I watched I Wish It Weren’t You really early because the algorithm knew I’d once stapled my heart to someone who called me by his ex’s name. By episode 3 I was texting my bestie: “This is just ‘Contract Marriage: Hurt Edition’ and I’m enrolled.”
If you need a story that proves you can be the main character and still miss your cue, stream it free. Warning: you’ll side-eye every ‘I love you’ for a week.
Also Watch As: Miss You After Goodbye
- Part 1: The Not So Simple Drama You Sit With in I Wish It Weren’t You
- Part 2: First Clause, Substitute Syndrome, Divorce Papers & Passport Stamps, Post-Credit Ritual, and How I wish I’d Met This
- Part 3: Conclusions Reached About I Wish It Weren’t You
Part 1: The Not So Simple Drama You Sit With in I Wish It Weren’t You
I Wish It Weren’t You calls itself a short-form drama, though it stretches five contractual years into something that feels much larger. I kept thinking of those relationships that begin with a practical plan and end with a quiet bruise you notice only in the shower. Neil signs his name on a piece of paper.
Marry Keira for five years, keep her away from the Simon-shaped wreckage, then exit without fuss. His reward is a cleared moral debt to her father. Keira says yes because, to her, rebound with paperwork feels safer than rebound with unpredictable feelings. It is strange how believable that logic is. I have watched friends choose structure over desire just to feel like they were steering their own story.
The show’s smartest trick is the imbalance it never apologizes for. One heart reads the clause no feelings as a shield. The other reads it as a dare. This is the kind of asymmetry I argue more dramas should lean into, because it mirrors real life more than we care to admit.
I have seen people treat boundaries as invitations and wondered if they realised how lonely that can make the other person. The titles echo this pattern. Each one looks like a crossed-out confession. I wish it were you turning into I wish it weren’t you. The shift is small on paper, though it lands with the weight of something learned too late.
By the time the terms expire, the contract is soft with tears they never confessed to each other. The story does not stage a dramatic chase scene or a last-minute revelation. Instead it offers something that feels harsh but honest. A passport. One suitcase. A final kindness that hurts more than any fight would have.
Part 2: First Clause, Substitute Syndrome, Divorce Papers & Passport Stamps, Post-Credit Ritual, and How I wish I’d Met This
I typed “i wish it weren’t you dailymotion” half-asleep, expecting a rom-com with amnesia. The thumbnail showed Neil adjusting Keira’s scarf while she stared past him at a gallery photo of Simon. One click and the site buffered like it was debating whether I could handle truth.
Opening scene: Neil voice-over, “I will marry her, but I won’t keep her.” I sat up so fast my neck cracked.
That line was a Terms & Conditions I’d never read in real life: devotion with expiry. I grabbed cold pizza like it was popcorn. By the end of episode one I’d laughed twice (Neil’s terrible omelette) and cried once (Keira calls him Simon, apologises, keeps eating). I paused to tweet: “Contract marriage stories hit different when you’ve been someone’s placeholder.”
Twelve likes, zero sleep. Dailymotion ads kept interrupting right when Neil’s eyes flickered hurt; I whispered “sorry” to the screen like that would patch him. First clause of engagement: viewer agrees to feel complicit.
Keira doesn’t mean cruelty; she means survival. She keeps Simon’s hoodie in Neil’s closet, sprays his cologne on the passenger seat. Neil never flinches… just opens the window, winter air slapping his cheeks like self-flagellation. I Wish It Weren’t You drama nails micro-aggressions: she asks Neil to pass the salt, then says, “Simon hated salt.”
The salt shaker becomes a loaded gun; Neil’s hand trembles, but he seasons her food anyway. I remembered dating a guy who stored his ex’s playlist on our shared drive, every car ride became a séance. Viewing tip: don’t root for Simon, root for the moment Keira realises nostalgia is not a personality.
That moment arrives when Neil rips the hoodie in half to bandage her scraped knee: cotton torn, spell broken. She finally sees the fabric was always cheap. I cheered so loud my cat left the room. Substitution ends when usefulness becomes priceless.
Final episode. Neil places the signed divorce agreement on the breakfast Keira didn’t eat, adds a post-it: “You never owed me love, but you owe yourself freedom.” He pockets a single key: the storage locker where he kept her childhood photos she thought Simon had. Exit music: none. Just door click.
I paused the I Wish It Weren’t You full episode, walked to my kitchen, and just stared at the pile of unsent letters I’d shoved behind the toaster like they were radioactive. The show refuses the usual “run through the airport” fantasy. Instead it follows Neil on a bus, rain hitting the window like punctuation, his reflection soft and hard at the same time.
He smiles, barely, and the future stays unreadable. I screenshotted that frame, printed it at the pharmacy kiosk that always jams, and stuck it on my mirror with a crooked strip of tape. Caption: “Closure is self-driven.” It felt dramatic and also embarrassingly accurate.
Next morning I booked a solo train ticket to the coast, something I’d been “meaning to do” for three years but never actually meant. My friends assumed I was spiraling. I said, “Relax, it’s my season finale.” Honestly I wasn’t sure if I believed that or if I was just tired of my own reruns.
The drama taught me you can be the one who leaves and the one who’s finally going somewhere; those roles aren’t opposites.
I couldn’t hoard the ache. So I sent a group chat invite: “Bring a promise you broke to yourself, we’re cremating everything with instant ramen flames.” Five friends arrived in pajamas, which somehow felt more ceremonial than black-tie. One carried a blanket like we were attending a very sad, very cozy cult meeting.
Rules for the night grew on the spot.
We filmed the pot because of course we did. The sparks looked like pixelated confetti falling into broth. One friend admitted she’d stayed in a grad program she hated because quitting felt like failing in public.
Another confessed she kept faking cheerfulness on family video calls because “they worry too fast.” By 2 a.m. we were salty, full, and lighter in ways no scale could measure. We promised updates once we “found our Neil,” though none of us agreed on what that even meant.
I keep the empty pot under my sink. It rattles every time I open the cupboard, which feels like the universe knocking.
Part 3: Conclusions Reached About I Wish It Weren’t You
Open Dailymotion and search “i wish it weren’t you.” Let the buffer wheel spin like the cheap globe Keira keeps chasing from continent to continent. While it loads, you might feel that small, stupid pinch in your chest that shows up whenever a character walks away cleaner than you ever did.
When Neil steps out of frame with nothing clinging to him, notice how the air on your side of the screen grows wider. It is the kind of quiet that makes you check if you left a window open. Sign one last contract with yourself: I will leave what does not love me back. I will not redraft that clause again just to make someone else comfortable.
Leaving takes more courage than any reunion the writers could invent. I argue it is the real proof of affection, because sometimes love asks for distance when staying would rot the parts of you that still work. I have seen this play out in real life.
A friend of mine once moved out of a relationship with a note on the fridge that said, “I can’t keep watering what will not root.” It looked harsh, but she started sleeping again.
For me, I Wish It Weren’t You settles into a mantra for anyone who discovered devotion too late and apology just in time. It does not offer comfort. It offers recognition. That feels rarer, and honestly more usable. You watch Neil choose clarity instead of chaos, and something in you quietly admits that endings sometimes teach faster than miracles.
Close the tab. Sit with whatever feeling refuses to leave. Then delete the draft you kept rewriting in your head. Wishes are not mistakes. You hold the cursor now, and you finally get to edit the last line.
