Ariana Grande Ages Decades as ‘Peaches’ in New ‘Brighter Days Ahead’ Short Film Teaser: Watch

After erasing her past, Ariana Grande is looking well into her future in a new teaser for her Brighter Days Ahead short film.

In the snippet posted on Instagram Wednesday (March 26) — just two days before the film and the accompanying Eternal Sunshine deluxe album are set to arrive — Grande returns to the Brighter Days memory-wiping clinic first seen in her 2024 “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” music video. In the original visual, the Grammy winner plays a heartbroken character named Peaches who has all traces of her ex wiped from her hippocampus, an homage to Michel Gondry’s 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

But in the short film, it seems that Peaches will revisit the clinic when she’s much older, with the teaser showing a wide shot of Grande sitting in a wheelchair as she waits for her name to be called. “Is there a Peaches here?” says an offscreen voice, robotically distorted in some places. “Peaches?”

The teaser’s cover art on Grande’s grid is a close-up photo of her hands clutching a peach-shaped purse. But while her fingers and the backs of her palms are clearly hers — distinguishable by her fading tattoos — her skin is withered and wrinkly, as if the 31-year-old star were actually about 80 years old.

Grande has been leaving a breadcrumb trail of teasers ever since she first announced the Brighter Days Ahead short film March 12, just two days after she revealed that the Eternal Sunshine deluxe — which will feature six new tracks — was also on its way. Both the film and extended album will arrive Friday (March 28).

In another recent teaser, the only trace of Grande was in an adorable throwback photo of herself as a child tucked inside a pocket watch, which a man’s hands held open on a wooden table. The black-and-white clip also featured a Casablanca-esque wide shot of a man in a trench coat walking down an eerie street as an unseen violin plays a crackling melody.

This week, the Victorious alum also debuted part of one of the songs on the Eternal Sunshine deluxe. Fans who called her Brighter Days hotline (934-33-ERASE) could hear her singing over a starry mid-tempo beat, “Was I just a nightmare? Different dimensions, stuck in the Twilight Zone.”

The snippet likely belongs to a new song called “Twilight Zone,” the title of which Grande revealed along with the rest of the tracklist March 17. Other song titles include “Intro (End of the World) Extended,” “Warm,” “Dandelion,” “Past Life” and “Hampstead.”

See Grande’s new Brighter Days Ahead teaser below.