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THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS 2002, dir. Peter Jackson

The main issue with the Will and Elizabeth ending is, that it turns Elizabeth into Penelope after a story that largely had her in the role of Odysseus, which creates narrative dysjunction.

This isn't a question or complaint over whether or not "the rules" of the film should be treated as immutable laws and/or whether people are allowed to play with them in fan spaces. Elvy produces fanworks that reinterpret canon literally all the time--I'd say he does it MORE than he writes or draws within the absolute bounds of canon--so I think it's safe to say he fully gets that. He is also not arguing that Elizabeth and Will are absolutely stuck. The point of frustration has more to do with how many people fundamentally misunderstand those rules before they decide whether or not they fuck with them--and how that affects the way fans engage with the text itself as they watch the movies and produce criticism and analysis, which also has additional ripple effects of creating pockets of stagnation in the characters' fics and tags.

To address Elvy's original point, let's use the curse of the first movie to create a hypothetical comparison. How that curse in that movie works is if a person removes a coin from the Aztec chest, the taker is directly cursed by that act. To break that curse, the coin-taker must return the coin to the chest with their blood--and if multiple people have taken coins, they ALL must do this as a collective before any one of them can be freed from the curse. In theory, simple. However, it is not explained in one single lore drop, but broken up into several sources of information that the viewer must piece together gradually. So when it came out--and even today with new viewers who don't pay attention--there is a point of confusion where people think that the medallion curses ANYONE who EVER touches it, and somehow that means that when Jack is revealed to be a skeleton the revelation is that he too was somehow cursed the entire movie. That isn't what the movie establishes at all, but some people still come to that conclusion, not fully grasping the rules and backstory sprinkled throughout the film's canon.

And I want to emphasize: correcting people about how this curse works does not bar them from toying with different ideas for how the curse could be different, it just helps them understand what is actually going on in the movie.

Anyway, even though people do misunderstand this, it isn't a common enough misunderstand ingto make much of an impact on the fandom. But for our sake, let's imagine if it did. If people were constantly in the tags asking why didn't Jack turn into a skeleton sooner if he was one the entire time, claiming Jack's entire fight Will makes no sense since he was just immortal anyway, complaining how it ruins Jack's character for them because of how inconsistent it is, lamenting over how sad it is Jack lived out 10 years as a skeleton, filling his AO3 tags with fix-it fics going "AU: Jack gets to be a mortal human like he always should have been!" And all of this at volumes that create feedback loops pushing other efforts at unique or in-depth engagements with the work out of view. Individually, it wouldn't be exactly "WRONG" if people were posting things with their facts mixed up, but collective consequence of consistently approaching the source material from such a misguided angle would be the establishment of weird fanon that accidentally big chunks of the community from many from interesting, more informed and intentional explorations of the character like "WHAT IF Jack WAS a skeleton the entire time?" or "WHAT IF the curse turned everyone into skeletons, and Will and Elizabeth and Jack all got cursed?" or even more canon-aware takes that just explore "How did it feel to turn into a skeleton on the trust that Will would understand what had to follow?" etc.

That is what's going on here with AWE's ending for Elizabeth and Will. Fans keep reaching two extremely opposite misinterpretations of the source material that either trap Elizabeth in a miscast role of a landlocked housewife or erase their tragedy entirely by assuming there is no meaningful separation for them at all. Both are factually wrong, and that has ripple effects in how the fandom engages with their characters.

You're actually right about that last point that she isn't Penelope--which is why it's nonsense to insist that AWE's text turns her into that trope. It doesn't. And neither does Elvy, for that matter. (And as a tangent, there's a reason the fifth movie is treated by old fans as apocryphal bullshit: it has different writers and retcons multiple things in P1-3, not the least of which Elizabeth and Will's open-ended AWE ending and doesn't justify their drastic shifts in personality and behavior to total resignation.)

These are the canon rules of the Dutchman's contract, establishing how to free Will and prevent triggering his "trap" curse:

Will has to do the job for 10 years IN THE UNDERWORLD.

At the specific sunset ending those 10 years Elizabeth has to meet Will ashore somewhere in the MORTAL WORLD.

That's it.

