Christopher Nolan’s latest film at the box office- Oppenheimer, is shattering records and has already grossed over $500 million worldwide. But fans of the acclaimed director can’t decide where the film sits in his filmography. Is it better than Inception and Prestige?

People can’t decide. But it has again brought attention to the ending of one of his best films- Interstellar.

The ending of Interstellar confounded many due to its unconventional narrative coupled with a complex story involving time, dimensions, aliens, and more. There’s also the bootstrap paradox of it all to round it off as well. So what was going on at the end of Interstellar? Well, that has to be tackled from multiple angles.

Interstellar’s ending is complicated. But two things are clear. One is that time doesn’t flow linearly. The future humans who helped Cooper relay the quantum data inside the black hole to Murph had already accessed the five dimensions. They only helped Cooper to save their ancestors and ensure their survival somehow. Two is that they chose Cooper and Murph because they have the one thing technology lacks- love.

The Ending of Interstellar Explained

Interstellar is a poignant tale of humanity trying to survive by trying to find a home in the stars because Earth is dying. But more than that, it’s a heartbreaking tale of a father’s love for his daughter, who he leaves back home to ensure her survival.

Ultimately, he does make sure that his child and humanity as a whole get to live. But how? That’s where things get complicated.

First things first- what is that interdimensional library? Cooper lies to Brand about the weight Endurance would need to shed to free itself from Gargantua’s gravity after the slingshot maneuver. They drop the shuttle with TARS in the black hole to lessen the weight and transmit quantum data back to NASA scientists.

After all, they need every little help to solve the gravitational equation back on Earth so city-wide spacecrafts can lift off into space. But that isn’t enough. So Cooper dropped his shuttle with him in it so that Brand could get to Edmunds’ planet and begin the human race anew with the embryos present on the Endurance.

Cooper knows he will die, but he is prepared to do it to ensure his children, Murph, and Tom’s survival. But he doesn’t die even though his shuttle gets ripped apart by Gargantua’s gravity. Instead, he gets transported to an interdimensional library from where he sees his daughter, specifically her, in her childhood bedroom. But what is his purpose here?

TARS tells Cooper that this three-dimensional forever-stretching library will let him access the five dimensions. Eventually, our man of the hour figures out that he has to give the most crucial message to Murph, and only Murph because she is the one who will ultimately save humanity. Initially, Cooper tries to rewrite history by instructing Murph to convince him to stay.

But that doesn’t work because he can’t change the past. So he realizes that he has to accept the reality of where he is and then help Murph save humanity. How? He gives the quantum data required to solve the gravitational equation to his daughter by encoding it in the short-hand arm of his wristwatch that he leaves back home.

In an emotional moment, he declares that love will bring his daughter back to her childhood house and his watch because love is the only thing that transcends time and space.

This equation will allow humans to manipulate gravity, lift entire cities into space, and ensure humanity’s survival. Murph does that, thanks to the data she receives from her dad, who is the ghost she saw when she was a kid.

Who Are ‘They’ in Interstellar?

We are told of a ‘they’ in the film from the beginning. These beings constructed the artificial wormhole, and later on, TARS deduces that these creatures must be benevolent as well since they built the forever library to help Cooper understand and use their five-dimensional reality. But who are ‘they’? Cooper realizes that it’s humans.

In the future, humanity will progress enough to navigate through all five dimensions. These future humans will manipulate time and use gravity to artificially create a wormhole that will give NASA access to the 12 planets that can become the future home of humans. Thus, kickstarting the initial mission with Cooper, Brand, Edmund, Mann, and more.

They also saved Cooper from the effects of the wormhole and enabled him to give Murph the data necessary to save humanity by solving the gravitational equation. The future humans did all this and even saved Cooper after the mission was over to ensure that humans of the past could survive the destruction of Earth.

But there’s a question- why go through all this when humanity has already survived?

Here’s where the bootstrap paradox comes into play. This means that the cause of something (an event) is the result of the same thing. So, maybe in the actual timeline, humanity failed to escape from Earth because they couldn’t solve the gravitational equation.

However, maybe Edmund’s colony survived, grew, evolved, and developed the ability to travel through space and time.

So, the future humans may have created a new timeline where they changed the past. As the film reveals, humans would never have solved the gravitational equation without the quantum data inside the black hole. The only way they could get it is by intervention from an outside force, humans themselves.

But it’s also possible that time works differently for these future humans who have accessed the five dimensions. It may not be separate timelines, but something else entirely. After all, the film repeatedly emphasizes that time works for different beings in different corners of space and time.

So, future humans might have helped out their ancestors so that they could exist, or more of them could exist. But why did they choose Cooper and Murph only? It’s because they had what isn’t possible for technology to have- human connection and love.

What are your thoughts about the ending of Interstellar?

How did you decode it? Why did the future humans decide to rescue their ancestors?

Let us know in the comments below.