In the present, still unimpressed by his father's stories, Will demands to know the truth, but Edward explains that he is who he is: a storyteller. While doing his own investigation into his father's stories, Will finds the small town of Spectre, and meets an older Jenny (Helena Bonham Carter), who explains that Edward rescued the town from bankruptcy by buying it at an auction and rebuilding it with financial help from many of his previous acquaintances. Will suggests his father had been having an affair with Jenny, to which she replies that while she had indeed fallen in love with him, for Edward there only two types of woman, Sandra and all the other woman, so he could never love any other than Sandra.
When Will returns home, he is informed by his mother that his father had a stroke and is at the hospital. He goes to visit him there and finds him only partly conscious, and unable to speak at length. Since Edward can no longer tell stories, he asks Will to tell him the story of how it all ends. Beat and deciding to play along, Will tells his own tall tale about helping Edward escape from the hospital and they go to the river where everyone in Edward's life appears to bid him goodbye. Will carries his father into the river where he becomes what he always had been: a very big fish. Edward then dies, knowing his son finally understands his love of storytelling.
At Edward's funeral, Will is astonished when all of the characters from Edward's stories appear to pay their condolences to his father; Amos, Karl, Norther Winslow, Jenny, Ping and Jing all arrive, though each one is a slightly less fantastical version of themselves than in Edward's stories—the sisters, for example, are not conjoined but are merely identical twins. Will finally realizes the truth of his father's life for which his stories were embellishments. When his own son is born, Will passes on his father's tall tale stories, remarking that his father became his stories, allowing him to live forever.