The Odyssey: Explaining the Last Scene of Christopher Nolan’s New Epic

Spoilers follow for The Odyssey.

Does it feel a little silly to try to explain the ending of a story that’s been around for thousands of years? For sure. But at the same time, when it comes to the movie version of The Odyssey, based on the epic tale by Homer, writer/director Christopher Nolan goes in very different direction than the source material – and the final scene(s) of the movie finally pull back and outright state what the film is really about, and why Nolan is making his own adaptation now, in 2026. Short version? War sucks, man.

There’s obviously a lot more going on here, but briefly, let’s recap how the movie ends for some context, and then we can discuss a little further how Homer (d’oh!) ended the original, and posit a bit about why Nolan (why you little…) went in the direction he did.

The Odyssey Ending Recap

After finally returning home to Ithaca, Odysseus (Matt Damon) pretends to be a beggar on the advice of the shade of Agamemnon (Benny Safdie). The latter is in Hades thanks to returning home from the Trojan War thinking he’d be greeted as a hero, only to be assassinated by his own wife, Clytemnestra (Lupita N’yongo). Basically, Agamemnon suggested Odysseus get the lay of the land after nearly a decade away, and it turns out this is pretty good advice… Odysseus’s court has been taken over by a bunch of rambunctious suitors all vying for the hand of his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway).

Odysseus reconnects with his old ally Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), who doesn’t realize who he’s talking to (he’s blind, we can give him a pass), though helps Odysseus realize that his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) is in trouble thanks to a plot by the suitors, led by the cowardly, lying Antinous (Robert Pattinson). Odysseus helps save Telemachus, who figures out thanks to clues in context that this “beggar” is his missing father, though they keep the secret long enough for Odysseus to attend a dinner and observe what the suitors are up to.

At the end of the evening, Odysseus is called forth (still in disguise) by Penelope, who likes to talk to travelers to get potential news of her husband. We’re actually going to skip what happens here because it’s more important to delve into later at length. Suffice to say they have a conversation that ends with Penelope offering a challenge to the suitors, one that ostensibly will lead to her marrying whoever can win the contest.

The next evening, the contest is revealed: Whoever can string Odysseus’s old hunting bow, and then fire an arrow through a row of axes, will win Penelope’s hand in marriage. Guess who the only person is who was ever able to accomplish this feat? Odysseus, of course, and when he again is able to complete it, he reveals himself. The suitors attack, he and Telemachus fight them back, and while many of the suitors are killed, including Antinous, more bend the knee, welcoming back their king.

Odysseus is injured in the process, but – despite what it momentarily seems to Penelope – the wounds are not fatal. Instead, he keeps a promise he made to Sinon (Elliot Page), a warrior his actions sent to Hades, to sail off into the West to honor his fallen soldiers. Telemachus is named king of Ithaca to keep the land safe, and we end with Odysseus and Penelope on a boat. Earlier in the movie, they had talked about sailing the sea and chasing the setting sun, which is part of what they do here. But there’s another aspect to it, which is where we need to jump back and discuss what Odysseus and Penelope talk about before the challenge evening, AKA perhaps the most crucial scene in the whole movie.

The Most Crucial Scene in The Odyssey

See, here’s the thing: Plot is not theme or story. And while there are plot elements that Nolan holds back until the final act of the movie, the reason he holds them close to his chest are because Odysseus’s whole, well, odyssey is about him coming around to realizing what he did during the Trojan War was inherently wrong. It isn’t until he tells Penelope the real story of what happened with the Trojan Horse and what he’s come to realize over these long years of journey home that he truly understands where he went astray, and what he needs to do next.

Yes, he led Agamemnon’s army to victory. But all movie long we’ve been hearing about the mysterious threat of the Men From the Sea. Those mysterious, deadly men? They are Agamemnon’s army, sacking villages and raping on their way home. We get to see this at one point as a village sets itself on fire as soon as they see Odysseus and his ships approaching, but there’s context left out there… While Odysseus and his second-in-command Eurylochus (Himesh Patel) present themselves as friendly allies, there are gaps in the story. Why are they still sacking that village? Why does the witch Circe (Samantha Morton) think Odysseus’s men are nothing but rapist pigs? There’s an underlying sense of “not all men” running through the movie where we’re supposed to identify Odysseus’s crew as heroes, but perhaps they are not nearly as heroic as they purport themselves to be. Certainly, it’s Odysseus’s own hubris that leads to them being stuck at sea when he unnecessarily shoots an arrow at the cyclops Polyphemus (Bill Irwin), who turns out to be the son of Poseiden. While Poseiden perhaps goes a little over the top in response, Odysseus taking petty vengeance for Polyphemus eating his men, when the cyclops is merely doing what is in his nature, is not the action of a hero.

