ending of the whale essay

• Action/Adventure
• Children's/Family
• Documentary/Reality
• Amazon Prime Video

More From Decider

New Shows & Movies To Watch This Weekend: 'Bridgerton' Season 3 on...

Jax Taylor Admits His "Delivery Is Awful" In 'The Valley': "That's One Of...

What Happened to Regé-Jean Page? Did the Duke Bomb His Movie Star Career...

'9-1-1's Malcolm-Jamal Warner On Amir And Bobby, Working With Peter...

'Unfrosted' Has Everyone Wondering "What's The Deal With Jerry Seinfeld?"

Chrissy Teigen Stuns John Legend On 'The Drew Barrymore Show' With Reveal...

Brooke Shields Flashed Her ‘Mother of the Bride’ Co-Star Benjamin...

Andy Cohen Reveals Sarah Jessica Parker's Reaction When He Suggested Rosie...

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to copy URL

‘The Whale’ Ending Explained: Brendan Fraser’s Uncomfortable Drama Ends With a Final, Cruel Tragedy

Where to stream:.

To say The Whale is a difficult watch is the understatement of the century. The movie—which is now available to purchase on digital platforms like Amazon Prime Video —is a relentlessly uncomfortable and cruel two hours documenting the (spoiler alert!) final week of a 600-pound man, who has isolated himself from the world, and is now facing imminent death due to health issues caused by his weight.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky—the same man who brought you uncomfortable, divisive movies like Black Swan and mother! — The Whale is based on a 2012 play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter. Hunter, who also adapted the screenplay for film, based the story on his own experience with obesity in college. “I know many people who are big, happy, and healthy, but I wasn’t,” Hunter said in an interview for the films’ press notes. “I had a lot of unprocessed emotions from attending a fundamentalist Christian school where my sexuality came to bear in an ugly way, and that emerged in an unhealthy relationship with food. When I started writing The Whale, I think it all just came pouring out of me.”

Thus , The Whale features many hard-to-watch sequences of binge-eating junk food, beads of sweat rolling down Brendan Fraser’s heavily make-upped face, and Fraser struggling to move around in a squishy, rolling fat suit. If you manage to make it to the end of the film, you’ll be met with a moving but ambiguous conclusion. Don’t worry, Decider is here to help. Read on for an analysis of The Whale plot summary and ending explained, including what happens at the end of The Whale , and whether Charlie dies. Major spoilers ahead.

The Whale plot summary:

We meet Charlie (Brendan Fraser) as he is giving a virtual lecture for an online college English course. He keeps his camera off, telling his students that his webcam is broken. In reality, he is ashamed of his appearance as an obese, 600-pound man. Charlie can’t walk on his own and never leaves his house. Through the course of the film, he is visited by several recurring characters. There is Liz (Hong Chau), Charlie’s nurse friend who cares for him. Liz informs Charlie that his blood pressure is at a dangerous level, and that he needs to go to the hospital, or he will very likely die of congestive heart failure by the end of the week. Charlie refuses to go, citing the fact that he has no money and can’t afford the hospital bills. He instead decides to spend his last week of life attempted to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

Another visitor of Charlie’s is Thomas, a door-to-door missionary from an evangelical church called New Life. Thomas walks in on Charlie while he is hyperventilating and at risk of having a heart attack. Charlie thrusts an essay about Herman Melville’s Moby Dick into Thomas’s hands and instructs him to read it. After Charlie calms down, Thomas asks why Charlie asked him to read it. “I thought I was going to die, and I wanted to hear it one last time,” Charlie says. “It’s a really good essay.”

Charlie is also visited by his teenage daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), whom he hasn’t seen since she was 8 years old. Charlie, a gay man, left Ellie and her mom when Ellie was 8 because he fell in love with one of his (adult) students. Charlie tells Ellie he wanted to be part of her life, but that her mother forbade him from seeing her. Ellie is an exceptionally angry teenager and is exceedingly cruel to her father. When Charlie learns that Ellie is in danger of flunking out of high school, he offers to help her with her upcoming essay. He also offers to pay her to spend time with him—all the money he has, which is over $100,000.

• brendan fraser

Chris Pratt Honors His Late Stunt Double Tony McFarr: “I’ll Never Forget His Toughness”

Chris hemsworth, jennifer lawrence and more slated as oscars 2024 presenters, stream it or skip it: ‘doom patrol’ season 4 part 2 on max, the last hurrah for dc’s crazy jane, elasti-woman, robotman, negative man, and cyborg, the saddest tv cancellations of 2023… so far.

Thomas the missionary returns to Charlie’s home because he believes he was sent by God at the exact right moment to help Charlie. Liz is upset by Thomas’s presence and tells him to leave Charlie alone. We learn that Liz’s brother, Alan, was Charlie’s romantic partner, as well as a member of the New Life church. Liz blames New Life for her brother’s extreme unhappiness—because he was told his sexuality went against the will of God—which eventually led to Alan jumping off a bridge and killing himself. Charlie, in his grief, began binge-eating in response.

Charlie’s health is rapidly declining. Liz brings Charlie a wheelchair to help him move around his house. Ellie once again visits Charlie and demands that he write her essay assignment. Charlie agrees. Despite how cruel Ellie is to Charlie, he insists she is an amazing person. Ellie slips Charlie sleeping pills, and while he is unconscious, Thomas the missionary once again comes to visit, and Ellie threatens to kill her father if Thomas doesn’t smoke pot with her. She snaps an incriminating photo of Thomas, and then confronts him: She knows he’s not from New Life, because she knows that New Life no longer has door-to-door missionaries.

Thomas confesses that while he used to be a missionary—after his parents sent him away to the church when they discovered him smoking pot–he grew frustrated with the church’s lack of social outreach and felt he wasn’t truly helping people. After a blow-out argument with the pastor, Thomas stole all of the church’s petty cash and left. He confesses to Ellie that he is almost out of money, but is too afraid to go home. Ellie secretly records his confession.

Liz and Ellie’s mother, Mary (Samantha Morton), show up and discover that Ellie has drugged her father. After Liz coaxes Charlie back to consciousness, she finds out that Charlie, despite his protests about hospital bills, does, in fact, have money. He’s just been saving all of it to give to Ellie. Liz is furious that Charlie has refused to buy the medical care and equipment he needs, and storms out. Ellie storms out too, telling her dad to “just fucking die already.” Charlie gives Ellie the essay she asked for before she leaves.

Charlie and Mary talk about their life and marriage. Charlie shares a memory of going to the beach with Ellie and Mary and swimming in the ocean. Mary tells Charlie one reason she kept Charlie away from Ellie is that she was afraid Ellie would hurt him. Mary says Ellie is “evil,” and shows Charlie a cruel picture of himself that Ellie posted on social media, mocking him. Charlie continues to insist that Ellie is amazing and that she’s a great writer. Mary leaves in tears, and Charlie, also in tears, tells her that he has to believe he’s done one good thing in his life, aka Ellie.

After Mary leaves, Charlie goes on a binge eating session that ends in him vomiting. He rashly posts a prompt on his students’ online message board, challenging them to write something honest. Thomas visits one last time and shows Charlie a Bible passage highlighted in Alan’s old Bible. Thomas believes Alan died because he turned his back on God and gave into “the flesh,” aka homosexuality. Charlie, for once, stands up for himself, and more or less tells Thomas to piss off. Thomas informs Charlie that Ellie sent his recorded confession to his church and parents, and that both parties forgave him, meaning he can finally go home.

In his final webinar class, Charlie reveals he has been fired. He reads some of his students’ responses to his prompt to be honest. Moved by their honesty, he vows to be honest in return and turns on his web camera to show them his entire body. The students react in shock and disgust.

The Whale ending explained:

On the last day of his life, Liz returns to Charlie to take care of him. Even though she is angry, she loves him. Charlie tells Liz that he believe Ellie ratted Thomas out because she wanted to help him, because, “people are amazing.” Ellie storms into the house, angry with Charlie because she failed her essay assignment. When she sees the shape Charlie is in, she uncertainly asks Liz what’s wrong. “He’s dying,” Liz replies. Ellie says to call an ambulance, but Charlie replies, “No.” Ellie asks to speak to Charlie alone, and although Liz doesn’t want to leave Charlie, she agrees. Liz seems to realize that she is saying goodbye to Charlie, and tells him she’ll wait downstairs.

Ellie demands to know why Charlie failed her assignment and accuses him of purposefully screwing her over. Charlie, who is beginning to hyperventilate, tells Ellie that he didn’t write the essay—she did. It’s an essay on Moby Dick that Ellie wrote in 8th grade. Ellie’s mom sent the essay to Charlie, and Charlie believes it’s the best essay he’s ever read. Charlie sobs that he is sorry for leaving Ellie. As he begins to actively have a heart attack, Ellie turns to leave. Charlie begs her to read her essay to him, and she relents. As Ellie reads about the whale in Moby Dick , Charlie stands to his full height, entirely on his own. (Get it? He’s the whale!)

With a massive effort, Charlie walks toward Ellie. When Ellie reads Charlie’s favorite line in the essay—”And I felt saddest of all when I read the boring chapters, that were just descriptions of whales, because I knew the author was trying to save us from his own sad story, just for a little while,”—Charlie imagines stepping into the ocean, all those years ago when he wasn’t so obese.

Ellie steps toward Charlie. She begins to read the next line of the essay, “This book made me think about my own life, and then it made me glad for my–” but she cuts off. Charlie and Ellie smile at each other. Then with a gasp, Charlie floats off the floor and into a bright white light. With that, the movie ends.

Does Charlie die in The Whale ?

Yes. While one could argue that The Whale ending is up for interpretation, my interpretation is that Charlie’s feet leaving the ground is a clear metaphor for Charlie’s body leaving this earth, aka, that he has died of heart failure. The movie has made it clear throughout that Charlie only has about a week to live, and is careful to denote each day of the week. Liz said at the beginning of the final scene that Charlie is dying.

This is slightly different from how the stage version of The Whale ends, with a hard cut to black. But in an interview with editor Andrew Weisblum for the film’s press notes, it seems clear that the filmmakers intended this scene to indicate “the end” of Charlie’s life, and that it mirror the first scene that Charlie has with Ellie. “It was important to set that up structurally, these two moments that reflect each other—where in one Charlie fails and in the other, he succeeds. The cutting patterns and shot choices of the two scenes are very similar. But the power of that final scene is that we know Charlie is facing the end.”

What was the end of Ellie’s essay in The Whale ?

But what about that final line of Ellie’s essay, that we never got to hear? What is she glad for? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. The full essay is never read in the movie and always cuts off before that final line.

While we never get to hear what it was that Ellie was glad for in her own life, it’s clear that this is the most impactful part of the essay for Charlie. Did she write that she was glad family, perhaps? Or is she glad her dad left her when he did, to spare her his sad story? Or for the fact that she has books to read, to escape her own sad story, just for a little while?

It’s up to you to fill in the blank. Because the movie is so bleak, I choose to interpret it as Ellie feeling grateful for both her mother and her father, who love her. I just need Charlie to know that Ellie was grateful for his love. He needed to know he did one good thing with his life, he said. Maybe he’s clinging to that essay because the final line, written by Ellie, confirms that he did.

• Ending Explained
• Prime Video

Does 'Yellowstone' Return Tonight? 'Yellowstone's Season 5, Part 2 Premiere Date Info, Kevin Costner Updates, And More

'Live's Kelly Ripa And Mark Consuelos Learn Why Ankle Socks Are "Canceled" From Gen Z Members Of Their Studio Audience

'The Resident's Malcolm-Jamal Warner Says Cast Would Be Open To Returning For A Season 7: "I Think We Would All Jump At The Opportunity"

'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire' Comes To Digital, But When Will 'Godzilla x Kong' Stream on Max?

PBS's ‘MaryLand’ Introduces ‘Masterpiece’ Fans to the Magical Isle of Man

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Monster’ on Netflix, a Dialogue-Free Indonesian Horror-Thriller

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes

The Whale ending explained: Brendan Fraser breaks down Charlie and Ellie's final scene

Fraser explains his interpretation of what the last exchange between Charlie and Ellie (Sadie Sink) means for both characters: "He's liberated."

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Whale .

It's easy to get swept up in the emotions of Darren Aronofsky 's searing drama The Whale , which follows Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a reclusive, 600-pound literature professor struggling, in the last days of his life, to reconnect with the teenage daughter, Ellie ( Sadie Sink ), whom he abandoned years prior. The film's conclusion, however, might be more difficult for some viewers to read, so we asked Fraser and screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter to break down what the final scene means for Charlie's journey.

The film slowly builds to a key moment for the father-daughter pair, after Charlie spends most of the movie defending Ellie's sporadic outbursts and prickly, wounded disposition — particularly to his longtime caregiver and friend, Liz ( Hong Chau ). Charlie maintains that Ellie, like most people, has an innate capacity for empathy, and regularly heralds one of her blunt, years-old school essays criticizing the classic novel Moby Dick . He see it as a signifier of her purity, honesty, and unbridled passion. Still, Ellie remains skeptical of Charlie during most of the film's running time.

