Tenet: Everything In The Timeline We Don’t See

Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Tenet.

Though Christopher Nolan is famous for packing a great deal of information into his mind-bending films, his most recent cerebral blockbuster Tenet stretches beyond what can fit into its runtime. For moviegoers familiar with the director’s oeuvre, the initial feeling of confusion as the credits roll is almost as much a part of the experience as the film itself. But carefully examining the breadcrumbs that Mr. Nolan leaves viewers can illuminate the larger story at play.

In Tenet, a CIA operative known only as The Protagonist (John David Washington) is enlisted in a mysterious battle against a subterranean force led by an egomaniacal villain (Kenneth Branagh) traveling backwards through time to destroy humanity’s past. As he pieces together the existential threat with the help of his ally Neil (Robert Pattinson), he discovers that the whole operation – the titular organization and their fight to preserve the world as we know it – was created by his future self. His and Neil’s interactions weren’t the beginning, but rather the end of a long and eventful friendship.

But how did we get all this background information from the tip of the iceberg presented onscreen? What exactly is happening in the future of Tenet‘s palindromic world that we don’t see? Here’s a guide to all the major events in Tenet‘s timeline that the movie doesn’t show.

Sator and the Future Organization

The central obstacle to our Protagonist takes the form of Russian oligarch Andrei Sator, who is working for a mysterious future organization that is set on destroying humanity’s past by assembling and setting off a doomsday device known as “The Algorithm.” In the future, humanity has brought itself to the brink of extension by its own hand, as climate change has ravaged life on Earth. A scientist has created a doomsday device that is capable of inverting everything in the universe, which would cause the annihilation of everything before the device was activated. Realizing its potential devastation, the scientist scatters pieces of it into the past in the hope that this will prevent it from ever being used. The unseen future antagonists believe that by killing those responsible for the Earth’s destruction – in this case, their ancestors – they have a chance at preserving their own lives, so they enlist Sator to collect the Algorithm for them in exchange for gold.

Sator himself grew up in a Siberian city ravaged by war and poverty, and in a moment of serendipity, he discovered a piece of the Algorithm amidst the rubble of his hometown as a young man. He was then charged by agents of the future organization to collect these pieces for them. An older man in the events of the film, Sator is dying of inoperable pancreatic cancer, and has linked the Algorithm to a dead man’s switch – believing if he can’t live, no one can. He gets to take the world out with him, and the future organization gets to make one last desperate attempt at preserving their future by destroying their past mistakes. It’s a win-win.

The Tenet Organization and Mastermind of the Mission

Having discovered this existential threat to humanity during the events of the film, our Protagonist decides to found – or rather, learns that he already has founded – a counter organization known as “Tenet” to save the world from its self-destruction. After being captured at an operation gone awry in an opera house during the film’s opening sequence, the Protagonist receives mysterious instructions from a gentleman on a boat who leaves him with only with the word “Tenet” and the advice to use it wisely.

From there, he slowly collects the fragments of information as to the extent of the villains’ plot while also discovering the counter-plot he will help create in the future. Through the shady arms-dealer Priya (Dimple Kapadia) and his fast-friend Neil, he learns that the fight into which he’s been recruited is of his very own design. The third-act temporal pincer operation represents the culmination of his organization’s mission.

Neil and the Other Adventures

But the Protagonist didn’t mastermind Tenet all on his own. His “new” friend Neil reveals that he’s actually a long-time friend from the future who is traveling backwards in time to jumpstart – and ultimately save – the whole mission. In his swan song conversation with the Protagonist, Neil remarks about how this is the end of his journey, and that despite that, the two have an adventure-filled future ahead of them – adventures we don’t get to see in the film, but which might suggest a sequel.

And that’s not all! A popular theory would suggest that Neil makes yet an additional appearance in the events of the film as Kat Barton’s (Elizabeth Debecki) son. Given the resemblance, specifically Pattinson’s blonde hair, fans have made the connection that Tenet serves the additional function of saving Neil’s mother, and by extension Neil’s younger self, so that he could grow up and fill his role in the adventures he and the Protagonist are yet to have.

History of the Algorithm

All these events are set into motion because of one central device: The Algorithm. Like those who created the atomic bomb, the scientist who discovers the Algorithm sometime in the future determines that its devastating power is too great to allow it to fall into the wrong hands. But because any replicable formula or concept can be transmitted through time with ease simply by word of mouth, this algorithm is fixed in material form and broken into pieces distributed across time and space. If all pieces were to be assembled, the algorithm could be activated and untold disaster unleashed.

By the time we reach the denouement and our heads are sufficiently reeling from a story so complex even its lead actor doesn’t totally get it, the Protagonist, pincer-move leader Ives (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and Neil break up pieces of the algorithm and agree to return them to untraceable hiding places, preventing calamity. And as the credits roll, we can all exhale and remember just how we felt when we left Inception for the first time thinking “this is gonna take another few viewings to fully understand.” So with that, perhaps the best thing to do in the hopes of fully comprehending Tenet is watching it again, this time with the benefit of knowing the story beyond what the film shows us, and trying to piece together the situation just as our Protagonist must do himself.

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