The Meaning Behind Eliza’s Gasp at the End of Hamilton

• Lin Manuel Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton landed on Disney+ on July 3.
• Hamilton ends with Eliza (Phillipa Soo), Hamilton’s wife, giving a monologue.
• What does her gasp at the end of Hamilton really mean? Here are the two main theories—including one from Miranda.

Alexander Hamilton, the main character of Lin Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical Hamilton, is excessively verbal. He spends most of the show’s three hours talking, rapping, or attempting to sing, with barely a bar’s rest. But the ending of Hamilton belongs entirely to his wife, Eliza (Phillipa Soo), one of the musical’s three iconic “Schuyler sisters.”

At the end of the musical, in the song ” ,” Eliza explains how she devotes her life to continuing Hamilton’s legacy, whether through establishing an orphanage or compiling his papers. The song (and show) ends on an ambiguous note: Eliza gasps—as if she’s seen a horrifying apparition— and the stage goes black.

What is the significance of Eliza’s gasp? Since the musical dropped on Disney+ on July 3, there’s been tons of fan speculation. Recently, Miranda himself weighed in on the debate: “The Gasp is The Gasp is The Gasp. I love all the interpretations,” he wrote on Twitter.

Years ago, Soo opened up about the ambiguous moment in an interview with AOL Build. “People are like, ‘Is it Eliza going into heaven? Is she seeing Alexander? Is she seeing God? What is it?’ And it’s kind of all of those things. Sometimes, it’s literally, I look out and I see the audience, and that’s what it is, but I think, that idea of ‘transcendence’ is present in all of that,” Soo said. “Whether it’s in Eliza’s mind, or in Phillipa’s mind, they’re both one and the same, which is beautiful about that moment.”

Based on Soo’s responses, the intention behind that very loud inhalation changed every time she played the role. She’s seeing Hamilton, God, the audience. But what does the audience see? Here are the prevailing theories behind Hamilton’s ending. Warning: There are spoilers ahead.

Theory Number One: Eliza gasps because she dies at the end of Hamilton.

The rationale of The Gasp might be as grim and straightforward as this: Eliza gasps because she dies. She joins her husband, her son, and all of the other musical’s characters on “the other side,” the musical’s recurring euphemism for what comes after death.

This interpretation is in line with the the actual history behind Hamilton. The real Eliza Schuyler died at the old age of 97, and outlived the musical’s other characters. Never remarrying, Eliza raised a brood of seven children as a single mother, while grieving the losses of her husband and eldest son, Philip who both died in duels.

Theory Number Two: Eliza gasps because she sees the audience.

This very meta theory is gaining steam among Hamilton fans. While it might sound far-fetched at first, there’s credence behind the theory: In realizing she’s on-stage, Eliza sees that her efforts to preserve her husband’s legacy were successful. Centuries later, and he is still being celebrated.

Fittingly, Hamilton the musical exists because of Eliza. Ron Chernow, who that inspired Miranda’s musical, credits Eliza Schuyler Hamilton’s record-keeping with his ability to write a biography at all. “Her efforts made it easier to research Alexander’s life, because after his death, his enemies were in power,” Chernow told Smithsonian Magazine.

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As she indicates in the final number, the real Eliza spent the rest of her life devoted to preserving Hamilton’s legacy. Eliza summarizes her decades-long task to compile an archive in the final song: “I interview every soldier who fought by your side” and “I try to make sense of your thousands of pages of writings / You really do write like you’re running out of time.” Her efforts also included collecting his papers, and sending questionnaires to his colleagues to verify details in his letters, per Smithsonian Magazine.

However, there’s one thing missing from Hamilton’s archives: The letters she and Eliza exchanged. Historians believed that Eliza, like Martha Washington before her, burned her husband’s personal letters. But there’s still enough left behind to write a musical.

In the final moments of Hamilton, the focus shifts to the storyteller. Eliza puts herself back into the narrative—because she created the narrative. Mic drop.

So, which theory is it? How does Hamilton really end?

We hate to be all, “It’s up to you to decide for yourself, dear viewer,” but it seems that that’s the real answer. Miranda deliberately left the ending up for interpretation. While speaking to Wired, Miranda touched on the endless possibilities of the Gasp:

“I think it’s different for each Eliza. I do think that it traverses time, in some way, whether that thing she’s seeing is Hamilton, whether that thing she’s seeing is heaven, whether that thing she’s seeing is the world now. I think those are all valid and all fair. I do think she is seeing across a span of time,” he said.

Count Hamilton’s ending among its many, many opportunities for theories and interpretation. It’s what Miranda would want.

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Elena Nicolaou

Elena Nicolaou is the former culture editor at Oprah Daily.