"Ellie torments him, when she cases him out the fist time she sees him," Fraser observes, noting a specific piece of blocking. "You notice that she stands behind him. She knows he can't look over his shoulder. She's torturing him a little bit. She's cross, she's angry for the sadness she feels, and that's how this 17-year-old brilliant kid comports herself. She goads him into taking to his feet, knowing well that he likely can't and that it would make him very uncomfortable to do that without even having the assistance of his walker — but she takes it from him anyway and makes him prove himself, and he can't."

That scene, Fraser says, is key to understanding the film's conclusion, which brings Ellie and Charlie together for a genuine connection, as she reads the essay aloud. Again, Charlie attempts to rise up and walk toward her. That's where things get fantastical, as Fraser calls the final sequence an act of "contrition" for Charlie, in which he's "liberated" after finally breaking through her defensive armor, reaffirming to Ellie that he sees her for the person she is — and always was.

"It's important because it's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet," Fraser says. "For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it. While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn't need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he's got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie — with a touch of magic realism — finally does fly."

Screenwriter Hunter calls the run-up a "hero journey where he gets the elixir."

"He's struggling this entire film to put a mirror up to his daughter to say, 'This is who you are,' and in those final moments, that mirror is this essay," Hunter explains. "When she looks at it, she can't deny turning it in and getting a D, but then, here's her father, all these years later, being like, 'This is the best essay I've ever read.' At long last, he's the only person who sees her, and she knows it."

As for whether Hunter feels Charlie is actually walking in the final shot, he says it's open for interpretation.

"I think it's an apotheosis — you can take it how you want it," he says. "In the play, the way I wrote it is that you hear a sound of waves and they slowly intensify through that scene, so, there's a way to read it both ways. It wants to be miraculous, either literally or figuratively, and I think you can watch it either way."

You can watch and interpret for yourself: The Whale is now in theaters nationwide via A24 . See Fraser explain the movie's ending in the video above.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly 's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Brendan Fraser's emotional performance will move you to tears in new trailer for The Whale
• Golden Globes nominate Brendan Fraser after The Whale star said he won't attend ceremony
• Brendan Fraser praises Encino Man costar Ke Huy Quan for 'performance of his lifetime' in Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Brendan Fraser tears up discussing his kids and The Whale : 'I have as much love as I'll ever need'
• Brendan Fraser reveals why he turned down Disney's George of the Jungle sequel

Related Articles

The ‘cathartic release’ of ‘The Whale’ explained by the play’s actors and directors

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

The following contains spoilers from the movie “The Whale,” now playing in theaters.

The movie version of “The Whale” ends with a breath, a bright light and a beach. The last visual shows the sun shining, the tide rising and falling, and a younger, slimmer version of the lead character, Charlie, staring out into the ocean as his daughter plays in the sand behind him.

If the serene seaside scene confused you, you’re not alone: That final flashback was a surprise to playwright and screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter, as director Darren Aronofsky tacked it on without discussing it with him. But the ending’s overall effect echoes the final moment of its source material, which actors and directors who’ve staged the popular play consider to be a release that, when performed, feels communal and generally satisfying for the audience in the room.

“The way it’s structured, this play is designed to slowly and repeatedly turn up the pressure until it almost can’t be tolerated,” said Davis McCallum, who directed a 2012 off-Broadway staging at Playwrights Horizons. “And then it has this really cathartic release at the end of the piece — a blackout, a sound effect, and a moment where the audience just lived in that silent darkness together.”

Both the play and the movie “The Whale” center on Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a reclusive, morbidly obese instructor of online writing classes who has been eating himself to death since the passing of his lover, a casualty of religious homophobia.

Review: Does Brendan Fraser give a great performance in ‘The Whale’? It’s complicated.

Darren Aronofsky’s intimate chamber drama, adapted by Samuel D. Hunter from his own play, navigates a tricky line between empathy and exploitation.

Dec. 8, 2022

The character is an amalgamation of Hunter’s past lives: as a closeted gay kid attending a fundamentalist Christian school in rural Idaho, a depressed adult who silently self-medicated with food, and an expository writing instructor for college freshmen (the piece’s heartbreakingly honest line “I think I need to accept that my life isn’t going to be very exciting” is an actual submission from one of Hunter’s students).

Throughout “The Whale,” Charlie is visited by his estranged and troubled daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink) , and his frustrated ex-wife, Mary (Samantha Morton), both of whom Charlie abandoned when he ended his marriage and came out as gay; Liz (Hong Chau) , a conflicted caregiver who is also the sibling of Charlie’s late lover; and Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a fundamentalist missionary who is far from home. Hunter doesn’t shy away from any of the issues the characters are dealing with “but doesn’t bury you in [them] either,” said Martin Benson, who directed a 2013 staging at South Coast Repertory. “He’s not advocating anything, he’s just writing what he believes is true.”

These characters and their concerns are similar to those in Hunter’s other plays, which tackle subjects “fundamental to Greek tragedy: the limitation of humanity’s vision, the place of religion in society and the desperate longing for relief from the lonely uncertainty of life,” wrote Times critic Charles McNulty when Hunter received the MacArthur “genius” grant in 2014. “He proceeds not with a moral point but through observation of the way his characters either defend their bunkered existences or attempt to reach beyond them — or more commonly, some combination of the two.”

Throughout the intimate live piece — which is staged without the escape of an intermission — all five characters reveal truths to each other and the audience that raise the stakes of their potential bonds.

“These deeply flawed characters actually care about each other so much, but there are so many obstacles for them to express that love or connect with one another in real ways, however desperately or destructively,” said Joanie Schultz, who directed a 2013 production at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater. “So when some of them finally do, it’s gorgeous and almost magical.”

Numerous stagings of “The Whale” accentuate the pressure-cooker effect by designing Charlie’s living room, where the entirety of the play unfolds, with an extra sense of claustrophobia or isolation. For example, the 2014 Bay Area run raised the Marin Theatre Company stage by four feet and angled Charlie’s ceiling so that, from the audience’s perspective, the character appeared to “dominate the space in a way that intimidated the people who visited him,” said director Jasson Minadakis.

Likewise, the off-Broadway version strategically lit the space “so that it felt as if his room were hovering in this dark void,” said director McCallum; the Chicago staging positioned the proscenium “like an island in the sea, which was really effective because they’re all alone on their own islands in some ways, with all these barriers to connection,” said director Schultz.

Darren Aronofsky on ‘The Whale,’ fatphobia and empathy

Director Darren Aronofsky dives deep on “The Whale,” fatphobia, human connection and how he feels about Brendan Fraser and Sadie Sink.

Dec. 13, 2022

Within these confined spaces, the actors who played Charlie — each wearing body suits weighing anywhere from 30 to 100 pounds — charted his arc physically and emotionally. As he attempts to nudge daughter Ellie toward a place of authentic self-expression, he too reveals himself to his students. The intention is that, by the time Charlie shares that he’s giving his life savings to Ellie, and endures great pain to stand up and walk toward her as she reads her “Moby-Dick” essay aloud to him, the audience would feel the overwhelming fulfillment Charlie gets during his final breath in the play.

“Every night, it was a journey, and it wasn’t easy to watch or to perform,” recalled Tom Alan Robbins, who starred in the 2012 world premiere in Denver. “His goal is self-destructive, but you want the audience to understand what has driven him to do this, and that his redemption is in the relationship he tries to forge with his daughter. You want that last second to be a combination of incredible pain and incredible triumph because, however briefly it is that they connect, it’s still an achievement for him.”

“Ellie says terrible, devastating things to Charlie throughout the whole thing, but he loves her so much that it doesn’t even hurt him,” said Matthew Arkin, who played Charlie at South Coast Repertory. “So in that final moment, whatever flaws he had, whatever mistakes he made and in whatever ways he couldn’t love himself enough, he lived a life redeemed, because he gave everything to save his daughter.”

Whether Charlie dies at the end of “The Whale” is up for debate. As written in Hunter’s script, the stage directions of that breath simply read, “A sharp intake of breath. The lights snap to black.” Many theater makers say that breath could very well be his last inhale, after which he is finally freed from the pains of his body, his loneliness, his grief. “The love and connection that Charlie gives Ellie is a gift, and hopefully she will remain true to her voice and herself in a way that he gave up on,” said Hal Brooks, who directed the Denver premiere.

It also could be considered in a metaphorical way, mimicking “how whales immerse themselves for so long underwater and then they finally come up to the surface,” said Schultz, or “a deep intake of breath before diving in somewhere they’ve never gone before,” said Shuler Hensley, who played Charlie in the New York run as well as a London staging in 2018. “It’s a brilliant ending, because audience members have constantly told me they couldn’t breathe afterwards. They didn’t know what to do, whether to applaud or get up or move because they’ve become so connected to Charlie.”

When asked about the ending, Hunter didn’t clarify Charlie’s status because, he said, it’s not necessarily relevant. “The final moments of this play and this movie abandon realism a little bit, and it’s no longer about this guy in this apartment,” he explained. “What matters is that he’s connected with Ellie, he’s done the thing that he’s been trying to do throughout this entire play, and that connection feels real and genuine. There’s this apotheosis that happens, and in the film, Charlie literally ascends off the ground.”

Though Hunter didn’t write the beach scene that follows Charlie’s onscreen ascension, he called it “marvelous” and shared an interpretation of what it might mean: “If it’s a flashback to the last time Charlie went swimming in the ocean, close to when the family fell apart, what I see in that shot is a man staring down the abyss of self-actualization, contemplating the decision he has to make about the different avenues he can take.

“Maybe he was thinking about what would happen if he stayed in that marriage: Ellie would have grown up with a closeted father, [his lover] Alan would have been miserable and, as Liz points out, would have probably died way before he did when he was with Charlie,” Hunter continued. “Choosing to stay or leave, both paths are complicated and tragic in their own ways, but ultimately, I think Charlie took the more hopeful route, and chose to look for the salvation one can find through human connection.”

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Ashley Lee is a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she writes about theater, movies, television and the bustling intersection of the stage and the screen. An alum of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute and Poynter’s Power of Diverse Voices, she leads workshops on arts journalism at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. She was previously a New York-based editor at the Hollywood Reporter and has written for the Washington Post, Backstage and American Theatre, among others. She is currently working remotely alongside her dog, Oliver.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Climate & Environment

Cloudy with a chance of rage: Climatologists fume over relocation of L.A. weather station

May 17, 2024

California is changing how big power companies charge for electricity. What to expect on your bill

May 16, 2024

Travel & Experiences

The 101 best West Coast experiences

This anesthesiologist is L.A. County’s highest paid employee. He works 94 hours a week

The Whale Ending Explained: Step Into The Light

"The Whale," is a controversial and devastating film that seems to be going in an obvious direction, but a growing undercurrent of hope leaves viewers guessing about where exactly our protagonist will end up. Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is an online schoolteacher whose binge eating has cost him his mobility, his health, the possibility of regular human interaction, and any semblance of normalcy. When he finally starts suffering from congestive heart failure and refuses to go to the hospital, he is given a prognosis of just a few remaining days. Charlie doesn't change his ways or seek proper medical attention, but he does finally reach out to his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink).

At their first meeting in years, the callous teenager challenges her father to walk toward her without the assistance of his walker. He fails at first, but in the final moments of the movie, he actually succeeds. As he makes his way to her, she reads him an analytical essay about Moby Dick that she wrote as a child. She does so at Charlie's request — he recites it to himself often throughout the film. He even has another character read it to him during his first health scare at the beginning of the movie because he wants it to be the last thing he hears before he dies.

Charlie makes his way to where his daughter stands in his doorway before levitating and disappearing into his fondest memory of his family. In this memory, he stands on the ocean shore with his feet in the water, while his young daughter plays in the sand and her mother watches on.

So what exactly does this memory mean? Why is it the last image of the Academy Award-winning film? Does Charlie really die in the end? And why is Charlie so fixated on this essay when it doesn't have any apparent relationship to his own life?

What you need to remember about the plot of The Whale

A few things remain sacred to Charlie as he slips into complete isolation and a fatal health crisis. One is Ellie, whom he hasn't seen in years before the events of the film. He remains connected to her through this essay. He is particularly fixated on a line where she says that "Moby Dick" allowed her to "think about my own life." This follows her analysis that Ahab thinks killing the whale will make his life better, but the whale is completely emotionless. This suggests that Ellie views her father as her own kind of whale — not because of his size, but because of his estrangement. She thinks that he is the cause of all the pain in her life and that he doesn't care about her at all, having not heard from him in years.

Charlie makes strides in repairing his relationship with Ellie over the course of the film, but he is scared of re-entering her life after his family fell apart when he left his wife for one of his male students. This love, which once offered solace, quickly became its own source of tragedy for Charlie when severe depression and emotional turmoil led his partner into life-threatening anorexia and suicide. Charlie avoids memories of his late partner, even the happy ones, and keeps them hidden away in a locked room or tucked into a bookshelf. But he does allow himself to ruminate on a happy memory of his family. Even though he is kept at bay by his affair, a custody battle, and eventually his weight gain, he knows they are out there living their lives still and thus allows himself to preserve a happy memory of them at the beach.

What happens at the end of The Whale?

