Grease Fan Theory Suggests That Sandy Is Dead

In the landscape of pop culture, fan theories tend to fall into one of three camps: No Way, Hell Yes, or WTF? But a new theory about Grease has somehow managed to fall into all three of those categories. Simply put, the idea—which was originally posted more than three years ago by Redditor atomicbolt—goes like this: Sandy is dead!

Remember the scene at the beginning of the movie, when Danny and Sandy are getting all summer lovin’-y with long walks on the beach and sandcastles while waves crash all around them? Well, that rough surf is apparently what did our darling little Sandy in. The rest of the Pink Lady-filled musical romp, according to atomicbolt, is just “a drowning woman’s coma fantasy.”

“As she drowned, her brain deprived of oxygen, she had a vivid coma fantasy involving her summer fling Danny, where they shared a magical year of high school together,” atomicbolt went on to explain. “The visions get increasingly outlandish as time passes, until finally, as Danny desperately tries to resuscitate her on the beach, she sees herself flying into Heaven in her dying moments.” Which would explain the movie’s oddly surreal ending, which sees the couple fly off into the sky in a convertible:

As if that weren’t disturbing enough, fellow Reddtor Randomd0g chimed in with an even darker theory: that Sandy is alive for much of the movie, but commits suicide toward the end, and that the final, “Tell me about it, Stud” scene is more of a dream sequence. For proof, Randomd0g points to three things:

“The last line of ‘Look at me I'm Sandra Dee (Reprise)’ is ‘Goodbye to Sandra Dee.’ Everything that happens in the last scene is just a little TOO perfect. Danny and Sandy are back together despite everything, Rizzo SUDDENLY isn't pregnant AND Kenickie suddenly decides that he actually loves her, the geeky kid gets onto the sports team, EVERYTHING is suddenly ok, just the way that sweet, innocent Sandy would have wanted it to be. And in the last shot of the movie, she flies up to heaven with her dream boyfriend in her magic flying car.”

Not to be outdone, then yet another fan of the film offered up an even more grim prospect: they’re both dead!

"Danny tried to save a beautiful stranger from drowning but lost his own life as well in the process," goes the dual death theory, which goes on to suggest that “Sandy” isn’t even her name—it was the name Danny invented for her because of where they both died—and that the rest of the film is “what his life would have been like if he had rescued her."

Tell me more, tell me more.