Ariana Grande is giving us a glimpse at her future—and looking back at her past.
The musician and Wicked star just dropped both a deluxe edition of her album Eternal Sunshine and a 26-minute-long short film called Brighter Days Ahead; the film continues the storyline of her “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” music video, which was inspired by the beloved 2000s movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The short film opens with Grande’s character Peaches— an aged-up Grande, complete with long, graying hair that flows down her back instead of in her signature ponytail, a hearing aid, and wrinkles—being prepped to revisit her last remaining memories.
As we watch, the older version of Peaches watches the most precious and meaningful moments of her life, including a montage of Grande’s IRL parents and grandparents dancing and clips of herself as a little kid. (Trust me, you might want to watch this with a few tissues nearby.) Grande-as-Peaches wears her hair pulled halfway up and back, pinned with a handful of flower pins. Her hands are wrinkled, though she’s still wearing her go-to French manicure, which has been a mainstay in her routine for years. Her hand tattoos, most notably the fingertip designs, are present and accounted for, though they’ve faded with time. (The special effects makeup and prosthetics were done by award-winning artist Justin Raleigh.) Throughout the short film, Grande performs a few songs from the album while Peaches watches—in her ponytail, no less—and walks through the wreckage of the life she left behind before stepping into her future and (literally) being put back together again.
Brighter Days Ahead, like the Eternal Sunshine album and the video for “We Can’t Be Friends”, is a meditation about how the joyful and painful moments of life can coexist, helping you become the person you’re meant to be. This theory shows on Grande-as-Peaches’s face, which is etched with the lines and memories.
In 2023, Grande got emotional when talking about her use of injectables and why she quit using them, telling Vogue that she wasn’t necessarily swearing them off forever, but was happy with her decision in the moment. “I know for me, I was just like, oh — I want to see my well-earned cry lines and smile lines. I hope my smile lines get deeper and deeper and I laugh more and more. And I just think aging … it can be such a beautiful thing.”