely false) rumor that she was a lesbian, Janis was out and proud in Mean Girls 2024, taking a girl to the Spring Fling instead of attending with her gay best friend Damian.

After years of speculation, Mean Girls 2024 takes Janis from a queer-coded character to a canon lesbian. This also meant that she and Damian never awkwardly kissed at the dance and Janis never ended up with Kevin G like she did in the original epilogue. This was always a confusing moment in Mean Girls, and the 2024 film improved upon this by providing important representation instead.

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What Tina Fey Has Said About Mean Girls 2024's Ending Compared To The Original Movie

Tina Fey Has Spoken About Significant Changes Made To The Script

With Mean Girls 2024 not just written 20 years after the first movie but taking place 20 years after the original story, there had to be some updates made to the script. As writer Tina Fey noted in a New York Times interview, some things were deemed okay–even when they weren’t–in 2004 that simply wouldn’t fly today. For example, Regina had a line in the original Mean Girls about Janis dreaming of diving into a pile of girls and everyone laughed, but Fey took it out as she felt students today would take the homophobic "joke" for what it is.

Fey didn’t just update the script to reflect today’s society, she wanted to teach some lessons as well. In 2017, while preparing for the Broadway musical, Fey appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers. She told a story about her five-year-old daughter getting the wrong messages from Mean Girls, despite it being “positive at its core.” This could have inspired her to emphasize this positivity in Mean Girls 2024 by adding certain apologies and having everyone get along and not just co-exist.

What Happens To The Cady & The Plastics After Mean Girls?

The original Mean Girls film featured an epilogue narrated by Cady that revealed what happened to them during their senior year of high school. Cady began dating Aaron, Regina joined the lacrosse team (which served as a positive outlet for her anger), Karen became a weatherperson, and Gretchen joined a new clique. Though a group of young girls seemed ready to take over as the new junior Plastics, as Cady put it, “finally, Girl World was at peace.” The new group of Plastics only left room open for the disastrous Mean Girls sequel.

Without this epilogue in the Mean Girls musical movie, viewers can only speculate what happened to Cady and The Plastics after the film ended. Since Karen didn’t have her “ESPN” subplot, she probably didn’t end up as a weatherperson, but the other character outcomes could have been plausible. The end credits scenes showed everyone having fun at the Spring Fling dance, suggesting that after Mean Girls, they all became friends, or at least could be friendly with each other.

Lindsay Lohan Returns For Mean Girls Cameo

The Original Cady Plays A Different Role

Mean Girls had a surprise cameo with Lindsay Lohan playing the host of the High School Mathletes State Championship. After avoiding the club due to what it would do to her social status, Cady finally joined the Mathletes towards the end of the film to gain extra credit. This is where she says her famous “the limit does not exist” line, but not before sharing a comedic conversation with Lohan’s unnamed character.

Cady had learned her lesson from her time with The Plastics and didn’t want to compete with other girls anymore. However, Lohan as the host reminds her that she’s actually taking part in a competition, which she wins for North Shore. She may not have played her original character like Tina Fey and Tim Meadows, but Lohan's cameo is a nice nod to 2004’s Mean Girls film and her contributions to the classic.

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Why Mean Girls' Ending Doesn't Set Up A Sequel

It’s Unlikely That Mean Girls 2024 Will Have A Sequel

Mean Girls 2024 has a post-credit scene that previously appeared in the trailer and likely happened when Cady first came to Regina’s house. Karen and Regina are walking to the camera as the head of The Plastics says, “You're next. You could be really hot if we changed, like, everything." Since it’s a direct address to the camera, the Mean Girls post-credit scene could be interpreted as a tease at a sequel, but that doesn’t fit with the film’s message. Rather, it’s more likely a cheeky way to address the audience and warn that anyone could become a Plastic.

The original Mean Girls movie had a sequel, Mean Girls 2, which was released in 2011 as a standalone TV movie. It shared the setting of North Shore High and followed a similar plot formula, with a new girl transferring to the school and encountering The Plastics, leading her to start her own clique, The Anti-Plastics. It was ill-received and deemed an unnecessary sequel that paled in comparison to the original. The Mean Girls story is self-contained, so there’s no need for the musical movie to have a sequel.

