Directed by Christopher Nolan, Interstellar is a fantastic tale of time, space, and love. But if you got a bit lost in the final act of the film, we wouldn't blame you. So let's do our best to walk through the bizarre, mind-bending ending of Interstellar.
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00:00Directed by Christopher Nolan, Interstellar is a fantastic tale of time, space, and love.
00:06But if you got a bit lost in the final act of the film, we wouldn't blame you.
00:10So let's do our best to walk through the bizarre, mind-bending ending of Interstellar.
00:16Life on Earth isn't great in Interstellar.
00:19Massive dust storms are tearing up the planet, crops are failing, and soon humanity will
00:23cease to exist.
00:25Looking for answers, NASA turns to the skies, hoping for some kind of insight.
00:29Okay, now you need to tell me which planet has the same world.
00:36As we learn at the beginning of the film, a group of 12 scientists traveled through
00:40a mysterious wormhole that appeared near Saturn, to see if the 12 planets on the other side
00:45could sustain human life.
00:47A few years later, the Endurance and its crew, including Matthew McConaughey's Cooper and
00:52Anne Hathaway's Brand, are going to visit the three most promising planets in the hopes
00:56of colonizing one.
00:57When they arrive on Dr. Man's planet, the heroic scientist assures them this icy cold
01:02spot is the perfect place for humans to live.
01:05Our world is cold, stark, but undeniably beautiful."
01:12Unfortunately, it's soon all revealed to be a ruse.
01:16Although each of the original 12 scientists knew their trip was one-way, Man admits he
01:21never fully considered the possibility that his planet would be uninhabitable and that
01:25he might die alone.
01:26Although he resisted the urge for years, he eventually falsified his survey data to coax
01:31another team to travel to his planet, intending to use the Endurance to escape.
01:37At this point, Man is so desperate to leave that he'll do anything, even kill.
01:42Paranoid that the Endurance crew won't go along with his plan once they learn what he's
01:46done, Man attempts to kill Cooper so he can make his getaway.
01:51Back on Earth, Cooper's now-grown children find themselves at odds.
01:55His daughter, Murph, played by Jessica Chastain, has realized the surface of our planet has
02:00become uninhabitable.
02:01So naturally, she's trying to persuade her brother, Tom, to bring his family to the secret
02:06NASA facility where she's been working on the gravitational equation that would allow
02:10humanity to escape into space en masse.
02:13Despite Murph's warnings, Tom refuses to abandon the farmhouse where they grew up.
02:18After Cooper left them in their grandfather's care when they were children, never to be
02:22heard from again, Tom lost all faith in NASA's ability to help them.
02:26Dad didn't raise you to be this dumb, Tom.
02:29Dad didn't raise me.
02:30Grandpa did, and he's buried out back with Mom and Jesse.
02:33Convinced her brother is making a terrible mistake, Murph sets fire to Tom's cornfields,
02:39knowing that since Tom relies on his crops for survival, he'll be forced to drive out
02:43to try to extinguish the blaze.
02:45That buys Murph enough time to return to the house and evacuate Tom's wife and son, likely
02:50in the hopes that once Tom realizes his family has gone to the NASA facility, he'll have
02:55no choice but to join them.
02:57Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures.
03:00Without enough fuel to either return to Earth or travel to the third potentially habitable
03:05planet, Cooper proposes to use the gravity of the black hole Gargantua to execute a slingshot
03:11maneuver, which would send the Endurance off with enough inertia to reach the planet Dr.
03:15Edmonds was sent to assess.
03:17However, every time the Endurance crew approaches the black hole, its gravitational field distorts
03:22their perception of time due to relativity, meaning what they experience is only minutes,
03:27passes as years for anyone outside Gargantua's gravity.
03:31Every hour we spend on that planet will be seven years back on Earth."
03:37By executing Cooper's slingshot maneuver, he and Brand will experience time slippage
03:43of 51 years.
03:45They both realize this means Cooper will have to give up hope of ever seeing his children
03:49back on Earth, as they will likely have died of old age by the time the Endurance exits
03:53Gargantua's gravity.
03:55Still, Cooper knows that his plan is humanity's last chance for survival, adding even more
04:00drama to Cooper's decision is Mann's earlier speech about the moment humans experience
04:05before death.
04:06According to Mann, as our brains grasp at survival, we'll experience a vision of the
04:10thing we most desire to see again.
