Typically, adapting a work of literature as famous as Homer’s Odyssey would not necessarily leave audiences in much suspense over the ending. (Maybe that’s giving audiences too much credit as potential readers, but then again, you don’t really need to read that epic poem line by line to be familiar with the story’s broad outlines.) But Christopher Nolan, the writer/director behind the new film The Odyssey, is known for his narrative tricks and twists, and not even a text as well-known as this one can quell those instincts, especially given that there are many translations, interpretations, and adaptations of the work that have appeared in the centuries since its original circa-8^th-century-B.C. composition. Nolan’s version gives its audience plenty to chew on, within the text, meta-textually, and even (perhaps accidentally) related to the ginned-up pre-release “controversy” about some of Nolan’s creative choices. Let’s sift through the wreckage of the Trojan War, and plenty of accompanying spoilers, to get into it.

**Spoilers for The Odyssey, now in theaters**

The basic shape of Nolan’s Odyssey is true to the original poem, following Odysseus (Matt Damon) as he attempts to lead his men home following the Trojan War. The poem even depicts some events via flashback, which is compatible with how Nolan approaches the timeline. He begins the movie with Penelope (Anne Hathaway), wife of Odysseus, and their son Telemachus (Tom Holland) at home in Ithaca, after years of awaiting his return and playing host to a variety of suitors hoping to marry Penelope and take his place as king. There are brief flashbacks to before Odysseus departed for the war, and eventually we start to see bits and pieces of his journey following his victory at Troy. Some of this is framed as Odysseus recovering bits of memory while stranded on an island with Calypso (Charlize Theron), who feeds him lotus flowers that keep his mind hazy. Throughout the film, there are warnings that Ithaca needs a king (whether Odysseus or someone else) to defend against any invading “people from the sea,” an unseen but fearsome-sounding band of marauders who have hastened the fall of this Bronze Age world.

So over the course of the movie’s 170 minutes or so, we’re following Odysseus through various tribulations (including encounters with a cyclops, a witch, a group of large warriors, and other fantastical elements) in the past, as Telemachus attempts to learn more about his father, as well as figure out a defensive strategy against the encroaching suitors, in the movie’s present. That search includes another flashback, an account of the famous Trojan Horse gambit that results in the fall of Troy, a major victory for Odysseus. (This is only mentioned briefly in Homer’s poem, with far more detail provided in Virgil’s later poem Aeneid.) Ultimately, as in the poem, Odysseus does return home to Ithaca, albeit without any of his men, who all perish during various stages of the journey.

The Odyssey Ending Explained: Who Are the People from the Sea?

In Ithaca, Odysseus infiltrates his own palace, disguised as a beggar, with the help of Telemachus (who gradually comes to understand that he’s helping the father he never knew, rather than one of his men, as Odysseus initially claims) and his faithful ally Eumaeus (John Leguizamo). Before confronting the suitors, he speaks with Penelope, and explains a series of realizations he has had about his adventures, told in the third person — echoing the stories told about him throughout the film. Odysseus now sees his inability to find his way home as a subconscious wish of sorts, born of his shame over what he unleashed at Troy. We see more of the “battle” that ensued when his men infiltrated the Trojan walls with the horse, and it is more horrific than the version described earlier in the film. The people of Troy are slaughtered as Odysseus wanders around in a horrified daze, witnessing (among other things) the killing of an unarmed woman who is begging for her life.

That woman has a familiar face: Zendaya, who has also appeared as the goddess Athena, who Odysseus encounters repeatedly throughout his journey. Suddenly, greater ambiguity enters this portrayal: Was Athena appearing to Odysseus in the form of this woman, or is Athena not there at all? Though we see other forms of magic and fantastical creatures, the movie doesn’t include other gods on-screen. (Zeus and Poseidon are much referred-to but never seen; they are fuller characters in Homer’s epic poem.) Odysseus himself doesn’t weigh in on whether he believes he actually saw the face of Athena in that haunting recurring vision, but he does offer a chilling conclusion: It is he and his fellow Greeks who are actually the “people from the sea.” They have brought about their own civilization’s downfall by breaking “Zeus’s law” — which amounts to the golden rule of treating others as you would want to be treated (in this case, because they might be Zeus or another god in disguise).

Nolan probably didn’t anticipate that his movie would become an object of culture-war fury, specifically due to right-wing reaction to his casting of a few performers of color — including Zendaya, as well as Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Helen of Troy and her twin sister Clytemnestra — and a trans man (Elliot Page, in a small but crucial role as one of the Greek soldiers) in his version of the Greek myths. But this conclusion functions as a surprisingly direct rejoinder to the minority but frequently expressed idea that Western culture is threatened by outside forces. Nolan agrees that the society depicted in his film (and, we might extrapolate, echoed in our own present) has suffered from decay, but it is an inward rot, perpetuated by the Greeks themselves, not some outside forces that make for an easy scapegoat. Nolan made a movie about the downfall of society being caused by precisely the violence, hostility, and domination that Elon Musk and his most ardent followers are trying to glorify. The sight-unseen criticisms of The Odyssey only further support Nolan’s central thesis.

Does Odysseus Die in The Odyssey?

Odysseus doesn’t die at the end of the original poem, and though it briefly looks as if Nolan might alter that ending when, following a fierce battle against the suitors, Odysseus looks a bit like a pin-cushion, with various spears sticking out of his body. That doesn’t happen, but Nolan doesn’t stick strictly to the original text, either, where Odysseus reclaims the throne and the gods intervene to stop any further vengeance from the families of the suitors.

Instead, Nolan’s version ends with Odysseus and Penelope voluntarily entering exile, leaving Telemachus to rule as king. It’s telegraphed early on, during a flashback where Penelope suggests that and she Odysseus might abandon their royal posts and flee to avoid Agamemnon’s lengthy war. Images we take as imagined idyll in that scene reappear at the film’s end, as Penelope and Odysseus really do set sell for unknown western destinations.

Nolan essentially revives his Dark Knight Rises ending, where Alfred’s fantasy of Bruce Wayne leaving Gotham City behind is realized after the billionaire/superhero fakes his own death — only here, it’s far more bittersweet, even downbeat, fusing that more optimistic superhero adventure with the mournfulness of Nolan’s recent Oscar-winning Oppenheimer.

As the couple sails away, Odysseus says that “songs will be all they have to remember those of us who could write,” giving him a mini-prophecy about what happens to written language in the period following the real-life Bronze Age (hint: there’s no trace of it). “A new dawn will break over the darkened world,” he further predicts, “and all our mistakes will once again be forgotten.” Nolan cleverly sidesteps the question of what happens to Odysseus the man — maybe he really will live out his days with Penelope as intended — and reframes the movie as a question of what happens to Odysseus the legend, and whether people of the future will learn from the mistakes of this age, or see them flattened into stories of triumph, glorifying the “west” and their supposed cultural superiority.

In the run-up to The Odyssey’s release, some people accidentally rushed to provide the answer: that we will refuse to learn from history, and that we will plunge ourselves into darkness repeatedly.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.