Tenet Ending Explained: From Robert Pattinson’s Neil to Dimple Kapadia’s Priya Singh, Decoding the Final Fates of Main Characters in Christopher Nolan’s Sci-Fi Film (LatestLY Exclusive)

There is a genre of movie called lovingly by fans as 'Mind-F**k'. As the name suggests, the genre belongs to those films that mess with your brains and never bother to give you coherent answers to what you have been watching. Christopher Nolan's latest, Tenet, is a spy movie, an action thriller, a sci-fi saga but also a mind-f**k flick that leaves your mouth open at whatever is happening on the screen. Think Interstellar's climax was crazy. Tenet is entirely that. TENET Movie Review: Christopher Nolan’s Latest Is a Spectacular Puzzle That’s Also a Numbing Head-Scratcher!

Tenet stars John David Washington in the lead, while Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth Debicki, Aaron Taylor Johnson and Sir Michael Caine are in the supporting cast. Bollywood star Dimple Kapadia is also seen in a very prominent role in the film,

So what's Tenet about? In a nutshell, it is about preventing a global catastrophe caused by humans from the future, angered by the state of Earth that we have left for them. As revenge, they have been sending specialised weapons into the present, that is treated with inverse entropy.

Say what now? In simple layman words, Inverse entropy makes the objects move backwards in time, when their normal equivalent move forward. A former CIA agent whose name is never mentioned throughout the film (for bizarre reasons) is assigned by a mysterious organisation called Tenet to find the source as well as the recipient, the latter turning out to be a Russian oligarch named Sator. Sator has been collecting nine pieces of algorithm for the future humans, that had been hidden in the past by a scientist. It is later learnt that the wife-abusing Sator wants to destroy the world for SPOILER-ish reasons, and it is now upto the protagonist and his new mysterious comrade Neil to try and stop using the very same inverse entropy.

So what happens to all the main characters? How many of them is alive and how many die to prevent World War III? And why were the deaths essential? In this special feature, we try to offer simple explanations for the final fates of each main character. Needless to say, HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Protagonist

Played by: John David Washington

Towards the later half of the film, The Protagonist - yup, he calls himself that - learns that he had encountered a masked himself from the future both during the airport heist in Freeport and the carway chase in Tallinn. After preventing Sator's plan of global devastation, The Protagonist also learns through Neil, also a member of Tenet, that he himself was the founder of Tenet. Or rather his future self. It was The Protagonist who went bach in past, created the organisation and hired every member of Tenet, including Neil, so that they can prevent the catastrophe. In the end, he is determined to take his role in Tenet seriously and also protect Kat from any harm from his own organisation.

Sator

Played By: Kenneth Branagh

An arrogant Russian black arms dealer, who frequently abuses his wife and blackmails her, Sator is the main antagonist. He has been the point of contact for the humans in future to receive the shipment of the inverted ammunition, having found a piece of algorithm during the collapse of Soviet Union in the early '90s. Using two turnstiles in his containment areas, he has also managed to invert himself. But through Kat, we learn that he is suffering from pancreatic cancer and is dying. And he wants to also destroy the world in the process, because he doesn't want it to flourish when he is not in it. His doomsday device is triggered by his fitbit that would trigger once his pulse is dead. For his dying moment, he chooses to go back in time to the last happiest day he had with his wife in Vietnam on her yacht. Oblivious to him, an inverted Kat is waiting for him at the yacht, who kills him for all the abuse she had suffered and for separating her from her son.

Kat

Played By: Elizabeth Debicki

An art appraiser and a long-suffering wife of Sator, Kat manages to survive his torture and later near-fatal injury through an inverse bullet, when the protagonist, Neil and Ives inverts her using the turnstile in Tallinn and again inverts her back using the turnstile in Freeport airport. To delay Sator from triggering his fitbit, she is once again inverted and sent back to their happy day at the yacht. At first Kat manages to seduce her husband, but she couldn't keep her anger contained and shoots him, getting him to fall off the deck. His death could have ruined Tenet's plan to prevent the catastrophe, but thankfully that doesn't happen. Kat later realises that the woman she thinks she saw jumping from the yacht during her holiday with Sator and mistakes her for his mistress, was herself choosing her freedom. She is happily reunited with her son, and is saved from being murdered by the protagonist.

Neil

Played By: Robert Pattinson

At first a fixer and aide to the protagonist, we know that there is more to Neil than what meets the eye. It is revealed that he is also a member of the Tenet having been hired by the protagonist from the future, and who has been his friend and mentor, which he tells the protagonist from the present in the finale. It was a masked Neil who saved the protagonist from getting killed by an inverted bullet in the beginning of the film (during the Kyiv opera house mission), that the protagonist recognises from a specific trinket in his bag. Which is also why Neil knows a lot about the Protagonist and also prevents him from doing something, which he knows won't matter much.

Both the protagonist and Ives invert themselves and go back in time to North Siberia to prevent Sator's plan from happening. When the protagonist chases Sator's right hand man to the bunker where he was drop the algorithm, he finds a corpse lying on the ground that has the same bag with the trinket. When the goon tries to kill the protagonist with a trinket, the corpse comes alive, and takes the bullet that saves the protagonist. Which means that by going inverted, Neil has sacrificed his life for his mentor, thus ending his time-loop. Towards the end, when the protagonist parts way with Neil, who is going to invert himself again, the former realises that his new friend is going to meet his maker. But Neil stops him from saying anything by claiming 'What's happened has happened.'

There is a theory that Neil happens to be the son of Kat, who in the film is called Max, because both share similar hairstyle. Something to think about, right? Tenet Director Christopher Nolan Crashes A Real Plane AGAIN For A Scene.

Priya Singh

Played By: Dimple Kapadia

An arms dealer based in Mumbai, Priya Singh uses her husband (Denzil Smith) as a cover to operate in what she sees as a man's world. She is the member of Tenet and it is she who sends the protagonist to chase after Sator. Priya keeps offering advice and tips to the protagonist whenever he lands, even hinting that there are two versions of him ("You are a protagonist."). In the end, she wants to kill Kat to tie up loose ends, but Kat realising that she is in danger, calls up the protagonist who arrives from the future and kills Priya.

Ives

Played By: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Coming late in the movie, Ives is a military man called in by Neil to rescue the protagonist and Kat when they are captured by Sator in Tallinn. He leads the Tenet forces - both straight and inverted - when they attack Sator's base in North Siberia. When they recover the algorithm, Neil, Ives and the protagonist split it in three pieces, one of which is kept by Ives, while the other two take each. He suggests that they kill themselves after hiding the pieces, so that no one can track them again. We are unclear of Ives' final fate after this point.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 04, 2020 03:29 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).