And that’s what Odysseus, in disguise as a beggar, lays out for Penelope. She’s been waiting all these years for her husband to return, but he might as well have died the day he hatched the plan to use the Trojan Horse to breach the walls of Troy. There’s a lot of talk in the movie of “Zeus’s Law,” which states that you can’t turn anyone away as they might be a god in disguise. Odysseus used that to trick the Trojans into accepting the horse, which broke that law; and further, as Odysseus lays out, it broke the delicate balance of rules we have that form a society. He watched as “10 years of rage” spilled into the walls of Troy, leading to the death of a priestess of Athena (Zendaya), beheaded as he watched. Yes, the army spurned the gods, and Odysseus was punished for it; but more than that, they broke society. The walls of Troy crumbling and falling down are a very literal representation of how war destroys civilization, and while Odysseus spent years denying it, eventually he has come to accept his very singular role in this particular cycle of darkness.

Details

This is specifically used to spur on Penelope to seemingly give up the memory of her husband, though there’s an interpretation that she knows – or hopes – the beggar is Odysseus, and puts forth a challenge that only he could complete. But it also ties into the final scene as Penelope and Odysseus straight-up talk about how civilizations always fall because of war, entering periods of darkness, but through a reminder of history there’s hope that next time they won’t repeat those mistakes. Again, they are quite literally chasing the fading light of civilization, which will soon fall into darkness; but every setting of the sun eventually leads to a new dawn… Only for the cycle to repeat.

And that’s what Nolan is getting at here: We are currently, in the modern day of 2026, leading to our own inevitable destruction by breaking our own laws, spurning our own gods, by fighting with each other. It’s a theme that Nolan has embraced repeatedly, most recently with Oppenheimer, the film directly preceding this one, where the filmmaker attempted to show how our hubris in splitting the atom was both a scientific leap and also broke the world. In The Odyssey, he goes thousands of years back in time to explain how this is nothing new, and humanity will always lead to its own downfall. And heck, it's a theme through all his movies. Sure, Batman might be a lighter topic than the development of the atomic bomb or the fall of the Greeks. But that trilogy is threaded through with concepts like “escalation” and the famous “some men just want to watch the world burn” speech from The Dark Knight.

How The Odyssey Ending Is Different From Homer’s Original

This is decidedly different from what Homer laid out in The Odyssey, which follows Odysseus’s reunion with Penelope with another reunion: He finally meets his father, Laertes, once again. The latter does not appear in the movie, but is saved for last in Homer’s original, repositioning the story as one of fathers and sons and returning heroes. There are a lot of interpretations of Homer’s epic, as you can likely imagine, but while there’s been various discussions about whether Odysseus is a hero or not, he is triumphant at the end… And also returns to being king of Ithaca, alongside Penelope as his queen. It’s a happy ending, regardless of what you, the reader, think of Odysseus’s actions.

Nolan doesn’t necessarily end his version of The Odyssey on a sour note, but by excising Laertes, and focusing instead of Odysseus and Telemachus, he repositions this as how the older generation, mired in forever wars, has failed, and it’s time for the younger generation to take their own swing at things. Whether they will make the same mistakes is up to them.

Penelope and Odysseus’s final lines in the movie boil down to how we may ignore the written word, but stories built to instruct us how to navigate the darkness will survive in song – or in this case, movies. Basically, Nolan is using the former king and queen as his mouthpiece to drive home that the reason he is making a movie version of The Odyssey now is because we in the audience and humans at large are no longer learning the lessons Homer laid down thousands of years ago in the written word, and these stories need to survive. Not merely because of the oral tradition, but as a reminder that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Or in short? War sucks, man.

You can chat with Alex Zalben on BlueSky @azalben.bsky.social, or find him regularly yapping on the Comic Book Club podcast.