04:12Mann speculates that Cooper's final image will be of his children, since they're his
04:16reason for living.
04:17"...at the moment of death, your mind's gonna push a little bit harder to survive.
04:22For them."
04:24By giving up hopes of seeing his children again, Cooper is prioritizing the future of
04:28humanity over his own motivations for survival.
04:32With its depleted fuel supplies, Endurance must decrease its weight to pull free of Gargantua's
04:37gravity after completing Cooper's slingshot maneuver.
04:40Before beginning the maneuver, Cooper decides the shuttle holding TARS will detach and drop
04:45into the black hole.
04:46In addition to relieving the Endurance of the shuttle's weight, Cooper hopes that TARS
04:50can collect the quantum data from inside the singularity that NASA scientists on Earth
04:55need to complete the gravitational equation that will allow humanity to leave.
04:59While odds are slim that TARS will be able to transmit this data back to Earth, Cooper
05:04is determined to at least try, since it's his children's last hope of survival.
05:08However, Cooper doesn't tell Brand that losing TARS' shuttle won't account for a big enough
05:13drop in weight.
05:14In fact, an additional shuttle has to detach in order for the Endurance to escape.
05:18Cooper decides that he should bite the proverbial bullet, leaving Brand to continue on to Edmund's
05:23planet and restart the human race.
05:26He doesn't tell Brand until the last moment because he knows she would argue with his
05:30decision.
05:31But even without the possibility of seeing his children again, Cooper is at peace with
05:34his probable death.
05:36After falling into the black hole, Cooper continues to record what he's seeing and transmits
05:41it back to TARS, hoping the additional data might help scientists back on Earth.
05:46Although he expects to eventually get crushed by Gargantua's gravity, Cooper is miraculously
05:51spared once his shuttle is ripped apart.
05:54And that's when things get crazy.
05:56After surviving the wild ride, Cooper gets transported to an infinite, interdimensional
06:01library that allows him to look back into different moments in his daughter's childhood
06:06bedroom, including the day he left for his mission on the Endurance.
06:09If you're leaving, just go.
06:12No, no, no, no, don't go, don't go, you idiot!
06:18TARS determines that they made it through Gargantua alive because they were protected
06:22by them, the mysterious beings who constructed the wormhole in the first place.
06:28Since the beginning of the film, who they are has been a mystery.
06:32While NASA realized the wormhole was artificially constructed by some sort of advanced, intelligent
06:37beings, they didn't have any information about them beyond the assumption that they must
06:41be benevolent.
06:43TARS deduces they also must have built this library to help Cooper understand their five-dimensional
06:48reality.
06:49And sure, it's confusing, but it's also nice to have otherworldly beings on your side.
06:55Although the library where they bring Cooper seems to go on forever, every part of this
07:00room serves as a window into the exact same place, his daughter Murph's childhood bedroom.
07:05At first, Cooper seems to think he's been brought to her because of his own desire to
07:09see her again, but TARS helps him understand they have constructed this three-dimensional
07:14reality for Cooper, allowing him to access all five dimensions in a way he can understand.
07:19Why do they want to help us, huh?
07:21I don't know, but they constructed this three-dimensional space inside their five-dimensional reality
07:26to allow you to understand it.
07:28Together, TARS and Cooper figure out that through the library, Cooper is able to physically
07:33influence different points in spacetime by using gravity to move things, as time and
07:39gravity are the fourth and fifth dimensions that exist in their reality.
07:43What's the point of all this?
07:45Cooper deduces that he's been brought here to send a message back through time, using
07:49gravity, and that Murph has to be the one to receive it.
07:53Cooper realizes that while he thought they were fixated on him, he's not actually the
07:58one who's most important to saving humanity Murph is.
08:01The library exists to ensure that Cooper will be able to deliver his daughter the information
08:06she needs, right when she needs it.
08:09After Cooper finds himself stuck in the library, he realizes he's supposed to pass along the
08:15quantum data that TARS collected from inside Gargantua, the information the robot gathered
08:20from inside the black hole will help Murph save mankind.
08:25And Cooper is the interdimensional messenger, selected by the same mysterious forces that
08:30constructed this library and created the wormhole near Saturn.
08:34But something sent you here.
08:36They chose you.
08:37Well, who's they?
08:39And once Cooper understands his new purpose, he realizes the creatures who've been assisting
08:43humanity aren't extraterrestrial at all.
08:46They didn't bring us here at all.
08:54We brought ourselves.