At the end of "The Whale," Charlie makes a triumphant march to his daughter as she reads to him from the essay that he loves so much. Despite being on his deathbed (or perhaps death couch is more accurate), he manages to achieve a physical feat that he was unable to do days earlier. He rips off the tubes that aid his breathing, pushes himself to his feet, and trudges towards Ellie as she reads out the words he knows by heart. Just as he reaches her in the doorway, he ascends. His feet fly off the ground, his eyes turn to the heavens, and he is transported back to that peaceful day at the beach. In this memory, he is down to a healthier weight again. His feet are in the ocean, his young daughter plays in the sand, and his ex-wife Mary (Samantha Morton) haunts the edge of the frame like a specter, watching on.

So what exactly does this mean? Where is Charlie going? And did he actually get up and walk towards Ellie at all? The answer might seem cut and dry, but there are actually a few competing theories.

Did Charlie die in the end?

The most obvious conclusion to draw from this ending is that Charlie has perished from the congestive heart failure that is slowly killing him over the course of the film. The movie catalogs his final days, beginning on a Monday when his dear friend and nurse, Liz (Hong Chau), says he will be dead by the weekend. Although we don't see Charlie's dead body or his funeral, we know he is on the brink of death and that the strain he puts on his body by walking towards his daughter will likely cause his heart to finally fail. However, the ending is slightly ambiguous.

Part of the reason why Charlie's death is questionable is because it's unclear whether he wants to die or not. There are moments where he indulges dangerously in junk food and others where he stops himself, at least momentarily. His commitment to over-eating and reluctance to seek medical attention suggests that he is suicidal, but certain things hint at an optimism or will to live. He puts out apples for a bird that comes to his windowsill every day, something Ellie notices right away. Charlie also makes a last-ditch effort to reconnect with his daughter, and in getting to know her, finds a newfound love of humanity in general, declaring that, "People are amazing!" It almost seems too cruel that this reconnection with Ellie and subsequent optimism would come too late — when his body was too far gone to be saved — and that he would die anyway. So maybe that's not what happened.

Does Charlie go to heaven?

In Charlie's final moment, he retreats again to a memory of himself and his family on the beach. This memory, which Charlie references in conversation with his ex-wife in a previous scene, was a true moment of peace and clarity of spirit for him — perhaps the last he ever felt. So, is this heaven? The answer might guide the viewer as to whether or not Charlie died or not.

It's interesting that Charlie would end up in some version of heaven because of his complicated relationship with religion. Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a missionary from a local New Life church is a frequent guest at Charlie's house in the week leading up to his death. Charlie's late boyfriend Alan was the son of the head of the church and a devout follower. When his father found out about Alan's relationship with Charlie, he exiled him from the church, which is what sent Alan into a depressive episode that eventually led to his death. Charlie was at odds with Alan's faith when he was alive and remains at odds with it after his passing. This religion vehemently rejects homosexuality and insists that a sinner like Alan or Charlie would never get to heaven. The missionary encourages Charlie to deny his sexuality and bodily sins and ask for God's forgiveness so that he might gain salvation in the afterlife, but he refuses. How ironic would it be if Charlie ended up in a blissful eternity anyway?

The religious themes of the movie suggest that Charlie did in fact die and go to heaven in the end, but they may have just alluded to a kind of spiritual peace or death of ego that does not necessarily imply a physical death.

What has the cast and crew of The Whale said about the ending?

Brendan Fraser, who plays Charlie in "The Whale,"   has a theory about the film's ending that might surprise you. He described the ending to Entertainment Weekly and, in doing so, revealed that he does not think his character perishes in the final moments of the film:

"[I]t's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet. For him to finally break through to [Ellie], humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it. While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn't need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he's got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie — with a touch of magic realism — finally does fly."

The white light and skyward look, along with the state of Charlie's health, definitely suggest that this is the moment his life "physically" ends, despite Fraser's interpretation. However, Charlie's march toward his daughter could be interpreted as a purely symbolic moment in itself.

"I think it's an apotheosis — you can take it how you want it," added playwright Samuel D. Hunter, who also adapted the work for the screen. "In the play, the way I wrote it is that you hear a sound of waves and they slowly intensify through that scene, so, there's a way to read it both ways. It wants to be miraculous, either literally or figuratively, and I think you can watch it either way."

The play had a surprising alternate ending

As it turns out, the choice to end the film with Charlie standing on the beach was entirely the idea of director Darren Aronofsky. The production of the play makes reference to Charlie's aforementioned memory through the sound of waves, but it ends abruptly, mid-sentence, with Charlie making his way to Ellie. Hunter gave his candid thoughts on Aronofsky's take on the ending in an interview with Digital Spy :

"The way the play ends is, Ellie has the last line of the essay: 'It made me feel glad for my ...' And she's cut off by the stage direction — 'a sharp intake of breath'. 'Charlie looks up, and has a sharp intake of breath. End of play.' I actually didn't know about the beach scenes until I saw a rough cut. It was just kind of an incredible surprise. I had no idea until I saw the rough cut, and I was so intensely moved by it. I was just like, 'Oh my God, that's perfect.' [...] In the play, it's the one moment that I script as he's giving that monologue about the Oregon coast that the sound of waves comes in. In the play, it's heightened, and expands a little bit. I think Darren [Aronofsky] took that idea, and kind of ran with it, in this gorgeous way."

Even though the movie ends in a slightly less ambiguous place than the stageplay, there is clearly still room for interpretation. Just like in the original piece from which it is adapted, the film dissolves its realism in this final scene and moves to a place of symbolism or magical realism. No matter how you interpret the ending of "The Whale," it certainly feels like a conclusive end to Charlie's story.

"The Whale" is currently available to stream on Showtime through Paramount Plus, and for rent on all the major streaming platforms.

'The Whale' Ending Explained: What Happens in Brendan Fraser’s Comeback?

No surprise from Aronofsky, but we have some questions!

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for The Whale Darren Aronofsky ’s The Whale has already proven to be one of the most controversial films of the year, which isn’t all that surprising considering Aronofsky’s history of making divisive projects. While Brendan Fraser has received widespread acclaim for his powerful performance as the overweight professor Charlie, the film has been perceived as “fatphobic” by some critics. It will be interesting to see where The Whale ends up landing this awards season; some view it as emotionally devastating, while others consider it to be manipulative and overtly cruel.

What Is 'The Whale' About?

The Whale is based on a play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter , and Aronofsky’s adaptation does a good job of reflecting the intimacy of a stage performance. The film takes place entirely within Charlie’s apartment as his friend Liz ( Hong Chau ) comes to care for him. Charlie has managed to isolate himself from the world; he communicates with his students via Zoom but does not ever show his face. Charlie decides to reconnect with his daughter, Ellie ( Sadie Sink ), who has no interest in him. Charlie agrees to help write her English papers if she will spend time with him and write personal essays from her heart.

Towards the end of the film, Charlie’s world begins to crumble. After making a series of inflammatory messages to his students, he’s fired from his job. His ex-wife, Mary ( Samantha Morton ), confronts him about his relationship with Ellie and criticizes him for his failures in their marriage. After being alerted that he has congestive heart failure, Charlie goes on an eating binge and consumes pizza until he vomits. It’s an emotionally overwhelming experience, especially toward the very final moments of the story.

Why Does Mary Not Want Charlie to See Ellie?

As Charlie reveals early on, he is openly gay and was in a relationship with one of his former students, Alan. Following Alan’s death, Charlie began compulsively eating, prompting Alan’s sister Liz to come and take care of him. As part of their arrangement, Mary forbids Charlie from contacting Ellie; she reacts with rage when she realizes he’s asked her to visit him. While Charlie is apologetic for his failure as a father, he does not apologize for his sexuality. In one of the most powerful scenes in the film, Charlie stands up to the missionary boy Thomas ( Ty Simpkins ), whose religion preaches homophobic messaging.

What Happened to Thomas?

As Mary reveals to Charlie, Ellie has been bullying people online through a private Facebook page. Mary feels that she has raised a cruel child and despite how Charlie has hurt the family, Ellie is the true “monster” in their family. In addition to posting pictures of her father, Ellie sends photos of Thomas (a former addict) to his church and family. Despite the seemingly cruel action, Thomas tells Charlie that he has newfound faith in people, as his parents have reached out to forgive him and welcome him home. Thomas also finds a picture of Charlie with Alan and realizes that he only put on the weight as a means of coping with his partner’s suicide.

RELATED: ‘The Whale’ Review: May the “Brenaissance” Continue Beyond Darren Aronofsky's Film

What Happened to Ellie?

Even though her father has been ghostwriting her essays so she can graduate, Ellie lashes out at Charlie when she realizes that he sent in an essay that she wrote when she was younger. Charlie feels that the essay is “honest” in a way that he appreciates, as he’s irritated by his students’ generic responses to his questions and prompts. He’s kept the essay for years and uses it to comfort himself. He tells Ellie how beautiful and talented she is, and for the first time, Ellie believes it. Even though Ellie spends the majority of the story mocking other people, she is in denial of her own talents and insecurities.

What Was Going on With the Pizza Delivery Boy?

Throughout the film, Charlie orders pizza online and has the delivery boy, Dan ( Sathya Sridharan ), leave it outside his door. While Dan tries to spark a conversation with him because he visits Charlie’s apartment so often, Charlie refuses to step outside and show his face. However, Dan decides to wait on the porch when Charlie comes to pick up the pizza and finally sees him for the first time. His immediate response is to look at Charlie in disgust.

What is Charlie Trying to Do at the End?

Charlie’s ultimate goal is to be completely honest with everyone around him. He refuses to apologize for his homosexuality to Thomas, and chastises him for thinking of him as “disgusting.” He realizes that even though Ellie appears to be cynical, she is really just seeking approval. He even shows his face to his students, and compliments some of the responses that they left in the last message board post that he felt were more honest than their previous work.

What Is Happening to Charlie in the Film’s Final Moments?

Charlie is dying at the very end and refuses to go to the hospital. As he bonds with Ellie, he attempts to stand. Between the effort of moving and his overall mental state, Charlie dies and ascends into an idealized version of heaven. It’s not the first time that Aronofsky has tackled religious imagery within his films. Both Noah and The Fountain directly deal with faith, spirituality, the afterlife, and the stories of the Bible-inspired mother! While Charlie meets his fate, he’s able to feel accomplished and unashamed.

What are the Differences Between the Play and the Film?

While both the original stage production and the film are very similar, Hunter made some changes to the script when translating it to a feature. Certain elements of the story, such as the Zoom calls and personal photographs, are detailed in a way that wasn’t possible on stage. While the play was released in 2012, the film takes place amidst the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, as news footage can be seen in the background. The endings are the same, but the film is slightly more hopeful, as Charlie feels that he has accomplished something greater.

Screen Rant

Brendan fraser shares his interpretation of the whale’s final scene.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

The 2 Stars Of Guy Ritchie’s Recent Box Office Flops Can Anchor His 2025 Box Office Redemption

The two pieces of career advice john wayne gave michael caine, george lucas rewrote the phantom menace's victory with a single line.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Whale. Brendan Fraser breaks down his interpretation of The Whale 's ending after it concludes on an ambiguous note. The Whale premiered on December 9 and is an emotional psychological drama starring Fraser. It has been touted as Fraser's comeback film after he disappeared from the Hollywood scene for many years. The Whale follows Charlie (Fraser), a morbidly obese man who tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink). The film has received mixed-to-positive reviews so far, with critics being nearly unanimous in their praise of Fraser's performance. However, the film has received some criticism for director Darren Aronofsky's melodramatic adaption of Samuel D. Hunter's 2012 play of the same name.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly , Fraser and Hunter (who also wrote the film's screenplay) shed some light on the ambiguous ending of The Whale . For many viewers, the scene may seem tragic and to others, the religious undertones may evade their understanding. Hence, Fraser and Hunter discuss how they interpreted the ending and how it was a hero's ending for Charlie, one in which he found liberation. Check out their statements below:

Fraser: It's important because it's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet. For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it. While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn't need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he's got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie — with a touch of magic realism — finally does fly. Hunter: He's struggling this entire film to put a mirror up to his daughter to say, 'This is who you are,' and in those final moments, that mirror is this essay, when she looks at it, she can't deny turning it in and getting a D, but then, here's her father, all these years later, being like, 'This is the best essay I've ever read.' At long last, he's the only person who sees her, and she knows it.

Related: The Whale Confirms Sadie Sink Is Stranger Things' True Breakout Star

What Happens In The Whale's Ending

Fraser and Hunter's explanation of the ending will be welcomed by some, as The Whale 's final scene is a bit difficult to understand on paper. Before the ending can fully be explained, Fraser reveals that viewers needed to understand an earlier scene in the film. That particular Whale scene was one in which Ellie and Charlie first begin spending time together after Charlie agrees to help her write an essay for school. Ellie, still hurt at being abandoned by her father, tries to hurt him back by challenging him to walk. Unfortunately, at that point in The Whale , he can't stand or walk, and is therefore unable to prove himself to her.

In the final scene of The Whale , Ellie confronts Charlie about switching out her essay with an essay on Moby Dick she wrote in 8th grade. Charlie switched out the essays because he finally saw her and understood that the latter essay was an expression of herself. Though Ellie is defensive at first, the two end up attempting to connect one last time. To do so, Charlie asks Ellie to read the essay to him. As she does so, despite his health failing him, Charlie manages to stand and walk toward her. He is finally able to prove himself to her. However, the effort of walking is more than Charlie can withstand, and he dies as Ellie reads the essay. In the end, a bright light seemingly shines down, which could be interpreted literally as Charlie ascending to heaven or figuratively to prove that he has been redeemed.

