The Ending Of 80 For Brady Explained

"80 for Brady" might not go down in history as one of the best sports movies of all time, but the film still has a certain charm to it. Sally Field, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, and Jane Fonda star as a group of friends in their 80s (or almost 80s) with an extreme passion for all things football and Tom Brady. When a story-based contest is giving out free tickets to the 2017 Super Bowl, the group sees their opportunity to have the experience of a lifetime.

Ever so lightly based on a true story, "80 for Brady" combines elements of road trip movies, sports biopics, and buddy comedies to tell a story about friendship that's packed with laughs. You don't have to know everything, or even anything, about football and Tom Brady to fall in love with the group of friends at the heart of the film or to appreciate the chemistry between the four leads, all of whom are top-tier actors, not to mention legends in their own right. This post-game wrap-up will clue fans in on how the gang's Super Bowl shenanigans came to a close and where the friends might be headed next.

"80 for Brady" might technically be a sports movie, but that doesn't mean that you have to be a diehard football fan to enjoy the film. Any movie with talented actresses like Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin is going to pull in a crowd, regardless of the premise. Even people who showed up to the theater with no idea what a two point conversion is probably recognized that Tom Brady is a real football star and that the Patriots and the Falcons are real NFL teams, but they might not know anything about the incredible true story of the 2017 Super Bowl.

Super Bowl LI was history-making in more ways than one, and "80 for Brady" actually nails all the important points. At halftime, the Falcons were 25 points ahead of the Patriots, and almost no one believed that the game could be turned around because no team in history had ever made up more than 10 points in a Super Bowl. Brady and his team proved the world wrong, not only pushing the game into the first overtime in Super Bowl history, but also coming back from that massive deficit to win the game. Was Brady's incredible playing motivated by an inspirational speech from an 80-year-old fan? That we'll never know, but that's the picture that "80 for Brady" paints for viewers.

Making a movie about one of the greatest sports victories of all time seems obvious enough, but where did someone get the idea for the group of friends at the heart of "80 for Brady?" It turns out that they're based on a real group of friends who really are passionate about football and Mr. Tom Brady.

Elaine St. Martin and Betty Pensavale created the Over 80 for Brady fan club with their friends Claire, Anita, and Pat (via CBS Sunday Morning). The women were all football fans for years, and they'd been friends since they were children, but after their husbands died, getting together every Sunday to watch a game brought them closer than ever.

The group's story made the leap to Hollywood thanks to Betty's grandson Max. After making them all "Over 80 for Brady" T-shirts, Max realized that the club's name had a certain ring to it. He already worked in the movie business and decided to pitch the film. Brady learned about it and loved the idea. He even recorded a personal message telling the women he wanted to make a movie about them. Betty, naturally, was elated.

When the movie begins, Maura is in an assisted living facility. She's got one close friend there — a man named Mickey (Glynn Turman) — and she gets to visit her friends for game day every week. Overall, Maura doesn't seem too troubled by her living situation, but it certainly causes trouble for her friends later in the movie. They have to perform an impromptu prison break to get her out in time to make it to the Super Bowl, and thanks to some sleeping pills, Maura isn't able to help them with the escape.

While she's still on her Super Bowl trip, Maura talks with Mickey over the phone and tells him that she's decided to leave the facility. She still has a house, and she'd like to go back to living in it. Maura's decision seems to surprise Mickey, and even the audience might feel like it comes a little out of the blue. If Maura likes the facility well enough, why leave it? Maura's Super Bowl extravaganza with her friends convinces her that she'd like to be a little more active, and a little more free to leave for more big adventures, than her lifestyle at the facility will allow. After all, why bother playing it safe when you can get into trouble and end up meeting Tom Brady?

Romance isn't the biggest focus in "80 for Brady," but for some characters, love is very much in the air. When Maura is first talking to Mickey at their assisted living facility, it's easy to see that the two have great chemistry. It's also pretty easy to see that Mickey is head-over-heels for Maura. He tells her that he's come to realize what's more important is who you get to spend your time with, and it's obvious he wants to spend more time with her.

Unfortunately for Mickey, Maura has other priorities at that moment. Seeing the two of them getting into hilarious situations while trying to meet a football star would definitely be entertaining — and might even be good material for its own movie — but it wouldn't be "80 for Brady." Maura tells Mickey that she needs to go on her trip with her friends, and while she's passed out from sleeping pills, Mickey helps the others get her out of the facility and make their plane.

When Maura tells Mickey over the phone that she's leaving the facility, she promises him that he can come over to her house any time he wants. The end of the movie gives us a flash-forward to the 2018 NFL season, and sure enough, Mickey is there on Sunday with ladies, so it seems safe to assume he and Maura finally found the time for each other.

Maura isn't the only character in "80 for Brady" who finds herself a romantic interest. To get primed for the big day, the entire crew heads to the NFL Experience the day before the game, and while there Trish runs into a man she recognizes, but not because she's met him before. Dan O' Callahan (Harry Hamlin) is one of the few characters in the movie who isn't based on a real person. He's a former NFL player who's actually won a Super Bowl himself. Trish notices his Super Bowl ring, and the two of them hit it off.