Yes, technically Elizabeth must "wait for him" because years must pass. But waiting does not require passivity or stasis from her. There is nothing in the third movie's text at all that says she has to suddenly fix herself to land he left her as a part of her "waiting"--the original writers have even said this more than once. Will did not ask her to sign her life away to him, only to keep her husband's fate and love in mind while she lives it however she chooses. She is a pirate and the Pirate King, not only Will's wife. Her home is a gorgeous ship and it can sail wherever she has the will and means to sail. His heart is in a box that can be hidden, carried, defended in more places and means than one. Needing to meet him somewhere specific in 10 years does not mean she has to live at that point for those 10 years--the horizon conveniently is always there no matter where she goes, and "keeping a weather eye" is something sailors can do while they go about their business. She even is shown in her final shot standing next to a boat, with Shipwreck Cove in rowing distance, accessible to one of the biggest pirate harbors in their world after having declared war on the English's economic powers. She's got shit to do, and she CAN do it. And having a baby thrown into the mix doesn't mean she is suddenly on post-partum maternity leave for all 10 years either. Children grow up and are also portable, and people did sail with them--just because she would need to sail a little differently and avoid battles for his sake doesn't mean she suddenly could forever go nowhere or do nothing for herself.

All of this is true, as defined by the text of the third movie--that ending is not taking any of that away from her. Their tragedy is written an open door fans to explore how she or he could pursue change. And the writers of the original trilogy encouraged that line of thinking--it was part of the intent of the ending that their fates are open and ambiguous. If she was willing to go the lengths she did to resurrect Jack, it is obvious she go to similar lengths for her soulmate, that even with their separation and restrictions, she absolutely could do something about it.

But there are still SOME limits. Even if she has all that freedom, the canon ending is still meant to be at least somewhat tragic, however permanent or temporary is the part that's originally undefined. There are thematic and narrative things the story is trying to say by making them have that tragic separation, with equal measures of doubt and hope that they can pull through it. Him giving her his heart the way he does means what it does BECAUSE of that separation. And it is also specific and explicit to their separation that she cannot easily go on the Dutchman in the condition that the movie leaves them both.

The Dutchman is a ship of the dead, sailing the seas of the dead--Will is in a literally separate world. That world is only accessible for normal ships via a long, magically obscured journey that would shatter her ship to pieces at its end (shown by the journey of the Hai Peng). That world also has no food or drink for mortals to survive (shown when they almost die of thirst before the Up is Down sequence), so even if she makes it over there, there are physical limits to staying there without dying. That world also cannot be escaped without another vessel she can ride the green flash on at the exact point of sunset. Will could take her back, but then that would break the terms of the contract and curse him--which further dooms their hope of him coming back to her as a free man and partner. She could choose to simply stay with him, but then she would be dead. And if she dies, he cannot be freed from his contract with the Dutchman. And honestly, even if they just stayed dead together, what sort of existence or joy would that even it be? He isn't even wandering normal parts of the afterlife, he is working the passages of a state of limbo.

For ten years, she cannot access him easily. He cannot access her easily. That tragic fact is a KEY part of their canon ending. It sucks. It sucks for a reason.

BUT again: just because canon says she cannot stay with him aboard the Dutchman or simply go out and flag him down does not mean that canon says she cannot go on quests of her own to find new loopholes or magical solutions to their problems at all. Their separation is not anything like Penelope waiting for Odysseus unless you choose to make it so. Her canon-compliant story from that point is able to be far more like Orpheus and Demeter seeking Will's Eurydice and Persephone, if you understand what she can and cannot do.

@cyrannus95 I love that you asked this! Because this is a tangent and getting very long, I'm going to put most of the answer under a cut. And if anyone has extra questions, maybe direct it to my inbox so we're not hijacking OP's post further. (Or even better: I'm sure Elvy would love some asks about her thoughts on this subject herself!)

The shortest answer is that there is no answer--or at least there wasn't intended to be one, just like Inception's ending deliberately doesn't answer the question of whether or not Cobb makes it out of the dream.

The director of P1-3, Gore Verbinski, believed that because we are experiencing the moment when Will leaves from Elizabeth's perspective, and she herself does not know the answer to this question, the movie itself cannot take a stance on it. That's too omniscient. So the movie's answer is meant to be: we don't know. But there is hope.

Here's a quote from Ted Elliott, one of the writers, emphasizing this:

"Whether or not Will's service ends after ten years is beside the point of Elizabeth and Will's story, and any definitive statement, one way or another, actually dilutes the point of their story. The intention of the movie is to leave the question unresolved, to leave the audiences' understanding of Will and Elizabeth's future uncertain, because that is far more reflective of the circumstances the characters are in. They can't know, they can only have faith..."

Note: Wordplayer is the screenwriting website and forums of PotC 1-3's writing duo, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, which is why I link back to it so much. They personally answered many fan questions over there, so these are their direct quotes.

It is because they don't know that it matters that they choose to remain committed to each other anyway. It's a very different choice than if they let each other go. Because it is an expression of love through faith and sacrifice. And this approach fundamentally meant that the audience is free to decide what happens after 10 years. (Which is another big part of why older fans got mad when P5 came out--it took away fans' ownership of the ending.)

Below the cut I'll continue explaining the two possibilities.