The Odyssey Ending, Explained: Does Odysseus Survive His Epic Journey?
Nobody does big quite like Cristopher Nolan.
After a wait so long that we've all started to feel a bit like Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, Nolan’s The Odyssey is finally here, and it's colossal: a fully realised adaptation of Homer’s 2700-year-old epic that sees the Dark Knight director essentially follow up a billion dollar Best Picture winner (Oppenheimer) with one of the only things that could possibly be any bigger—a $300M+ budgeted adaptation of what some would argue is the greatest story ever told.
All that aside, there will still be a few audience members who enter the cinema this weekend (and beyond) with a little less knowledge of Homer's poem and Greek antiquity in general. Nolan, of course, covers most of the background and the main beats with a few exposition dumps early on, but there is still a lot of information to digest in the director's latest epic.
So, if you saw the movie and are still a little unclear about what goes down in the final act and that elusive ending, hopefully we can be of some assistance. Be warned: major spoilers, and stormy seas, follow from this point on.
What Happens in Nolan’s The Odyssey?
In terms of basic running time, Nolan’s 13th feature since announcing himself at the turn of the century with Following and Memento isn’t his longest ever. Still, it’s not far off, and coming in just a few minutes shy of Oppenheimer does not mean that there’s less ground to cover—to the contrary.
Edited at Nolan's usual brisk pace, The Odyssey takes in almost all the key sequences in the prodigal King's decades-long journey (20 years overall, the last 7 of which are covered in Homer's poem) while also finding time to show us some of what went down in Troy. This means that the movie’s 172 minutes cover not only Homer’s text (which, in terms of word count, is only roughly ⅔ the size of The Fellowship of the Ring) but also certain passages from another epic: Virgil's Aeneid.
In brief: like Homer's poem, Nolan’s version begins in media res and is mostly told through flashbacks, primarily from the recollections of Matt Damon’s Odysseus (during his Lotus flower-addled time with Charlize Theron's Calypso), but also from the rumours and first hand accounts heard by his son Telemachus (Tom Holland), who is attempting to hold the fort in Ithaca with his mother Penelope (Hathaway) as a group of vulturous suitors circle Odysseus' throne.
The movie essentially puts these three characters on a family reunion collision course, showing us the various trials they each must overcome to get there. For Odysseus, these include a famous confrontation with a feta-making cyclops, an encounter with a witch named Circe, and a retreat from a group of murderous warriors so bulky that they would probably have Ser Gregor running scared.
Odysseus survives and makes it home to bae, leaving the question at the heart of the movie a Pyrrhic one: can honour and civilisation survive, and is it even worth saving, in the face of all this violence?
How Nolan’s The Odyssey Ends
As we reach the final third, Odysseus' mind escapes the hold of the Lotus Flower as he realises, with some embarrassment, that seven years have passed on Calypso' island of Ogygia.
Almost immediately, he fashions a raft and—with the benevolent Athena (Zendaya) looking over him—is whisked through a storm back to Ithaca. Now appearing as a dishevelled beggar, he locates some old allies before encountering his son, who doesn’t recognise him. Before that penny drops, a plan is formed to rid Ithaca of the suitors. For this to work, Penelope will have to end things once and for all by offering a challenge in exchange for her hand in marriage. To push her towards this decision, Odysseus approaches her as the beggar and, through his account of the carnage in Troy, suggest to her that the spiritually broken Odysseus may never return.
Her last glimmer of hope apparently extinguished, Penelope immediately calls for the suitors to gather in a locked hall with no weapons for a task that involves stringing Odysseus' bow and firing an arrow through a line of axes—which, as Nolan shows early on, is something only he can do. When Odysseus eventually reveals himself by completing the challenge, all hell breaks loose (props to Nolan for not sugar-coating this unheroic part of the tale too much).
After much back and forth, and plenty of killing, Odysseus finally drives her sword through Antinous (Robert Pattinson), simultaneously ending the fight and avenging the young soldier (Elliot Page) who Antinous duped into taking his place on the ships to Troy. The remaining men drop their weapons and take a knee as the injured Odysseus, looking like a beefy hedgehog of arrows, approaches Penelope for their emotional reunion.
Despite building to this moment for close to three hours, the central theme of Nolan's movie is less to do with romance than the way that wars destroy people inside and out—both the conquered and the conquerors. Throughout the film, Odysseus is consistently forced to accept great losses and is rarely given the chance to properly bury and respect the dead. (For these sins, Odysseus and his crew are basically chased out of the Land of the Dead by their own men.) Prompted by the blind Tiresias’ prophecy in Hades, Odysseus promises to eventually honour them by traveling West and making a proper sacrifice, if and when he returns home.
And so, when the dust has settled, Telemachus is crowned King of Ithaca and Odysseus journeys out again, this time with Penelope in tow, to offer a sacrifice to the gods that will grant his fallen comrades some peace in the afterlife. In the final shots, Telemachus is shown wearing the crown and looking on as Odysseus and Penelope sail out into the sunset.
Is This Ending Accurate to the Original Text?
Spiritually, yes. As anyone who’s even read the SparkNotes can tell you, everything involving the prophecy, the suitors, and Ithaca in Nolan's movie is more or less what happens at the end of Homer’s poem. In the final moments, however, the director allows himself a little flourish.
In Homer’s text, the climactic showdown is not actually with the suitors but with their aggrieved families, a conflict that puts Ithaca on the verge of civil war before Athena intervenes. Afterwards, Odysseus explains that he must leave Penelope again to travel inland to fulfil Tiresias' prophecy. This makes Nolan’s ending a slight invention, one that gives Penelope (a character who Nolan and Hathaway subtly update) a more satisfying and well-earned end to her story arc.
Whether the Homerites (not to mention some less well-intentioned people online) will be on board with this will be interesting to see. It’s certainly a more constructive and romantic close than simply seeing Matt Damon trudge off on another dad bod side quest.
I for one am happy to welcome it: what are sacred texts, after all, without a little interpretation now and then?