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What The Lyrics Of Mean Girls' Ending Song "I See Stars" Mean

“I See Stars” Has A Deeper Meaning

Along with the changes in dialogue between Mean Girls 2004 and Mean Girls 2024, the use of songs and their lyrics allows the movie musical to add even more depth to the story. Songs like “What’s Wrong With Me?” provide another look at Gretchen’s character and her relationship with Regina. Multiple Broadway songs were missing from Mean Girls 2024, but one that appears in both versions is the finale song, “I See Stars,” which Cady sings when she breaks her Spring Fling Queen crown and gives the pieces away.

On its surface, the lyrics of “I See Stars” are about how everyone is a star. She sings to them, “You shine as bright as day / I will look out for you / We’ll light each other’s way / You’re all stars.” Yet, earlier in Mean Girls 2024, Cady spoke about missing the stars she would see at night in Africa – in the Broadway musical, this was the subject of the song “More Is Better.” At the end, Cady sings about stars because she finally feels at home again because she’s being her true self for the first time since she arrived at North Shore High.

The Real Meaning Of Mean Girls 2024

Mean Girls 2024 Has An Important Message

In the original, film, Cady summed up Mean Girls’ biggest lesson via a voice-over in which she said, “Calling someone stupid doesn't make you any smarter.” The line was given to Ms. Norbury in the Mean Girls movie musical during the assembly scene and was repeated by Janis and Damian in the film’s closing remarks. Unlike the original movie, which Cady narrated, the 2024 version was framed as a story being told by Janis and Damian, providing another perspective to the familiar story. Following the Spring Fling, they returned to provide the story’s moral.

Janis was one of Mean Girl’s meanest characters, but the final scene proved she too had learned her lesson: there is nothing to gain from being mean to someone, whether they were mean to you first or not. That just makes you like them, as shown by Cady becoming Plastic and acting in the same way she’d previously judged. If you have to become a worse version of yourself for someone to like you, those people aren’t your real friends. Amidst all the comedy and songs, Mean Girls has an important message to always lead with kindness and authenticity.

Which Mean Girls Has A Better Ending?

The Movies End With The Same Message

Both movies end with the idea of being kinder to those around you. They also both end with people accepting their culpability in bad behavior. That being said, the 2024 movie, arguably, has the better ending even if the movie overall doesn’t hold up to the icon status of the original.

Part of the reason that the 2024 movie has the better ending is that the audience gets to see both Cady and Regina own up to how poorly they treated one another. It’s important that the audience realize that Cady’s quest to help Janis get revenge on Regina doesn’t just change her on the surface but really does bring out the mean girl inside of her. Cady learns her lesson in the first movie, but she and Regina don’t apologize to one another there.

Another point in the 2024 movie’s favor is that it doesn’t tease a sequel. There’s no need to tease the idea of underclassmen beginning to perpetuate the mean girl cycle. The movie allows itself a conclusive ending with Janis and Damien closing it out by sharing the end of the story with the audience. Janis and Damien singing their goodbyes as the rest of the characters celebrate at the dance is a fitting way to close out the 2024 version of Mean Girls.

Source: New York Times, Late Night With Seth Meyers

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  Mean Girls is a reimagining of the 2004 classic comedy film as a musical, directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. When Cady Heron and her family move from Africa to the United States; she experiences a culture shock when she enters the public school system for the first time. While trying to fit in, she is roped into the popular but superficial and cruel clique, the Plastics.

  Director Samantha Jayne , Arturo Perez Jr.

  Release Date January 12, 2024

  Writers Nell Benjamin , Tina Fey

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  Mean Girls tells the story of Cady (Lindsay Lohan), a teen girl who falls in with the wrong crowd. After returning to the USA after spending her childhood in Africa, Cady infiltrates her school's group of mean girls, befriending the conniving Regina George (Rachel McAdams) and her cronies. However, Cady finds the high school hierarchy to be far more complicated than she had imagined, drawing her into a game of manipulation and deceit that threatens her reputation.

  Director Mark Waters

  Release Date April 30, 2004

  Writers Tina Fey