Ultimately, The Whale 's ending has many layers to it, and it is tragic in some sense. However, Fraser and Hunter point out that the underlying theme is redemption and liberation. In the end, Charlie is willing to accept his death because he has accomplished the one goal that he had, which was to prove to his daughter that she is seen and understood. It is also an extremely touching portrayal of the relationship between a parent and a child. Even though Charlie failed Ellie in many ways, he proved that his parental instinct and love for his daughter never faded as he was able to see the value and the piece of his daughter within a years-old 8th grade essay. According to Fraser and Hunter, The Whale 's ending isn't ambiguous or tragic but hopeful for all the parents out there seeking redemption.

Next: Why The Whale Is Controversial, Despite Brendan Fraser's Comeback

• The Whale (2022)

‘The Whale’ ending explained: what happened to Charlie?

Spoilers ahead

Brendan Fraser has swept awards season with his critically acclaimed performance in The Whale , which has a particularly emotional climax.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film follows morbidly obese literature teacher Charlie (Fraser) as he attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), who is torn up after Charlie left her and her mother to start a relationship with a man years earlier.

• READ MORE: Brendan Fraser: “I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m a fraud”

Alongside Fraser and Sink, the film stars Hong Chau as Charlie’s best friend and nurse Liz, Ty Simpkins as Christian missionary Thomas and Samantha Morton as Ellie’s mother Mary.

What happens at the end of The Whale ?

As Charlie nears death in his home, Ellie confronts him after receiving a low grade for an essay he’d rewritten. Charlie explains that he replaced her rewritten essay with the Moby Dick essay Ellie had previously written when she was in eighth grade – deeming it the most honest piece of writing he’d ever read.

Charlie asks Ellie to read the Moby Dick essay to him one last time. She initially refuses and goes to leave, but stops at the door in tears and proceeds to read it. As she reads, Charlie stands up and attempts to walk towards her, which he had failed to do when Ellie first visited.

As Ellie completes the reading, Charlie starts to ascend to the heavens as he looks up towards a white light in the sky.

Recommended

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly , Fraser gave his interpretation on the ending. “It’s important because it’s a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet. For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it.

“While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn’t need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he’s got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie – with a touch of magic realism – finally does fly.”

• Related Topics
• Brendan Fraser

You May Also Like

Billie eilish – ‘hit me hard and soft’ review: bold, brilliant and somewhat brighter, ‘furiosa: a mad max saga’ review: another mighty, petrol-soaked masterpiece, cage the elephant’s matt shultz: “i was in psychosis for three years – my arrest was a miracle”, breakthrough rapper songer on his life-changing year: “i’ve been pretty fearless”, natalie red: a disruptive, wildly talented force taking over the dancefloor, more stories, slash says guns n’ roses are “trying” to make a new album, watch kelly clarkson perform ‘say it ain’t so’ with weezer, sharon osbourne on why she “felt terrible” over daughter aimee not being part of ‘the osbournes’ series, emma stone to reunite with ‘poor things’ director yorgos lanthimos on new film ‘bugonia’, watch sabrina carpenter perform ‘espresso’ and more on ‘snl’ debut, bbc “explainer” newsreader ros atkins to dj at glastonbury 2024.

The Whale Ending, Explained

The ending of Darren Aronofsky's most recent film, The Whale, left many people with more questions than answers. Let's break it down.

• The Whale is a comeback film for Brendan Fraser, who delivers a highly-praised performance that won him his first Oscar for Best Actor.
• The film polarized critics due to its portrayal of obesity, with some claiming it stigmatizes and mocks fat people.
• The ending of The Whale is open to interpretation, with audiences debating whether the protagonist dies or experiences a symbolic moment of liberation.

The Whale hit the silver screen in 2022, marking the ultimate comeback of fan favorite Brendan Fraser following a few rocky years in his career and personal life. This Darren Aronofsky film, based on Samuel D. Hunter's 2012 play, was in the pipeline for years, as the director struggled to find the perfect actor to star in it. That remained the case until, eventually, he decided to cast Fraser based on his work in 2006's Journey to the End of the Night , a move that couldn't have worked out better: for his performance, the actor was lauded by critics and audiences alike, and took home his very first Oscar for Best Actor, among many, many other accolades. Joining Brendan in an equally brilliant cast are Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, and Samantha Morton.

With a worldwide gross of over $54 million against a $3 million budget, Aronofsky's film became an instant box-office hit and won several awards. However, reviews were quite polarized : while most critics praised Fraser's performance as the finest of his career and had kind words for the rest of the cast, others harshly slammed the film's portrayal of obesity, claiming that it stigmatizes and even mocks fat people. One thing is for sure: The Whale 's ending baffled many moviegoers. Let's break it down.

A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter. Directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser.

What Is The Whale About?

Unlike other films comprising director Darren Aronofsky's filmography , The Whale has a fairly straightforward plot — though, of course, it's not without a certain complexity. It introduces Charlie (Fraser), a morbidly obese English teacher, who lives secluded from society in the privacy of his home, a place that is not quite suited to his needs. His sole connection to the world around him is his computer, from which he teaches college students while keeping his webcam off, as well as frequent visits from his friend Liz (Chau), a nurse who goes out of her way to help him. From the very beginning of the film, it is revealed that Charlie's congestive heart failure is worsening by leaps and bounds, and he has only a few days to live.

Despite Liz's insistence and this bleak prognosis, Charlie refuses to seek medical assistance since, according to him, he does not have the means to do so. Instead, he sets out to rebuild the bond with his daughter Ellie (Sink), whom he abandoned at the age of eight when he left his wife to chase an affair with his former student Alan. In an attempt to get his daughter to forgive him, he offers her a hefty sum of money that he saved over the years, along with doing all of her homework if she spends time with him and writes something honest for him — which she reluctantly accepts.

Related: The Whale Review: Brendan Fraser's Awe-inspiring Performance Keeps Darren Aronofsky's Film Afloat

The Whale essentially provides the audience with a first-hand look at what seem to be the last days in Charlie's life, his overwhelming desire to bond with a daughter who has no interest in him whatsoever, his conflicted relationship with religion explored through his connection with a Christian missionary who seems hell-bent on saving him, and the rampant but useless efforts of the few people around him to get the man to seek medical care once and for all.

What Happens at the End of The Whale?

On his deathbed, Charlie gets one last visit from his daughter, enraged that the essay he wrote for her made her flunk. As it happens, he actually replaced the piece with an essay on Moby-Dick written by Ellie when she was just a child, which is how the audience comes to discover why the real author of the essay of such significance to Charlie throughout the film. Realizing he is in his final hour , the man asks his daughter to read it aloud to him one last time in spite of knowing its words by heart, and as she does so, he manages to stand up and walk over to her with remarkable strength, something he had not been able to do the previous days.

Upon reaching Ellie, they both smile at each other, Charlie's feet are lifted off the ground, and he becomes surrounded by a bright white light. Just before The Whale 's credits roll, we get a brief but significant scene featuring a healthier Charlie dipping his feet in the ocean with his infant daughter, playing in the sand and his ex-wife watching them from afar.

Judging from everything we saw in The Whale , we can deduce that, in the end, Charlie dies, and that this cherished memory of a happier time might be his own idealized version of heaven. Before he dies, he gets the redemption he sought so hard in his final days: Ellie seems to have started to let go of the resentment she holds against him for walking out on her, and Charlie departs this world convinced that he may have turned her life around (though this could very well be his own interpretation of the matter).

But as obvious as this conclusion may seem, Aronofsky makes sure to leave the door open to audiences' interpretation, not only regarding Charlie's tragic outcome, but also the moments leading up to it. This, in a sense, invites us to second-guess the truth of what is unfolding at the end of The Whale . Does Charlie really manage to stand on his own two feet, walk to his daughter, and obtain her forgiveness? Or is this simply a deathbed hallucination before taking his last breath? There are as many possible interpretations of The Whale 's ending as there are people who saw it, yet it's safe to say that this film has certainly left a number of unanswered questions that will continue to spark some very interesting debates.

Related: The Whale Writer Reflects on the Brendan Fraser Film's Success

What The Cast Has to Say About It

The wonderful thing about films with open or ambiguous endings is that they allow everyone who watches them to come up with their own conclusions, even those who made the movie. Brendan Fraser, in particular, attributed a very different meaning to The Whale 's ending: for him, his character does not die in the final moments, but rather goes through a symbolic moment of liberation as he walks towards his daughter.

"It's important because it's a Herculean effort that he makes to even get to his feet", he told Entertainment Weekly . "For him to finally break through to her, humble himself before her, and let her know that he made a mistake and is sorry for it. While his life has not physically ended in that moment, I think that he knows he doesn't need to live any longer, which is why he takes off his breather, he's got her reading the essay, and he does take to his feet like three Olympic dead-lifters, takes his baby steps to his baby, and in that beautiful two-shot, a great white light appears, and they look skyward. Depending on your belief system, spiritually or otherwise, we see that Charlie — with a touch of magic realism — finally does fly".

Samuel D. Hunter, screenwriter and creator of the original play, also weighed in: "I think it's an apotheosis — you can take it how you want it. In the play, the way I wrote it is that you hear a sound of waves, and they slowly intensify through that scene, so, there's a way to read it both ways. It wants to be miraculous, either literally or figuratively, and I think you can watch it either way".

Stream The Whale on Paramount+

The Ending Of The Whale Explained

Darren Aronofsky , the director of "Black Swan" and "Requiem for a Dream," returns with "The Whale," a new film that sees actor Brendan Fraser make the comeback performance of a lifetime in an emotional story of compassion. The film, based on the 2012 play of the same name , follows Charlie (Fraser), a reclusive 600-pound man looking to reconnect with his distant daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), while dealing with a resurgence of past mistakes. As Charlie, Fraser shows a range of emotions not seen in his past performances and leads a focused tale full of triumph and heartache. 

From the realization of his worsening health to the constant conflicts stemming from Charlie's past mistakes bleeding into the present, "The Whale" has a strong emotional pull that carries through to its tear-jerking ending. There's nothing as cathartic as watching "The Whale's" final act, which sees Charlie confronting himself and making better efforts to reconnect with Ellie. There are also unexpected revelations, burning themes, and closing arcs that all come so suddenly that the impact of some things could've slipped by. Looper is here to clear things up and dissect everything that happened during "The Whale's" finale 

The truth behind Thomas' visits

When we first meet Thomas (Ty Simpkins), we learn that he's a missionary who goes door to door spreading the word of the cult-like religious group he's a part of that believes the world is ending. While Charlie can accept him since he does help him at the start of the film, his nurse and friend, Liz (Hong Chau), outwardly criticizes Thomas, as both she and Charlie have a bad past with his group. However, Ellie is much more inquisitive about Thomas and is eventually able to get him to open up about himself, which leads to quite a revelation. 

It turns out that Thomas actually isn't a part of that group at all. He's just a runaway who left his home because of his frustration with the religious practices of his church and stole money from them to finance his trip. This reveal makes sense since he constantly said he was "new" to the group and didn't know the name of Liz's father, who leads the group. This also adds to Thomas' belief that he's ordained by God to help Charlie since he became frustrated by his old church's ability to spread its word and sees Charlie as an opportunity for self-fulfillment. It's an unexpected reveal that makes Thomas less of an innocent follower.

Ellie's picture collection

From her first appearance, it's tough to get a read on Ellie because of how closed off she is, and you can't help but question her real intentions. One thing that stands out as strange is how she takes pictures of Charlie and Thomas at different points in the film. Ellie takes pictures of Charlie struggling to use his walker and Thomas when he's smoking weed. Although it just seems like nothing at first, Ellie uses these photos for disturbing projects. 

Ellie uses the photo she takes of Charlie to ridicule him on social media, making fun of his weight and telling him to burn in hell. As for Thomas, she sends the photos of him smoking to his family after hearing his story, and it ultimately results in him reconnecting with his family. Although Ellie's photography might seem harmless at first, it has big implications for those in the photos, and it doesn't always yield positive results. 

The loss of Charlie's lover

After the death of his lover, Alan, Charlie develops an eating disorder that leads him to become incredibly overweight and suffer dangerous health issues. Although Charlie is generally unwilling to talk about Alan's death, Liz finds a moment to talk to Thomas about it. Alan's death also impacted her because he was her brother. According to Liz, her father, who leads the religious group that Thomas is supposedly a part of, was very hard on Alan after he came back from a mission and decided to not engage in the arranged marriage that he set up for him.

Instead, Alan decided to pursue a relationship with Charlie, leading to his father kicking him out of the group and the family. However, Alan still couldn't shake the impact of his upbringing and spiraled into a bout of depression that ended in him taking his own life. This would have a devastating effect on both Charlie and Liz and explains why they're so close. Liz is shown to be protective of Charlie from the start, and the story of Alan's death establishes why. That Charlie, too, could soon die is likely a gut-wrenching feeling for Liz. 

If you need help with an eating disorder or know someone who is, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ by dialing 988 or by callin g 1 -800-273-TALK (8255)​.