08:56As it turns out, at some point in the future, humanity will advance to a place where we
09:00can navigate through all five dimensions.
09:04It's these future humans who used gravity to create the wormhole that allowed NASA to
09:09send scientists to explore the 12 planets in the first place.
09:13These future humans are also the ones who protected Cooper from the effects of Gargantua.
09:18Just as Cooper is able to use the library to influence events that, for him, already
09:24happened, the humans of the future have been using their understanding of time and gravity
09:28to ensure their own survival by assisting Cooper, Murph, NASA, and the other humans
09:33of their past.
09:35After realizing why the library exists and that they want Cooper to give Murph the quantum
09:40data she needs to save the world, TARS asks how Cooper plans to communicate such complex
09:45information from another dimension.
09:46Love, TARS, love.
09:47It's just like Gran said, my connection with Murph, it is quantifiable, it's the key.
09:54The robot doesn't understand, but Cooper explains that he can trust his love for his daughter
09:58to guide him to exactly where he needs to be.
10:01As Brand explained earlier in the film, love is the only thing that transcends all dimensions,
10:06including time and space.
10:08Cooper decides to code the quantum data into the second hand of the watch he gave Murph
10:12before he left, assuring TARS that she will one day return for it.
10:16When TARS asks how Cooper can be sure, he responds,
10:19Because I gave it to her.
10:23He's confident that her love for him will lead her to where she needs to go, just as
10:27his love led him back to her.
10:29Sure enough, as all this is happening, the adult Murph has indeed returned to her childhood
10:34bedroom drawn by an unseen force.
10:37She suddenly understands the ghost from earlier in the film.
10:40The entity trying to contact her with dust patterns on her bedroom floor was actually
10:45her father.
10:46Reminded of her love for him, she finds the watch, and voila, things are suddenly starting
10:51to look up for humanity.
10:54With the planet dying, humans have to evacuate the place fast, but to solve the gravitational
10:58equation that allows humanity to escape from the tethers of Earth, you need quantum data
11:03gathered from inside a black hole.
11:05The equation couldn't reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics.
11:08You need more.
11:09More.
11:10More what?
11:11More data.
11:12You need to see into a black hole.
11:15Thinking that collecting such data is impossible, Murph believes the people of Earth are doomed,
11:19and that her father has abandoned her.
11:21However, once she realizes that Cooper was her childhood ghost, and that he's given her
11:25the data she needs through the watch, she's able to solve the equation, ensuring humanity's
11:30survival.
11:31Once Cooper passes along the quantum data, the library tesseract begins to collapse,
11:36having served its purpose.
11:38Cooper loses consciousness, and he later wakes up on a space habitat orbiting Saturn.
11:43Just as they brought Cooper to a library and allowed him to communicate with his daughter
11:46and save humanity, they also brought him back to safety once he was finished with his
11:51mission, only instead of Earth, he's now on a gigantic colony floating through space.
11:57Thanks to Murph's calculations and the data acquired from the black hole, humans were
12:00finally able to leave Earth en masse, and now they're spread out over several different
12:05space habitats.
12:06And it's all thanks to those mysterious forces who helped Cooper in the library and made
12:10sure people would find him once it was time for the library to close.
12:15Due to the time slippage that Bran warned about before executing the slingshot maneuver
12:19around Gargantua, at least 51 years have passed for the people of Earth, but it's only been
12:24hours for Cooper.
12:26By the time he makes it to the space habitat known as Cooper Station, his daughter, Murph,
12:31whom he last saw as a little girl, is an old woman on the verge of death.
12:35On the flip side, Cooper appears to be about the same age as he was when he left.
12:39While Cooper is overjoyed to finally be reunited with his daughter, Murph knows that she won't
12:44live much longer, and tells him that he should go so that he doesn't have to watch her die.
12:49No parent should have to watch their own child die."
12:56Cooper takes his daughter's advice and steals a ship, intending to head back through the
13:00wormhole and join Bran on Edmund's planet.
13:03Like Cooper, she would have only recently arrived, and she'll soon be entering hypersleep,
13:08keeping her the same age until he reaches her.
13:11Sadly, Edmund's himself has died at some point during the decades he spent waiting
13:14for NASA to send a team to his planet, but as Bran takes off her helmet and breathes
13:19in the air of her new home at his gravesite, it's evident this is the planet the astronauts
13:24have been searching for, where humanity can rebuild and eventually thrive again.