Dan takes down Trish's phone number, but when he starts texting her the next day, she has some second thoughts about their potential relationship. She tells her friends that she's spent her life going in and out of relationships, and she isn't sure she's ready to head down that path again. Even though Trish's friends are encouraging her, she still keeps ignoring Dan's texts.

Eventually all the ladies run into Dan just as they're about to get kicked out of the Super Bowl for not having tickets. He saves the day and invites them all up to a skybox where they can watch the rest of the game in style. After that he and Trish get back to talking, and even though Dan doesn't show up in the final scene of the movie, there's no reason to think they didn't give their relationship a shot.

Early on in the movie, the 80 for Brady crew tries to win free tickets to the Super Bowl by calling into a sports show and telling a moving story as part of an open competition. Later Lou comes to see the rest of her friends with tickets in hand and tells them all that they won the competition. It's not until disaster strikes and the tickets are revealed to be fake that Lou finally admits they didn't win anything. She paid for the tickets and trip out of her own pocket because she was worried that it would be their last opportunity to have a big, memorable experience together.

Losing the tickets ultimately doesn't prevent the gang from getting to see the Super Bowl or meet Tom Brady himself, but Lou is still out a huge chunk of money. Maura steps in and offers to pay Lou back everything she spent to get them to the game. It turns out that when the Patriots were 25 points behind in the game, Maura took out a bet with the skybox's owner. Who knows what she put up for her end of the bet, but she walked away with all the money in the owner's wallet and his gold watch.

Lou, Trish, Maura, and Betty aren't the only people with problems in "80 for Brady." Betty's husband Mark (Bob Balaban) is an academic writer who's struggling to finish a paper that he needs to publish. Mark keeps asking Betty for her input on the paper, even after she leaves for her Super Bowl trip. He sends her multiple drafts and continually calls, asking if she's had time to read them, so he can base his final edits on her criticism.

Eventually Betty snaps and tells Mark that this is one problem he's going to have to solve himself. It's clear that he's been relying on her for writerly advice for quite a while, probably decades, but this trip finally pushes Betty's patience over the edge. Mark seems a little hurt by his wife's impatience, but he agrees to finish the paper on his own. Presumably, that's exactly what he does. A squabble like this isn't about to end a multi-decade marriage, so the movie doesn't return to this particular argument as it wraps things up. But it seems safe to say that Betty finally establishes a boundary she's needed for quite a while, and Mark learns how to be a little more self-sufficient.

Lou buys everyone tickets to the Super Bowl because she is seriously worried that her health is about to take a turn that will prevent her from going on any kind of trip ever again. In the movie we learn that Lou survived a bout with cancer several years before the Super Bowl trip, and in the lead-up to the Patriots's big game, her doctor reveals that he has some concerns and wants to run new tests to see if she is ill again.

Before even going on the trip, Lou gets her test results in the mail, but she decides that she doesn't want to look at them. She gets the tickets just in case she is about to receive bad news, and she doesn't want that news to potentially ruin the mood of the trip. When the whole group thinks that they aren't actually going to get into the game because the tickets turn out to be fake, Lou confesses everything to her friends, and they help make her feel better about the situation. Still, no one knows what the test results are, and they can't find out until they get back home.

The end of the movie skips forward to the next NFL season, and everyone's gathered back around the TV to watch Tom Brady play. Betty makes a quick reference to Lou's health being perfectly fine, which means those test results came back negative, and Lou never had anything to worry about in the first place.

"80 for Brady" would almost certainly feel incomplete if the crew never got the chance to meet Tom Brady in person. Throughout the movie, Lou envisions Brady giving her inspirational speeches that help her through difficult moments. She gets the opportunity to return the favor to the real Brady at halftime. She and her friends break into the coordinator's booth, and Lou gives Brady an inspirational speech over his helmet's speaker that helps him turn the game around for the Patriots in historic fashion.

After the game, a security guard approaches the group, and they're prepared to get in massive trouble for breaking into the booth. Instead he tells them that Brady would like to see all of them in the locker room. While the other women meet the team, Lou sits down with Brady and he thanks her for what she said to him.

Brady's appreciation apparently doesn't end there. A mid-credits scene shows Lou and all her friends relaxing on a beach, and Brady is seen joining them. Maybe the five of them took a trip out to the beach the day after the game, or perhaps Brady and the gang get together regularly, now that they've all helped each other so much.

Lou, Maura, Trish, and Betty aren't just fans of Tom Brady, they're major New England Patriots fans as well. They've been following the entire team for years, and after getting to meet them in person, they're bigger fans than ever. That must make the 2017-2018 NFL season pretty awkward for everyone.

Brady leaves the Patriots to play for the Buccaneers, but it doesn't seem like Lou or any of her friends take the decision too personally. In fact, the entire friend group finds a way to hold on to both of their favorite fandoms. During the football watch party at the end of the movie, everyone is wearing a custom jersey that is half Patriots and half Buccaneers.

How did the real-life Under 80 for Brady group respond to the quarterback's sudden change in loyalties? They took it a little harder than their big screen counterparts. "I was angry with him. I wanted to kill him," Elaine St. Martin told CBS Sunday Morning. But after the initial shock, Martin was able to get over her anger at least enough to continue wearing her game day shirt with Brady's face on it. There's no word yet on how the ladies feel about Brady announcing his permanent retirement on February 1 — conveniently two days before "80 for Brady" arrived in theaters.