Charlie's massive money

To get Ellie to spend more time with him, Charlie makes an offer that he'll pay her for the time she spends with him. It's a hefty amount. His offer of around $120,000 is unsurprisingly too good for Ellie to pass up, and it remains a big motivator for her throughout the film — along with Charlie rewriting her essays to help her graduate from school. However, given his conversations with Liz about not being able to afford better living conditions or a hospital visit, it's tough to believe that he has that money. 

In a conversation with Mary (Samantha Morton), it is revealed that Charlie  does have that money, and it leads to some other realizations and conflicts. Liz is frustrated by Charlie since he could've used that money to help himself and get the medical assistance he needs. Liz's belief that Charlie was broke played a role in some of the sacrifices she's made for him, leaving her feeling like she's been taken advantage of. However, Charlie would've likely never given up any of the money anyway since he always planned for Ellie to have it all. 

A tumultuous reunion

It's no secret that Charlie's marriage to his ex-wife, Mary, ended in shambles. He left her and Ellie to pursue a relationship with Alan, leading Mary to cut ties with him completely. However, when Mary arrives at Charlie's after learning that Ellie is there, we get a clearer glimpse into their fractured relationship and Mary as a character. In their time alone for the first time in a long time, we see these two more open and honest than ever before, and it's a strong example of their complicated relationship.

Although the two end up fighting over what happened between them, Mary is shown to be much more compassionate than previously suggested. She not only shows sorrow for Charlie for his current condition but even tells him a story about helping Alan before he died. This doesn't mend their relationship, and Mary still leaves in a fury over these resurfaced feelings, yet this scene shows the genuine care that remains in their relationship and how Charlie's decision to leave still causes ripples in their family.

A secret room

About halfway through "The Whale," Charlie tries to retrieve a key sitting atop a closed door – only for it to fall into a place he can't reach. Luckily, he gets Thomas to grab the key for him, and he opens a room that looks untouched and pristine compared to the rest of his house. At first, it's tough to figure out what this spare bedroom exactly is, but it eventually becomes pretty clear. 

Even before Thomas grabs a Bible with Alan's name on it from the room, it's obvious that this room is Charlie and Alan's old bedroom. After Alan's death, Charlie was unable to enter the room again and has never let anyone inside. He probably only unlocked it recently because Alan has been brought up in conversation again. He now sees it as solace as he heads towards a tragic end. There are no flashbacks that give us a real look at Charlie and Alan's relationship, but seeing Charlie's face when he looks into the room shows the real love he has for him still.

Charlie's final hope

Throughout "The Whale," Charlie is shown to be incredibly desperate in wanting to reconnect with Ellie. He's not only willing to pay a bunch of money to get her to keep him company but even offers to rewrite her essays to help her graduate. Even when Ellie is immensely cold towards Charlie, he still yearns for her love, and that makes you wonder what Charlie exactly wants from reconnecting with her. 

However, when talking with Mary, Charlie opens up about his desire to reconnect with his daughter, saying that he simply wants her to have the best life possible to create a sense of redemption within himself. He simply sees helping Ellie as the last thing he can do before dying to leave things on a better note and feel like he did something right. It's the wish that any parent would have for their child, and Charlie doesn't want Ellie to feel like she can't accomplish things because of how their family has fractured. 

Charlie's sense of positivity

Even when the worst things are happening to him, Charlie generally has a positive outlook on life and those around him. When Thomas is chastised by Liz or Ellie does something that even her mother views as evil, Charlie always shows compassion to those around him. For Charlie, though, this positivity is both a gift and a curse. While it is nice that he tries to find the good in things, it can lead to him ignoring real problems in his life and not being able to confront things. 

For instance, while it's nice that he makes an effort to remind Ellie that he thinks she's amazing, it doesn't heal the hurt she's suffered from their estrangement. This overt sense of positivity is also what leads to Charlie losing his faith and desiring to see only harsh truths that make "The Whale's" final act really tear at your heart. However, even when Charlie hits his lowest point, he is able to find the good in things again, leading to an emotional final sequence between him and Ellie. Charlie's journey throughout "The Whale" is about finding and understanding the truth about yourself without losing that sense of compassion that makes us care for one another as well as ourselves. 

A final revelation

As shown in the opening shots, Charlie keeps his webcam off when talking to his class because he doesn't want them to see what he looks like. However, after sending them an assignment that asks them to simply be honest, Charlie makes the bold choice to turn his camera on for the first time. With the assignment (or more so the wording of it) getting Charlie fired from his position and his students' submissions inspiring him, he decides to show them who their professor really is. 

In most other movies, this would be played like a truly inspirational moment. Yet, with Darren Aronofsky helming, it feels like a dark slice of reality, as some of Charlie's students can be seen reacting in shock around his square in the chatroom. It's a gut-wrenching affirmation of the truth that Charlie has been trying to hide from for quite some time, and the way it ends, with him throwing his laptop across the room, is legitimately painful. It's a moment you knew was coming, but still feels like a brutal punch to the gut. 

The essay's author

When we're first introduced to Thomas, as he helps Charlie during a painful incident of heart failure, we also learn about an essay on "Moby Dick" that Charlie loves. For most of the film, we're left unsure who the author of this essay is. We just know that it acts as sort of a calming mantra for Charlie that reminds him of something he loves. In the final moments of "The Whale," we discover that Ellie is the author of the essay and that it's been a pivotal part of Charlie's connection to her. 

Any time Charlie is in pain or on the verge of death, he either repeats part of the essay to himself or gets someone to read it to him. With the knowledge that Ellie is the author, hearing her essay acts as a reminder for Charlie of his final wish to make sure that she is in a good place before dies. It's a reveal that kicks off a deeply emotional final sequence between Charlie and Ellie that is undoubtedly one of the most emotionally charged moments in the film. 

Charlie and Ellie's final reckoning

The final moments of "The Whale" are full of rich emotion – largely because of the final reckoning that Charlie and Ellie have before Charlie succumbs to his poor health. Although it seems like Ellie will rush out the door before she and her father can have one last moment together, she stops and fulfills Charlie's request to hear her read her essay. This moment also leads to Charlie getting up to walk towards Ellie, something she requests he does earlier in the film. It's a climactic, full-circle moment bursting with emotion. 

There's something truly powerful about watching Charlie find the strength to get up and walk on his own in those final moments. However, this last act of strength doesn't mean that Charlie avoids death, as he's drawn up into a heavenly light. Darren Aronofsky ends the film on a fantastical vision of Charlie on the beach with Mary and Ellie. The choice to end the film on this flashback to a beloved memory likely signifies Charlie is at peace with how he left things and acts as a harmonious and fulfilling ending to his journey. Although Charlie and Ellie's relationship has been complicated, it's legitimately compelling to watch them come together in this final moment. 

Is this the start of Brendan Fraser's comeback?

Although Brendan Fraser was once a notable mainstream star leading franchises like "The Mummy," it's no secret that his career has taken a downturn as he's dealt with personal issues and opened up more about being sexually assaulted . Recently, Fraser has started to work more in front of the camera again with his role as Cliff Steele/Robotman in "Doom Patrol" and appearances in films such as "No Sudden Move" and "Line of Descent." He was even set to appear in DC's now-canceled "Batgirl" movie as the villain Firefly. With all the acclaim he's receiving for his performance in "The Whale," does this role signal a true comeback for Fraser? Absolutely.

Fraser is set to be one of this year's top awards contenders and has already received a best actor nomination at the upcoming Golden Globes with many more likely to come. Ever since he got some big social media buzz for the lengthy standing ovation he received at "The Whale's" premiere at the Venice Film Festival, it seems that audiences have rallied around him. Fraser's performance in "The Whale" and the acclaim he continues to receive for it could easily lead up to a strong resurgence for the actor that fans would be thrilled to see. Who knows? Maybe "The Mummy" franchise could return with him.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Stories for open-minded

The Whale movie explained: Charlie, the ending & meaning

The Whale  is one of those movies that want to make you feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t try to stage a safe, comforting experience. It didn’t want to entertain the spectator. What the movie tries to do is present an authentic story of pain, exploring feelings, motives, and events that can turn a life upside down. Spectators were obviously puzzled: what is the meaning of the ending? Does Charlie die? And what’s the message the film wants to convey? In this article, everything about the core of  The Whale will be explained.

You can watch the official trailer for The Whale here on Youtube .

The Whale explained: Charlie, the ending and the movie meaning

Two main characters constitute the blood and flesh of the movie: Charlie and his daughter Ellie. The stories of their lives explained the message of  The Whale , culminating in the ending. Charlie is a professor, and he was married to Mary. When their daughter Ellie was eight years old, Charlie fell in love with Alan, one of his students. He decides to abandon his family and live with Alan. Mary will hate him for this and forbid him to get close to her and her daughter. Years later, Alan struggles to manage his life; his family refuses him for his choices. His guilt destroys him, leading him to commit suicide. Charlie will therefore find himself alone, reasoning about the mistakes he made in his life. He will begin a self-punishing descent into obesity that will ruin his life.

At the ending of  The Whale , Charlie dies in front of his daughter Ellie, and the image of his feet levitating explained it with a beautiful metaphor. Charlie says it clearly for the whole movie: he doesn’t want to be saved. Listening to his story, we can try to understand how he feels: he had a wife and a daughter. He fell in love with Alan, and that destroyed his family’s lives. He cannot see his beloved daughter. Charlie did all this out of love for Alan, but after his boyfriend commits suicide, he has nothing left. The feeling is that he didn’t do a single good thing in his life: that’s why Charlie feels no purpose; there is no reason to improve his life. By eating junk food with no limits, he’s destroying himself, a self-punishment that he sees as unavoidable. He doesn’t even try to restore the relationship with his daughter because he knows nobody in this world would want him in their lives. Therefore, he will just die soon. And his money will go to his daughter, feeling it will be the only good thing he will do in life.

Ellie is a young woman who grew up with a mother with drinking problems and a father who abandoned her. She hates everyone; she’s drowning in anger and hate, and that’s just a normal consequence of a life without love. She doesn’t know the language of love: her parents acted like they didn’t love her, at least in her eyes. Her mother thinks she’s evil; her father believes she’s perfect. The truth is in the middle: “Evil” is not the trait of people born to hurt others, but the way we experience individuals who feel the urge to fight the world like their worst enemy. They attack everything they face because they are hurt. Defense is the only dynamic that drives them, and since they can be hurt by anything, every single presence in their lives becomes a threat. They are constantly at war: that’s why they destroy everything that crosses their way.

We can safely say that Ellie is not perfect, but we support Charlie in trying to understand her. Ellie’s behavior is a constant cry for help: she scratches everyone who gets closer because she desperately needs love. She is overwhelmed by her feelings, and she needs a guide. Basically, she needs the parents she never had. That’s why Charlie triggers her hate so much: he represents the reason why everything went south in her life. She always needed a loving father, and having it with so many years of delay is unbearable.

Identifying ourselves in Charlie, Ellie, and their stories, the meaning and the ending of  The Whale  are explained: Charlie knows he’s dying, and there is nothing he’s doing to prevent it. He feels terrible, and the only thing that can make him feel better is an old essay Ellie wrote when she was a child: while she reads it loud, Charlie finds the strength to do what Ellie asked him the first day, walking towards her. It’s the last effort his body is able to make: the second after, Charlie dies. 

There is no lesson we can learn; even religion cannot help. We cannot explain Charlie, Ellie, or Alan’s destiny with the Bible. Every life can become hell, partly because of our own mistakes, but the consequences are often worse than what we deserve. Charlie didn’t deserve a life where everything would point at him as a total failure. Ellie didn’t deserve to grow up as a woman dominated by her own hate. With both of them, life has been more challenging than deserved, and there is nothing they can do. Ultimately, The Whale leaves us with a sense of impotence and a precise meaning: we watched a compact series of broken individuals, and we only learned that blaming someone makes no sense.

Discover other movies and TV shows explained on Auralcrave

Share this story:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

About us | Privacy Policy | Contact us

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Film Colossus

Your Guide to Movies

The Whale (2022) | The Definitive Explanation

Welcome to our Colossus Movie Guide for The Whale . This guide contains everything you need to understand the film. Dive into our detailed library of content, covering key aspects of the movie. We encourage your comments to help us create the best possible guide. Thank you!

What is The Whale about?

The Whale is a reflection on guilt, consequences, self-deceit and the power of honesty. Specifically the way in which these things can erode someone’s life. For Charlie and Liz, it’s the loss of Alan. For Alan, it was feeling abandoned by his father. Ellie, Charlie’s daughter, also feels abandoned by her father. And Thomas stole from his church, ran away, and is too scared to look back. We see how easy it is for each of them to lie to themselves about the pain they feel. They fall back on distraction. It’s only once they start being honest with themselves, with one another, and with others, that any progress is made. 

Movie Guide table of contents

The ending of the whale explained, the themes and meaning of the whale.

• Why is the movie called The Whale?

Important motifs in The Whale

• Questions and answers
• Charlie – Brendan Fraser
• Ellie – Sadie Sink
• Mary – Samantha Morton
• Liz – Hong Chau
• Thomas – Ty Simpkins
• Written by – Samuel D. Hunter
• Directed by – Darren Aronofsky
• Based on the play – The Whale

The ending of The Whale begins when Thomas comes over and tells Charlie that he, Thomas, is going home thanks to Ellie. The conversation takes a turn when Thomas tries to “save” Charlie. Charlie pushes back on the idea of God and an afterlife and explicitly states his shame, guilt, and frustration with himself over his weight. 

