'Tenet' ending explained: Know the climax of Christopher Nolan's action thriller in detail

Tenet is a sci-fi action thriller drama which is written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Produced by Emma Thomas, the movie stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The movie received positive reviews and has grossed $357 million worldwide. 

At the beginning of the movie, the protagonist meets Clémence Poésy's scientist, who tells him that in the future, technology is invented that can reverse the flow of time. Sator plans to use the algorithm to reverse the flow of time permanently. This will allow the people in the future to overwrite the past.

Tenet's ending explained

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Neil and Ives' team invert themselves and move back in time to stop Sator and to save Kat’s life. During this time, the protagonist is warned that he can’t meet his past self and will be needing a special breathing apparatus as he is inverted and the world is not. He is then unable to stop Sator as the car he saw earlier was actually his crashed car in his inverted pursuit.

Thus, to give Kat time to heal, the duo makes their way to Oslo, knowing that there is another of the ‘time stile’ machines present at the free port. The duo is now in the past as they have gone through the machine, and are moving forward through time normally. Kat later reveals that Sator is dying due to terminal cancer and that he plans to kill himself on his luxurious yacht when he knows his past is missing.

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The protagonist, Neil and Ives set out on a mission to lift the algorithm which will be activated and change the entropy of the world and kill everyone. On the other hand, Kat heads to the yacht in order to stop Sator from killing himself before the duo succeeds. That’s when the battle begins where the red team is working backwards to the explosion and the blue team is working forward. With Neil’s help, the protagonist and Ives are able to lift the algorithm in time and Kat had decided to kill Sator just as they lift the algorithm.

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During this time, the woman Kat sees jumping off the yacht, she realises was actually her future self after she killed the future version of Sator. The protagonist also realises that Neil is killed when he went backward to help them and once they’ve escaped with the algorithm, he tries to persuade Neil not to go back. That’s when Neil reveals that he was recruited by the Protagonist himself for Tenet. It was all set by the Tenet organisation that Neil and others have been working back towards it and the Protagonist has been moving forward to it.

Image Source: A still from Tenet

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