This article contains major spoilers for the Love Tactics ending.
If we’re being frank here, if you’ve seen a single romantic comedy in your life, you already know the answer to the question of whether Asli and Kerem end up together. But sometimes it’s about the journey rather than the destination, and this cliched but otherwise likable rom-com has a journey worth some cursory examination. So, let’s do that.
In a broad sense, the premise is simple. Asli is a stunning fashion designer and blogger who helps her friend Hande deal with a romantic woe by targeting a playboy for humiliation. Her plan is to meet the kind of guy who broke Hande’s heart, convince him to fall in love with her, and then reject him, all while blogging about the experience. She believes she knows exactly what that kind of man is like, and will have no problem finding a suitable patsy.
The thing is, the patsy she chooses, an advertising executive named Kerem, is also trying to prove a point. After being ridiculed by his friends for his womanizing and his lack of understanding about love, which he believes doesn’t exist, he vows to get a woman to fall in love with him to prove that he’s a desirable long-term catch after all. The woman he sets his sights on is — all together now — Asli.
A lot of the film’s first half revolves around these two meeting and wooing one another, while neither knows that the other is playing them. It’s an even-handed depiction that always shows scenarios from both perspectives and makes a point of highlighting how both Asli and Kerem are wrong about each other and men and women in general. However, their dynamic is complicated when they both find themselves being sent on the same work trip. They both think the other has followed them without realizing that it’s a genuine coincidence.
This work trip is where the genuine bonding happens. While trying to stave off a clingy ex, Meltem, who also happens to be the daughter of the man both are working for, Kerem shares some of his background with Asli, showing her another side to him. She quickly realizes there’s more to him than she first assumed, and he realizes that he is developing very genuine feelings for her. Things are going quite well.
Love Tactics ending explained
This, however, puts Asli particularly in an awkward position. On the one hand, she has a responsibility to the audience of her blog, who’re waiting with bated breath for her to break this man’s heart — how is it going to look that she not only doesn’t want to do that anymore but is actually in love with him? She confesses to her friends how she feels, and shows them a picture of Kerem, at which point Hande reveals a problematic truth — the man who broke her heart in the first place was Kerem himself.
Stung by this, Asli follows her plan through. She live-streams Kerem confessing his love for her and then tells him that she was playing him all along. You can tell, though, that she’s doing this for her audience and her friend, not for herself. Nevertheless, though, the moment goes viral. In response, Meltem has Asli fired and then asks Kerem to go to London with her — she sees this, somewhat psychotically, as an opportunity for the two of them to be together. Kerem agrees to go with her as long as she gives Asli her job back.
In the final sequence, as Kerem boards a plane to London with Meltem, all of his friends rally with Asli’s friends to tell her what he has done. Since this shows he really does love her, they all rush to get Asli to the airport to stop Kerem from leaving — a played-out rom-com gimmick if ever there was one. In a clever touch, though, Kerem, seeing Asli’s final blog post confessing she had fallen in love with him, decides to get off the plane of his own volition, just as Asli is arriving. All throughout, Love Tactics never sided with one character over the other, and even in the end here, they both make the decision to be together.