The next day, he tells his online class that he’s been replaced. This is the consequence of posting an assignment to be honest where he used cuss words. During this “last lecture”, Charlie makes a big point about honesty and being yourself. This culminates with him turning on his facecam for the first time, revealing to the class what he looks like. Some are shocked. Some are awed. Some are concerned. Embarrassed. Stunned. “These assignments don’t matter. This course doesn’t matter. College doesn’t matter. These amazing, honest things that you wrote, they matter.” As a sign off, he throws his laptop across the room. It breaks. 

Liz shows up with food. Charlie doesn’t look good. He’s audibly wheezing. These two now have their final talk. Liz is upset at the revelation that Charlie has over $100,000 in the bank he’s refused to use to get himself medical help. She compares what happened with Alan dying from not eating to Charlie dying from overeating. “I can’t do this anymore.” Charlie says he told Alan he didn’t need anyone else, not God, not anyone else. Liz says, “I don’t think I believe anyone can save anyone.” Which leads to Charlie talking about Ellie and Thomas. “Do you ever get the feeling that people are incapable of not caring? People are amazing.”

 Ellie bursts into the house and confronts Charlie about the essay he gave her. It received an F. When she finally reads it, she realizes what it is. It’s an essay she wrote in eighth grade English class. It’s the whale essay Charlie has obsessed over since the opening of the movie. Charlie apologizes to Ellie. He breaks down Ellie’s own self loathing. “This essay is you.” He tells her she’s perfect, that she’ll be happy, that she cares about people. His condition quickly deteriorates. Charlie begs her to read the essay. Ellie’s about to go but opens the door and bathes herself and the room in light. She says, “Daddy, please.” Then turns and begins to read the essay. 

Charlie calms. Suddenly motivated, he rolls, he struggles, he stands. He steps. He steps. Closer and closer to Ellie. He flashes to a day of being back at the beach. His feet in the water. Ellie and Charlie share a moment. Then Charlie’s feet lift off the ground, he gasps, and ascends. We get a final wide shot of him on the beach, standing in the surf, young Ellie behind him. It’s a bright, lovely, picturesque day. 

There’s a good amount going on here, narratively and thematically. 

Charlie’s death

First and foremost, the obvious implication is that Charlie dies. But how should we take his feet lifting off the ground? The flash of light? The final shot? The Whale had been a very grounded, realistic movie. But that ending brings in aspects of the surreal. 

There’s an argument to be made that it’s a subjective visual. At that moment Charlie has a sense of peace. He reconnected with Ellie in a major way, breaking through the angry wall she had kept up for so much of the movie. To Charlie, his death isn’t this bleak, horrendous thing. It’s transcendent. The visual supports his sense of the weight lifted from his shoulders, and the grace and peace he feels. It’s similar to the end of Iñárritu’s film Birdman or scenes in Tár . In both those films the filmmaker allows the main character’s subjectivity to influence the film’s form. Aronofsky isn’t a stranger to this tactic, employing similar techniques in The Fountain and   Black Swan . The benefit of the subjective visual is that you can do dynamic things with it. The con is how subjective moments can create confusion around how literally something should be viewed. 

On the flip side of the subjective visual is the literal visual. In Birdman , we’re not supposed to believe the main character has telekinetic powers and can fly. It’s surreal subjectivity. But in Justice League , yeah, those things are literal. The Fountain , subjective. Inception , literal. Fight Club , subjective. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , literal. Mulholland Drive , incredibly subjective. Hereditary , literal. 

The literal visual means that what we see has to be taken at face value. It’s not metaphoric. Like all the transcendent, crazy stuff we see in The Fountain is just a way to demonstrate the grieving process. It’s not literally what Hugh Jackman’s character does. But representative of his journey. In Inception , everything that happens is what happened. The dream-sharing isn’t some euphemism. The memory erasure in Eternal Sunshine is not merely a representation of getting over an ex. It’s a “real” procedure the character’s going through. 

So in The Whale , if we read the ending as literal, then we have to try to explain how Charlie leaves his feet. What the flash of light means. And what that last image on the beach is. The clear, primary answer is that it’s a confirmation of God. That at the moment of his death, Charlie has this divine moment, a kind of personal rapture, as his soul leaves his body. Faith is one of The Whale ’s major themes. Thomas embodies that theme. His belief and quest to save Charlie creates a means by which the narrative can explore Charlie’s relationship with religion. It’s not a coincidence that the arc between those characters ends with Charlie decrying God, hoping there isn’t an afterlife. That conversation happens when it happens for a reason. 

The nuance here would be that Thomas thinks Charlie must atone for his sexuality. Something Charlie rightfully rejects. If Thomas was right, Charlie shouldn’t have such a divine conclusion. Instead of a light turning on, you’d expect a descent into darkness. It seems the atonement Charlie needed to make was with Ellie. Having done that, he’s redeemed. 

It probably doesn’t matter whether the end is surreal or literal. Either way, the point is the same: guilt, fear, and shame can lead us down a dark path where we lie to others and ourselves. If you walk that path, you’re damned. Through honesty, we find redemption. We improve our relationships. We liberate the mind, body, and soul. And it’s never too late to give yourself and those you love that closure. Thomas had the right idea in that it wasn’t too late for Charlie to be saved. But Thomas was wrong in what that meant. And how to apply it. As Liz says, “I don’t think I believe anyone can save anyone.” The Whale makes the point that others can’t know what we need. What will save us. Especially not a random niche religious off-shoot. Only you know what you need to do. If you’re honest with yourself, the answer is clear. If you’re not honest, then it won’t be easy. 

Ellie and her essay

We never hear the end of Ellie’s essay. It always cuts off at the same point: This book made me think about my own life, and then it made me feel glad for my…

While objectively we don’t know what Ellie says next, the visuals seem to imply the last word is “dad”. Just in the way that Charlie walks over to her. How she walks up to him. That when she reaches that point we see a shot of Charlie and he smiles. It cuts back to Ellie and she looks at him and smiles. It would also make sense why Charlie cherished that essay so much. Because it’s the one physical reminder he has that his daughter loved/loves him. She was glad for him. 

Whether she says “Dad” or not at the end of the essay, the important thing is that it ends with Ellie being glad. That embodies her narrative arc. She starts off so angry. She’s mean to everyone. Her own mom calls her evil. The implication is that she’s so upset about Charlie leaving that she’s been taking it out on everyone else. There’s a lot of fear of abandonment and self-loathing. Charlie slowly breaks down that wall. He keeps telling Ellie she’s amazing. She’s beautiful. Smart. Perfect. Even at the end. He’s adamant about the good in her. That she can be happy. He even says that she is that essay. The essay is ruminative, serious, slightly sad. But it builds to a point of finding joy. And the hope is that Ellie herself will now be able to do the same. 

Near the end of The Whale , Charlie and his ex-wife, Mary, get to reconnect. It’s not always pretty but it is cathartic. Eventually, they end up sitting next to each other. Mary lays her head on Charlie. They share a moment. Then Charlie begins to reflect. 

When Ellie was little, when we took that trip to the Oregon Coast together, Ellie played in the sand and we laid out on the beach. I went swimming in the ocean. That was the last time I ever went swimming actually. I kept cutting my legs on the rocks. The water was so cold. And you were so mad that my legs bled and stained the seats in the minivan and you said for days after that I smelled like seawater. You remember that? 

It’s not a profound moment. Nor a perfect moment. But it is a time Charlie remembers fondly. Through that subjective lens, it would represent simply a time of peace and potential. It’s probably one of many happy memories Charlie would die with. through the literal lens, it would imply something more heavenly, something afterlife-y. 

Zooming out from the narrative reasons, two things come to mind. First, most of The Whale is very interior. Aside from the opening shot, the entire movie takes place in Charlie’s house or on his front porch. There’s a claustrophobia to the mise-en-scene. That also influences the color palette. The Whale is a very muted film, full of grays and shows. Typically, art finds the most power through escalation or contrast. So if a story starts in a sad place, the most powerful ending is either complete desolation or a true reversal of fortune. Often you build up the potential of the story going either way. The movie Atonement is a good example of this. It sets up the romance between Kiera Knightly and James McAvoy. But they’re separated by war. You spend the movie uncertain if they will or won’t end up together. The eventual conclusion is insanely emotional. 

For The Whale , if it was going to have a negative ending, we’d expect it to double down on the claustrophobia and color palette. It would take those things to the extreme. But since it goes for a positive ending, it embraces aspects of contrast. Which is why when Ellie opens the door it’s such a surprising moment. For her, for Charlie, for the viewer. The light. The air. The sense of space. It’s lovely. The beach is about as opposite from Charlie’s apartment as it gets. It’s open. It’s bright. It’s full of energy. It’s also a time when Charlie had his family. All things that have been missing from his life. 

So ending with the beach just has that visual energy that leaves the viewer with a better feeling than seeing Charlie on the floor of his house. 

Of course, the movie’s also called The Whale and wants us to use that as a metaphor for Charlie. Not just in terms of his physical size. But as it relates to Ellie’s essay. Given the association with whales and the ocean, ending with Charlie on the beach feels like a way to try and visually connect person and cetacea. 

Guilt, grief, control, fear. 

Deep into The Whale we find out that Charlie’s boyfriend, Alan, passed away from complications arising from starvation. The starvation was a direct consequence of a falling out between Alan and his father, the leader of the New Life church. When Alan lost his father, he also lost his faith. The existential backlash caused a depression that manifested in a lack of appetite. Both Charlie and Liz (Alan’s sister) struggled to motivate him. Alas, nothing worked. Alan eventually passed away. 

Charlie and Liz both suffered with guilt, grief, and a lack of control. A person they loved very much is gone. It’s easy for them to blame themselves for their inability to save Alan. Could they have said more? Done more? It’s easy to imagine them caught in a cycle of what ifs. The lack of control they felt in regard to what happened with Alan ends up manifesting around their relationship with food. Charlie begins to overeat, as if eating for both Alan and himself. While Liz facilitates Charlie’s gorging by bringing him food. Even though she knows what Charlie’s doing is unhealthy, she gives in because of everything that happened with Alan. She can’t abide someone being hungry. Even if it kills them. 

These same emotions plague Ellie and Thomas, too, just in different ways and for different reasons. Ellie is angry about Charlie’s disappearance from her life. The pain of losing her father has made it hard for her to form and maintain relationships. Her form of control is to distance herself before others can distance from her. Or even push them away through insults and disturbing behavior. For Thomas, he also had conflict with a parent. In trouble for smoking too much pot, his father forced Thomas to go on a mission. He went but was upset by the mission leader only wanting to hand out pamphlets. It was too little. Thomas ended up stealing $2,436 from the mission and running off to do his own work. Which is what brought him to Idaho. Does he want to be there? No. But he’s also too scared to go back home. 

The lies we tell ourselves 

Charlie, Liz, Ellie, and Thomas all find ways to justify their behavior. 

For Charlie, he convinced himself that no one would want to be around him. This is why he keeps his camera turned off while teaching online courses. It’s how he reasoned staying out of Ellie’s life. And it fuels his eating. Because the more he eats, the more he can defend running away from any kind of accountability or confrontation. 

Liz is in a similar boat. She knows Charlie isn’t doing well. But he’s the only attachment to her brother that she has left. By feeding Charlie, it’s like she’s feeding her brother. She could put her foot down. Maybe she used to. Maybe there was a time she didn’t bring him two meatball subs with extra cheese or an entire large bucket of KFC? Maybe she used to try to get him to exercise? But it became easier to not fight him. She’d rather enjoy that part of Charlie that reminds her of her brother and gives her a sense of comfort rather than put her foot down and do what’s best for Charlie’s health. 

Ellie yells and screams that she wants nothing to do with Charlie. She says a lot of horrible things about him. Not just to his face but on social media. Yet she keeps coming back to his house. Ostensibly, it’s because he’ll do her homework and give her $120,000. But really it’s because she truly does want a relationship with her father. It’s just hard for her to work through those emotions. She’s been upset with him for so long that the process of forgiveness isn’t easy. And you can imagine there’s part of her that wonders if she did something to cause her dad to leave. By continually threatening to go, she causes Charlie to, over and over again, declare he wants her around. Slowly, she begins to believe it. 

And then Thomas lies about being from New Life and on a sanctioned mission. He ran away because he messed up and is scared to face the consequences. What will his father say? What will his church do? Will he go to jail? Will his family abandon him? To prevent that, he, much like Ellie, abandons them first. He tells himself and others that it’s the mission that’s important. But the minute he has an opportunity to go home: he does. That says a lot. 

The Moby Dick essay that Charlie’s so obsessed with is something Ellie wrote four years earlier. 

In the amazing book, Moby Dick , by the author Herman Melville, the author recounts his story of being at sea. In the first part of his book, the author, calling himself Ishmael, is in a small seaside town and he is sharing a bed with a man named Queequeg. The author and Queequeg go to church and later set out on a ship captained by a pirate named Ahab, who is missing a leg, and very much wants to kill the whale which is named Moby Dick, and which is white. 

