The Myth of the Do-Over
Lessons from Peggy Sue Got Married and The Heavenly Kid
There’s a moment in Peggy Sue Got Married when she looks across the high school gym and realizes she’s back in the body of a teenager — but with the weight of a woman who’s lived.
It’s not joy. It’s grief.
Because the chance to start over doesn’t erase what you know.
We love the idea of a do-over.
That with one reset, we could correct the mistake, choose the right path, become our better self.
That a return to the beginning means the chance to be new again.
But these films — Peggy Sue Got Married and The Heavenly Kid — show us a harder truth:
Even if you go back, you take the wound with you.
The Weight of the Return
In Peggy Sue, she’s given a surreal gift: reliving her senior year with full adult awareness.
But it’s not empowering. It’s lonely.
Because now she sees the fragility in everyone. Her parents’ imperfections. Her boyfriend’s insecurities. Her friends’ fears.
And herself — no longer the ingenue, but a woman mourning a version of life that never was.
She doesn’t want to escape her past.
She wants to forgive it.
Redemption Doesn’t Rewrite the Story
In The Heavenly Kid, Bobby is a greaser who dies young and cocky, then returns years later as a guardian angel to a teenage boy — only to find out that boy is his own son.
It’s not a redemption arc. It’s a reckoning.
He can’t undo the crash.
He can’t warn his past self.
He can only be there now, in spirit, to help the next version survive.
Time travel here isn’t about fixing the timeline.
It’s about healing what was broken in private.
The Illusion of the Clean Slate
Both films carry an emotional truth we rarely admit:
We don’t want a second chance to choose better.
We want proof that who we were wasn’t all wrong.
We want to go back not to rewrite — but to understand.
That’s what makes these stories so powerful.
We live in a culture obsessed with reinvention:
Second acts, rebrands, curated glow-ups.
But the do-over is a myth.
You don’t get to be someone else.
You just get to tell the story differently.
And maybe that’s enough.
Closing Reflection
We think starting over means erasing pain.
But maybe it’s about honoring the version of us that didn’t know better —
The one who loved too hard, feared too much, or said yes when they meant no.
Maybe Peggy didn’t go back to fix things.
Maybe she went back to say goodbye.
Maybe Bobby didn’t come back to save his son.
Maybe he came to let go of himself.
What would you tell your younger self if they could hear you now?
Not to change their path — but to let them know they were never alone.