Tenet ending revisited: The "temporal" pincer movement was just a diversion

Christopher Nolan's movies usually require entire books and concepts to understand. He took this complexity to a whole new level in Tenet, his 2020 sci-fi film starring an ensemble cast of John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Dimple Kapadia, and more.

If you think Interstellar (2014) or Inception (2010) can give you headaches, this one may well be a migraine for you. Time is at the core of the story, where it's moving forward and backward. So do the humans. The entire entropy of time is changed here. Reversed, if you want to put it like that.

You will see all that you have understood in the film at the end of it. Two teams are working, one forward in time and the other backwards in time. The ulterior motive is to get away with a device that, if detonated, would alter the world forever.

We won't dive into every detail, as it is better to see the movie after reading this, so you'll be able to understand what is happening in it. Nevertheless, you'll be amazed by the genius filmmaker who changed the flow of time to give us this masterpiece that'll be talked about for years to come.

Two teams are working as a diversion in the final battle of Tenet

A still from Tenet. (Image via Warner Bros.)

The final battle of Tenet is complex. It demands undivided attention because two teams are working separately in time. There's team red, and there's team blue, as you can identify with the colored tags on their uniform sleeves. The Protagonist (John David Washington) and Ives (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are leading the red team, while Robert Pattinson's Neil is leading the blue.

The red team is working normally in time, which is linear for them, while team blue is working in an inverted time zone, where things are moving backward. This entire phenomenon is described as "temporal" pincer movement. A pincer movement is simply two teams working simultaneously towards the same objective, although it happens at the same time. In Tenet, it is happening at different times.

One may ask, what is the purpose of this "temporal" pincer movement when both teams can work on the same side? That'll also give the team more men to work towards the objective.

The simple answer to this question in Tenet is that they need a diversion so that Ives and The Protagonist can retrieve the device before its detonation, saving the world.

The Protagonist created Tenet

When the mission is accomplished, another big revelation happens in the film. The titular organization in the movie, which the Protagonist is a part of, is actually created by the Protagonist himself.

Neil tells the truth to Washington's character when he asks whose operation this was. To that, it was the Protagonist's. At this point, Neil tells them that the Protagonist will recruit Neil in the future, so it's a beginning for him. However, for Neil (the one we are looking at), he has known the Protagonist for years, and this was his final operation with him.

All in all, that is all a big time loop, if we look at it from a distance.