In the course of the book, the pirate Ahab encounters many hardships. His entire life is set around trying to kill a certain whale. I think this is sad because this whale doesn’t have any emotions, and doesn’t know how bad Ahab wants to kill him. He’s just a poor big animal. And I feel bad for Ahab as well, because he thinks that his life will be better if he can just kill this whale, but in reality, it won’t help him at all. 

I was very saddened by this book, and I felt many emotions for the characters. And I felt saddest of all when I read the boring chapters that were only descriptions of whales, because I knew that the author was just trying to save us from his own sad story, just for a little while. This book made me think about my own life, and then it made me feel glad for my…

There are a number of resonances with The Whale . It helps to look at these not through the lens of “Why did Ellie write this?” but in terms of “Why did the filmmakers include this? What are they trying to say to the viewer?” First, the reference to Ishmael and Queequeg sharing a bed is reminiscent of Charlie and Alan. The reference to church brings us back to how much religion is a part of the film. Then the way in which Ishmael’s “entire life” is dominated by this one thing. Lastly, it’s the idea of the author attempting to “save us from his own sad story” through the descriptions of the whales. 

As Ellie says, “This book made me think about my own life…” We’re supposed to do the same with the film. Each of us probably has some whale that shapes our life. And other whales we use save others, even ourselves, from the saddest parts of our story. 

To put it another way: you have some guilt, some fear, that influences you, that causes you to seek control in ways that can often be detrimental. Maybe not to the extreme we see with Charlie. But problematic nonetheless. This can be minor like procrastinating on mundane things like laundry, texting back, being on time, going to bed, looking for a new job, etc. You get to it eventually, but not in a way that allows you to feel ahead of the curve rather than behind. Or it can be as large as neglecting responsibilities completely, abandoning relationships, hoarding, overconsumption of food and/or alcohol, etc. 

We all have some kind of Moby Dick that shapes up. And we all have the boring chapters about whales that distract us and others from the problems in our lives. They are the excuses we make. The lies we tell. 

There’s irony to how much Charlie keeps harping on Ellie and his students about being honest. At first, it feels like the basic sort of thing an English professor would want. Artists often talk about the need for honesty in the work. But as we learn more about Charlie, we realize how dishonest he’s been. To his students. To Ellie. To Liz. To his ex, Mary. And to himself. 

While he’s the one who’s the most vocal about honesty, the theme is a major part of Thomas’s character arc. He’s not really from New Life. He’s lied to Charlie, Liz, and Ellie. But finally comes clean to Ellie about his addiction to weed, the resulting fallout with his father, going on a mission as punishment, then stealing money and running away. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s just trying to help someone, anyone, so he can tell himself everything that happened had some kind of meaning. He’s desperate for that sense of catharsis. It’s similar to Charlie saying, “I need to know that I have done one thing right with my life!” But he’s at a far later stage than Thomas. 

What happens with Thomas? In his own words: “And your daughter, she took these pictures of me smoking pot, and a recording or something like that, and she found my church in Waterloo somehow, and then she sent it to them, and they sent it to my parents. And you know what they said? ‘It’s just money.’ And they forgive me. And they love me, and they want me to come home. How awful is that? I can’t tell if she was trying to help me or hurt me or…I’m going home tomorrow.”

Ellie facilitated an honest conversation between Thomas, his church, and his parents. The very thing Thomas had been avoiding. He hadn’t wanted the confrontation, the consequences. Because he feared the worst. But the reality wasn’t so bad. Honesty gave him a path back home. 

We see a similar thing with Charlie and Ellie. Charlie spent years hiding from Ellie because he didn’t want to be honest with her about what he looked like now. And he didn’t want to have the inevitable confrontation about his leaving with Alan. But knowing he only had such a short time left to live, he made the effort, finally. And, yes, Ellie was mean, cruel, petty, and in some ways evil. But she was also there. And simply being there gave father and daughter an opportunity to heal. If only he had done this years earlier, what would have happened? Would Ellie be the angry person she is? The “evil” person Mary describes? And would Charlie still be so large? Would he have had the capacity to forgive himself for what happened to Alan? Would he be in a much better place?

The end of the movie seems to imply that, yes, by being honest, Charlie finally finds some form of redemption. 

Why is the movie called The Whale ?

The most obvious application of the title is the size of Brendan Fraser’s character, Charlie. He is an immense man. Narratively and thematically, his obesity is a primary point of concern. Given the film is a character study, the title of The Whale seems like a poetic alternative to something more mundane like Charlie . It grounds us in the literary “what” rather than the more straightforward “who”. 

But there’s more to it than that. In the film itself, references to “the whale” have nothing to do with Charlie or his size. They originate with an essay written by Ellie.

Two key takeaways from this essay, The first is the dynamic between Ahab and Moby Dick. The second is how Ellie interpreted the descriptions of whales. 

Regarding Ahab and Moby Dick, notice how Ellie says Ahab’s “entire life is set around trying to kill a certain whale.” And how the whale is completely oblivious to it. When you look at the characters in the film, each of them has their own white whale that haunts them and influences their life. For Charlie and Liz, it’s the death of Alan. For Alan, it was his father’s rejection. For Ellie, it’s feeling abandoned by Charlie. For Thomas, it’s fear of judgment from his family and former church. Really, all of them are dealing with guilt. Guilt and fear. 

That brings us to how the descriptions of whales equate to the author “trying to save us from his own sad story”. That description demands we reconsider what the title means. Clearly there’s more to it than Charlie’s size. Rather, it seems to refer to the stories we tell others, or even ourselves, to spare them from our feelings and emotions. In other words: our guilt and fear cause us to distance ourselves from others. Rather than letting them see us for who we are, rather than letting them in and letting them help us, we look to save them from our weaknesses. 

This is exactly what we see with Charlie. He keeps his facecam off so his students don’t have to look at him. He refuses to see his daughter or ex. He doesn’t leave his house. All because he wants to protect others from seeing him. We hear the lies he tells. ONe of his first lines of dialogue is “And, yes, the camera on my laptop still doesn’t work.” It does. He’s just not being honest. 

What we see between the start and end of The Whale are a bunch of characters who weren’t being honest with themselves in some way or another. And they’re dishonestly presenting themselves to others. By the end, they all start coming clean and being more true to who they are. Warts and all. 

So the title The Whale refers to, I believe, not just Charlie, but these stories we tell to distract others. And the grief and fear that cause us to do so. 

Confinement

99% of The Whale is spent in Charlie’s house. It’s dim, messy, and sad. There are some weak, orange-bulb lamps. Some windows. But the curtains are drawn. So the characters and viewer are crammed into this space for nearly two hours. Psychologically, it creates a sense of claustrophobia and pressure that lends itself to the viewer experiencing tension. Most of us don’t know what it’s like to be the size Charlie is, but we can identify with that sense of mental and physical stagnation and confinement. 

Light and space

It makes sense then that at the very end of the movie that light becomes a powerful motif. The turning point between Ellie and Charlie happens after Ellie opens the front door and fresh air and sunshine flood the room. She reads her whale essay to him and we have these close ups of them washed in this light. And when Charlie dies, a bright light blossoms around him. The last shot of the beach is also very bright and open and seems to be symbolic for either a literal afterlife or just the final sense of peace Charlie has as he passes. Either way, its a stark contrast to the house that had become so much like a jail cell. 

Charlie holds the whale essay in high regard. At first, it seems like that’s just because it’s a simple, well-written, honest essay. A thing any teacher might have a soft spot for. Eventually, we find out the essay is something Ellie wrote four years earlier and Mary sent it to Charlie. So there’s the personal connection to it as well. It reminds him of Ellie. It has been, for eight years, his sole link to Ellie. When he hears it, he hears her. It also serves Charlie as a kind of compass. When Ellie returns to his life, she’s incredibly mean. Brutal. Mary even describes her as evil. Charlie rejects that. He’s convinced there’s more to Ellie. That she not only can be better but is better. That’s because of the essay. For Charlie, the essay is Ellie being honest. While everything else is performative, a consequence of the pain she doesn’t know what to do with. It’s acting out. It’s through the essay he seems to break through to her and, hopefully, change her future for the better. 

Food and more

Alan starved himself. It got bad. Both Liz and Charlie watched this person they loved whither. Eventually, Alan jumped off a bridge. The entire experience changed the relationship Charlie and Liz had with food. For Charlie, he started overeating. While Liz, a caregiver, started overfeeding. Even though they knew what they were doing wasn’t good, it provided both a sense of comfort and control. So they lied to themselves about how bad it was. This mutual enablement was a coping mechanism that represents an inability to process grief, guilt, fear, and anger in a healthy way. 

The facecam

Charlie has his facecam turned off when he teaches the online courses. He knows how shocking his appearance is. So he lies and says his camera is broken. In that way, he spares his class from having to look at him. The camera being off becomes the embodiment of not being honest with yourself or others. This false presentation that allows us to get through each day. Charlie turning the camera on becomes symbolic of finally getting honest with himself. It’s only by being honest that he can find peace before death. It’s just a shame he waited so long. Otherwise, he might have never been in such a dire place to begin with. That’s why he’s so adamant that Ellie and his students embrace honesty sooner rather than later. 

Questions & answers about The Whale

Is ellie really evil.

I don’t think Ellie’s evil in the way that Michael Myers is evil, though Mary seems to think so. But Ellie is very cruel. Her Facebook post about Charlie is pretty mean. Her breaking the plate that has the bird food—jerk move. Her taking the video of Thomas and sending it to his church—terrible. 

Thematically, though, there’s more going on. The Whale explores ideas of honesty and deceit. Especially self-deception. So even though you can perceive what Ellie’s doing as cruel, she’s often cutting through the lies we tell others and ourselves and getting at the truth of a situation. Which can hurt and create conflict. But as we see: that conflict is sometimes the thing we need the most to move beyond stagnation. 

What is the opening scene?

It’s Thomas getting off the bus from Iowa and deciding to start his missionary work. 

Is The Whale connected to other Aronofsky movies like The Wrestler or Black Swan ?

Narrative-wise, absolutely not. But there are similar themes. All three of those films end with the main character giving their life in some cathartic final act. It’s just The Wrestler and Black Swan focus on performance and the demands of high performance. The Whale doesn’t share that concern. With that said, all three movies deal with parent/child relationships, redemption, and self-destruction. And all end in very similar ways. So there is a conversation to be had, especially in terms of Aronofsky’s filmography. I just don’t think The Whale should be looked at as part of a thematic trilogy with Black Swan and The Wrestler . 

Now it’s your turn

Have more unanswered questions about The Whale ? Are there themes or motifs we missed? Is there more to explain about the ending? Please post your questions and thoughts in the comments section! We’ll do our best to address every one of them. If we like what you have to say, you could become part of our movie guide!

Chris Lambert is co-founder of Colossus. He writes about complex movie endings, narrative construction, and how movies connect to the psychology of our day-to-day lives.

Like The Whale?

Join our movie club to get similar movie recommendations and stories delivered to your inbox every Friday.

• Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

We hate bad email too, so we don’t send it or share your email with anyone.

Reader Interactions

September 30, 2023

Well said. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this synopsis.

January 4, 2024

This is a great analysis of the movie. Thanks

January 27, 2024

The boyfriend is called Alan, not Andy. That mistake ruined the entire review / analysis for me.

I feel bad. It’s fixed now. If you want to know what happened. In 2022, we were doing this thing were each section about a movie had its own page. So we had 5 different articles about The Whale. I’d write a draft for each article in Google Docs, copy it to WordPress, make final edits, then post. For some reason, when writing about the themes, I switched from writing Alan to Andy. It wasn’t something I caught until I was about to post. So I fixed it in WordPress but not the Google Doc. In 2023, we switched from the sectional style back to a singular page. It was easier to build out the single page from the Google Docs than from the WordPress pages so I went back to the original drafts. But completely forgot to update the mistake in the Theme section. That’s why you probably noticed that I used “Alan” in the beginning of the article then suddenly and abruptly switched to “Andy”.

It’s all fixed now. Thank you for the heads up. I feel bad that thousands of people have read this article with the wrong name.

Write a response Cancel reply

We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.

The Whale may end in a seemingly confusing way, but it's not

It's not that obtuse, really.

The film, surprisingly to some, missed out on Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay; The Whale 's source material is a 2012 play of the same name. The accolades it has garnered already, however, have piqued people's interests.

The movie itself isn't particularly oblique, nor is the ending that ambiguous despite its artistic license. As we delve into how it ends, be forewarned: spoilers for The Whale follow .

The Whale centres on a man named Charlie (Fraser), an obese man who works as an English Literature professor, teaching courses online. He always has his video camera off, leading some to speculate in the chat section about his personal life.

Charlie is reticent to interact with strangers, and he is visited most often by his friend Liz (Chau), a nurse who is very concerned about Charlie's health. Liz's concern is two-fold, for she is the sister of Charlie's partner Alan, who died by suicide.

We see Charlie's life unfold: he orders takeaway pizza but never interacts with the delivery-person, only shouting through the door to him and leaving money in the mailbox. He also has an estranged daughter, Ellie ( Stranger Things ' Sadie Sink ) whose rebellious nature and indifference to school causes tension between her and her mother, Charlie's ex-wife Mary ( The Walking Dead 's Samantha Morton).

