Showing a teenager that was happier dead than alive on screen is not necessarily the sort of message one wants to put forth in the world.
So, while the intent may have been for this to be a happy ending, producer Larry Wilson admits to Yahoo, that the reality was it was actually much darker.
The original ending was a happy ending of a sort, as the “strange and usual” Lydia felt largely out of place in the world and was clearly more at home with her dead friends, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis.