Summer of 69 Ending Explained: Do Abby and Max End Up Together?

Hulu’s ‘Summer of 69’ follows the story of a teenager named Abby Flores whose heart is set on a boy named Max Warren. She has known him since they were kids, and her affection for him has increased with each interaction. The problem, however, is that he has been dating a girl named Mercedes for a while now, which means that Max has never had the chance to express her feelings to him. All that changes when it is revealed that he and Mercedes are broken up. This is the perfect opportunity for Abby to get Max to fall for her, but for that, she needs to understand what he wants. A quick insight into him reveals that he is into 69, the sexual position. Abby decides to do it for him, but the problem is that she has never had a sexual experience, so she doesn’t really know how to go about it.

Seeking wisdom on the matter leads her to a strip club named Diamond Dolls where she watches exotic dancer, Santa Monica, in action. She is blown away by how the dancer is comfortable in her skin, and her confidence is something Abby wants for herself. So, she decides to hire Monica as her tutor in the art of seduction. At first, the stripper finds the idea odd, but when she discovers that Abby is rich and is ready to throw money at her, she decides to take the job. Her acceptance is also motivated by the fact that the money could help her save the strip club from going under and falling into the hands of an utter creep.

When Monica agrees to tutor Abby, the deal is set at $20k, which is what she needs to save Diamond Dolls. It is quite a high amount, but Abby believes she can make it within a week. From their first lesson, Monica sees that the teenager is interested in something that is way beyond her emotional capacity. She needs to understand herself before she can expect to get involved in a sexual relationship with a guy. The more she teaches all this to Abby, the closer they get to each other. At first, it seems that both of them will get their happy endings, but some major hurdles are revealed along the way.

How do Abby and Santa Monica Save Diamond Dolls?

To others, Diamond Dolls is just another strip club, but for Santa Monica, it is home. She is the crown jewel of the place, and she knows that if the club goes under, she and her friends will have nowhere else to go. This problem arises because their boss and the owner of the place, Betty, fails to pay the taxes for the property. Now, she has no option but to sell it. It could be Monica if she can get the money. Otherwise, the club will go to Rick Richards, a creepy man whom Monica and her friends hate with all their hearts. Refusing to let the place fall into the hands of a menace like him, Monica is even more motivated to get the money.

The deal with Abby comes as a godsend, but a major problem arises when Abby reveals that she doesn’t have the money. She was supposed to get it through her gaming platform, where she has quite a following and where people pay to watch her play. However, her sessions with Monica distract her from the game, and she misses the sessions that could have easily allowed her to get the $20k. Moreover, Monica has a deadline of Saturday, failing which, the club will go to Nicky. Abby knows about it, and she is heartbroken about not being able to hold up her end of the deal. But then, she comes up with a plan.

An Unexpected Friend Helps Save the Day

Realising that she has a lot of followers on her gaming platform, Abby decides to use it to her advantage. This time, instead of playing a game, she is going to dance for the audience. It isn’t just any dance, but an exotic dance, performed by the likes of Monica and her friends. She also drags her classmates (those who are of legal age) to Diamond Dolls, where she asks them to spare as much money as they possibly can. As she dances, people throw money at her, even though she is pretty bad at it. The dance is also streamed online, and that, too, fetches a lot of money. By the end of the dance, enough had been made to close the gap, including the $5k that Abby had given to Monica when they had made the deal.

Despite all this, they are still short of an odd $5k. Rick is ecstatic at this news, and he rushes Betty to get the papers so the place can be signed over to him and the deal can be done with. But then, Betty’s friend from school, Robin, shows up. The women hadn’t talked to each other for a while, but they reconnect over a school reunion where Robin reveals that her husband is most likely cheating on her. It turns out that he used to come to Diamond Dolls. Considering that he spends so much time in this place, it only makes sense that he should invest some money in it to save it. So, Robin decides to bridge the gap and give $5k to the cause. With this, Monica has the $20k she needed, and she gets to buy the place from Betty and fulfill her dream of not only saving the place but also becoming its proud owner, promoting herself from a stripper to a business owner.

Abby Learns a Valuable Lesson About Herself

When Monica starts tutoring Abby, she notes that the girl’s problem is not that she is unattractive or a dork, but that she is not realistic about what she wants and needs. While she fantasises about Max, she never makes the effort to know more about him until Monica tells her to do so. In the same vein, she has no friends and no social life to speak of, which is also a point of concern for her parents. This leads her to create extravagant scenarios and expectations in her head when all she needs is a friend she can talk to and spend time with. While her mind is laser-focused on 69, Monica advises her to take it slow, to understand herself, and explore her body and mind before inviting someone else to do it. This conversation does not end well between them, but later, Abby is forced to accept that Monica was right.

All this time, she had been asking others about what Max was like and what he wanted. She formed a second-hand image of him in her mind and fell for that, when what she should have been doing was to talk to him. If she had done that, she would have discovered that he is into the same things that she is. Moreover, he even follows her on Glitch, the gaming platform where she is a regular. Even though she hides her identity with a mask, Max has paid enough attention to her to know that it is she.

A conversation with him also reveals that the whole 69 thing she had been stuck on was never even real. Instead of a sexual position, the number referred to the jersey of his favourite player. On top of that, he never had sex with his ex, Mercedes, who turned out to be overtly religious and was saving herself for marriage. This means that Max and Abby have always been on the same grounds, but she never knew about it because she had never thought about talking to him.

Abby’s Romantic Fantasies with Max are Fulfilled in Unexpected Ways

Another thing that Max makes clear to Abby is that he has always liked her, which means that none of her shenanigans were ever necessary. When she tells him that she is not ready to have any sexual encounters with him, he understands her stance and accepts her decision. All of this proves that she had been going about it the wrong way all along, which is what Monica tried to tell her before they fell out. Eventually, however, Abby makes up with Monica when she helps raise the money. When she walks out of the strip club, she finds Max waiting for her out there.

It is clear that he wants to be with her just as much as she does, and now that their feelings about each other are clear, there is no need to beat around the bush. They kiss, and it is confirmed that they are going to explore whatever there is between them, one step at a time. The next morning, as Abby and Monica look back at the events of the previous day, Abby notes that both of them got what they wanted from the deal that they made a week ago. Abby wanted to 69 Max, but it went much better for her as she is now in a relationship with him without the pressure of performing any sexual acts to woo him. Monica wanted to save Diamond Dolls, and while things may have taken a bit of detour, she did end up doing exactly what she wanted.

Considering this, Abby says that they have 69ed each other, though in a more spiritual rather than sexual sense. Monica agrees that it is quite an accurate representation of their deal and its outcome. But above all, they both have found great friends in each other. This is what she chooses to focus on when her parents return to find their house in shambles following the impromptu party their daughter decided to throw the previous night. All this time, they were worried that she didn’t have any friends. But now, she has a good friend and a boyfriend, and life couldn’t be better.