Ellie agrees that she'll spend time with her father if he agrees to write her school assignments for her, but she struggles to contain her anger. Meanwhile, a young man named Thomas shows up to preach to Charlie about the New Life church; Charlie entertains him and the two strike up a strange bond.

Liz, however, is not pleased by Thomas' visits and dissuades him from returning by revealing that she and Alan were adopted by the Church leader, and it was Alan's inability to reconcile his sexuality with his faith that contributed to his death. Thomas, however, returns and finds Ellie instead and they begin a tense but curious friendship.

During one of her visits, Ellie drugs Charlie and while he's asleep Thomas arrives, and the two bond over a joint. Thomas reveals he ran away from home after stealing money from his youth group; Ellie secretly records the confession.

Later, Liz visits while Ellie is there and Charlie reveals that he has plenty of money saved, and he promised it all to Ellie if she'd just keep visiting. Liz is distraught, both at Charlie's unwillingness to help himself but also at his reticence to help her, and she leaves but not before Mary arrives to chastise him for bending to Ellie's will.

Mary reveals that Ellie has been surreptitiously taking photos of Charlie and putting them on Facebook, but Charlie doesn't care, finally admitting the crux of his motivations: he needs to know that he did one thing right with his life. Mary leaves, and Thomas arrives to reveal that he's going home; Ellie sent his confession to his youth group, but they accepted his apology.

He tries one last time to convert Charlie, but Charlie dismisses him angrily when he insists Alan died because of his sexuality and turning his back on God. Still emotional, Charlie sends a profanity-laden email to his students to write something honest and when they do, he reciprocates by turning on his camera.

Instead of being welcoming, his students are repulsed, leading him to throw his laptop against the fridge. Liz returns and reconciles with Charlie, spending time with him as he nears his seemingly inevitable death.

Ellie, too, returns just as Charlie faces his final hours, to rebuke him for changing the essay he promised he'd write for her. Charlie reveals he used the essay Ellie wrote when she was eight about Moby-Dick .

It becomes clear that Charlie is dying, and he begs Ellie to read the essay, which she does. As she reads, he stands and walks towards her (which he was unable to do during their first visit). As he nears her, a white light begins to engulf them and Charlie is lifted into the air until the light takes over completely; the final shot is the a younger Charlie on the beach with Ellie as a little girl, a memory.

The message is clear: Charlie has died. Whether he is in the afterlife, or reliving his favourite memory before his death, or whether this is simply a moment from the past for the audience's eyes — that's up to you.

The Whale is out now in cinemas.

Best Entertainment and Tech Deals

Shop Sky deals across TV, broadband and mobile

Shop Google Pixel 7a phones

Coronation Street X Joanie - Gilroy Retro Newton And Ridley Sweatshirt

LEGO Disney and Pixar ‘Up’ House

LEGO 007 Aston Martin DB5 James Bond

Sign up for Apple TV+

Heartstopper Volume 5

Barbie The Movie doll

Sign up for Disney+

Ted Lasso x Nike: AFC Richmond home kit

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

Jojo: Finally Home by Johannes Radebe

The Witcher wolf pendant

Barbenheimer - Barbie v Oppenheimer T-shirt

Barbenheimer T-shirt

Best PS5 deals - where to buy PS5 today?

Anker PowerCore Essential 20,000 PD Power Bank

Gabriella Geisinger is a freelance journalist and film critic, and was previously Deputy Movies Editor at Digital Spy. She loves Star Wars , coming-of-age stories, thrillers , and true crime. A born and raised New Yorker, she also loves coffee and the colour black, obviously.

.css-15yqwdi:before{top:0;width:100%;height:0.25rem;content:'';position:absolute;background-image:linear-gradient(to right,#51B3E0,#51B3E0 2.5rem,#E5ADAE 2.5rem,#E5ADAE 5rem,#E5E54F 5rem,#E5E54F 7.5rem,black 7.5rem,black);} Digital Spy Features

Emmerdale's Tom terrifies Belle in 20 pictures

Responder boss and Martin Freeman on s2 return

Responder season 2 review: Does it live up to s1?

Emmerdale Tom terror and more soap spoilers

Neighbours' shock accident aftermath in 16 pics

WWE Backlash France: Results and highlights

Corrie's Bethany left devastated in 23 pictures

Best movies on Prime Video to watch right now

Hollyoaks confirms huge wedding danger in 24 pics

Home and Away's Roo/Tane baby twist in 26 pictures

All the Heeramandi characters explained

The Whale ending explained: what happens?

Brendan Fraser stars in The Whale.

NOTE: spoilers ahead for The Whale .

Audiences are now able to watch The Whale , the drama that is being billed as Brendan Fraser 's career-defining performance. The movie sees Fraser play an English teacher named Charlie who is suffering from severe obesity and is told if his unhealthy ways go unchecked it could ultimately kill him. But before that can happen, Charlie is determined to reconnect with his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink).

Daren Aronofsky directed The Whale , which in addition to Fraser and Sink stars Hong Chau ( The Menu ), Ty Simpkins ( Jurassic World ) and Samantha Morton ( The Serpent Queen ). Check out What to Watch's thoughts on the movie in our The Whale review .

But if you've already seen The Whale and want to get some clarity on what happened in that ending, we've got you covered.

Does Charlie die in The Whale?

The Whale wastes little time in showing just how poorly Charlie is doing wealth-wise. In the opening moments, he becomes short of breath and nearly passes out. Thankfully, the young missionary Thomas (Simpkins) is there to help him, reading an essay on Moby Dick that manages to help Charlie gain his composure. 

When his friend and caretaker Liz (Chau) gets there, she tells him that his blood pressure is at a dangerous level and that if he does not go to the hospital he could die by the end of the week from heart failure. Despite this, Charlie is adamant that he will not go to the hospital, saying he can't afford it.

Instead, he attempts to reconnect with his daughter Ellie, who he left when she was just 8 years old when Charlie came out of the closet and began living with his new partner. She is understandably angry at him, but Charlie convinces her to stay saying that he will help her with her homework and pay her everything that he has, which is actually more than $100,000.

Get the What to Watch Newsletter

The latest updates, reviews and unmissable series to watch and more!

They spend a few days getting to know each other, though Ellie rarely pulls back on her anger toward him and even gives him Ambien to knock him out. When Liz arrives and sees this (with Ellie's mom), she learns that Charlie convinced Ellie to spend time with him by offering the money. Liz is frustrated that Charlie did not choose to use this money for his medical expenses.

After everyone leaves, Charlie has his dinner delivered, left as usual on his porch by the regular delivery guy. When Charlie goes to retrieve it, the delivery guy sticks around to see Charlie for the first time and his look of shock drives Charlie into an eating binge.

The next day, Liz confirms that Charlie's time is almost up. Ellie storms in, upset that the essay Charlie gave her to turn in got an F. The reason why it did was because it was not on the subject Ellie was assigned, but the Moby Dick essay Charlie had Thomas read to him. It was an essay Ellie wrote when she was younger and that Charlie tells her is a good, honest piece of writing. He asks her to read it to him one last time now that he is dying, but she refuses and goes to leave. However, she stops at the door, tearful, and decides to read it.

As she does, Charlie struggles to his feet and, without any assistance, takes painful steps toward Ellie, doing what he wanted her and his students to do — be completely honest and reveal their true selves. As he reaches Ellie, he takes a final deep breath, looks up and everything fades to white as Charlie dies.

Is The Whale a true story? 

The Whale is not based on a true story. However, it is based on a play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter. 

The play version of The Whale was first performed in 2012. It would go on to win numerous awards, including the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play, a 2013 Drama Desk Special Award for Significant Contribution to Theaters, the 2013 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Theater and more.

Hunter was brought on to write the adaptation of his play for the movie version of The Whale , which more or less follows the same format.

The Whale is now playing exclusively in movie theaters.

Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. Spending most of his time watching new movies at the theater or classics on TCM, some of Michael's favorite movies include Casablanca , Moulin Rouge! , Silence of the Lambs , Children of Men , One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Star Wars . On the TV side he enjoys Only Murders in the Building, Yellowstone, The Boys, Game of Thrones and is always up for a Seinfeld rerun. Follow on Letterboxd .

These are the A-list stars voicing the imaginary friends in the IF cast

15 blockbuster movies for summer 2024 ranked: the movies we can't wait for

Wait, was that the end of Blue Bloods?

Most Popular

• 2 The Young and the Restless spoilers: week of May 20-24
• 3 The Bold and the Beautiful spoilers: week of May 20-24
• 4 General Hospital spoilers: week of May 20-24
• 5 Days of Our Lives spoilers: week of May 20-24

The Whale | 2022

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky

A reclusive, morbidly obese English teacher attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter.

• Brendan Fraser's character in The Whale is a man who helps a morbidly obese man reconnect with his estranged daughter. Brendan Fraser
• Sadie Sink plays a supporting role in the plot of The Whale, but plays a significant part in the story. Sadie Sink
• Ty Simpkins plays the role of a young boy who discovers a mysterious creature and helps protect it. Ty Simpkins

Ending Explained

In the ending of The Whale directed by Darren Aronofsky, the protagonist's desperate attempt to save a beached whale fails as it dies. The protagonist, filled with guilt and despair, walks away from the scene, carrying the weight of the whale's death on his conscience. The film ends with a somber tone, highlighting the destructive impact of human actions on nature and the heavy emotional toll it can take on individuals.

Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York, prompting investigation

The collision with the 44-foot-long, endangered sei whale could have been avoided, experts said.

A cruise ship arrived in New York Harbor with a dead sei whale pinned to its bow, a revelation that has spawned a federal investigation and has led biologists to examine the whale’s carcass to determine the cause of death.

The MSC Meraviglia was returning Saturday from a Bermuda cruise when it sailed into the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal with the 44-foot-long sei whale affixed to its front. MSC, a Geneva-based cruise line, confirmed the incident “with deep regret” in a statement and said it had immediately notified authorities. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement is investigating.

On Wednesday, the whale was towed to Sandy Hook, N.J., for a necropsy. According to NOAA, officials discovered broken bones in the right flipper, tissue trauma in the right shoulder blade region and a belly full of food. Biologists took samples for biotoxin and histopathologic analyses. NOAA spokeswoman Andrea Gomez said the tissue and bone samples can help biologists determine whether the whale died before the collision with the ship or because of it.

The Atlantic Marine Conservation Society is leading the whale examination. Results from the exam could take days to weeks, said Kathleen Collins, senior marine campaign manager with the International Fund for Animal Welfare .

Based on the findings released so far, Andy Rogan, science manager at Ocean Alliance , a whale research and conservation nonprofit, said the cruise ship probably caused the whale’s demise. If so, it would have been a sudden death.

“Whales are huge animals, but compared to a ship that size, it’s still a massive impact. So much weight and power is hitting that whale,” he said. “It’s almost certain that a ship strike killed that whale.”

According to NOAA, vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are the biggest threats to sei whales, an endangered species that inhabits deeper waters off the coastline. Population figures are elusive, but NOAA documented roughly 6,300 sei whales between Florida and Nova Scotia from 2010 to 2013.

Sei whales are feeding during this time of year, and Collins said the whales eat on the surface, placing them in the potential bull’s eye for collisions with a ship’s bow. She said crew members and passengers might not have felt the bump because of the ship’s size. The MSC Meraviglia weighs 171,598 tons; sei whales weigh up to 50 tons.

“It really is a tragic case where this strike likely happened and everyone was oblivious until they came into port,” Collins said. “They likely don’t even know exactly where they struck the whale, either.”

NOAA urges boaters operating along the East Coast to cruise slowly, stay alert and report any sightings of right whales or dead, injured or entangled whales. In its statement, MSC said it follows comprehensive measures to avoid accidents with marine life, such as training deck officers with the Ocean Research & Conservation Association and adjusting itineraries in regions populated by whales.

Collins said voluntarily reducing vessel speeds can help avoid run-ins. However, she said, cruise ships and large tankers prefer to move briskly because they are on tight schedules.

Macinzie McFarland, a spokesperson for Cruise Lines International Association, said in an email that cruise ships take several measures to protect marine mammals, including whale observation training for crews and reducing vessel speed.

“The chance of mortality with a vessel strike goes down pretty substantially as you reduce the vessel speed,” Collins said.

Cruise lines also rely on technology such as underwater radiated noise management systems and specially designed hulls, propellers and noise suppression devices that minimize underwater vibrations. .

Marine outlets, agencies such as the Coast Guard and the Whale Alert app share information about whale sightings and locations.

Rogan said there is no “silver bullet” for ships to avoid whales, but advances in technology can help lower the threat. He said hydrophones can pick up whale acoustics, information that NOAA could then disseminate to vessels. At a recent workshop, Rogan said, he learned about infrared cameras that can detect whales within a 360-degree range, particularly in front of a vessel.

Rogan urged the public Thursday to share its outrage about the incident with government agencies and with the cruise line. Collins said she hoped the incident would inspire the cruise industry to act as a better steward in the waters it shares with vulnerable marine life.

The MSC Meraviglia, she noted, is headed next to Canada, a critical ground for North Atlantic right whales, including mothers and their newborn calves.

A previous version of this article misstated the maximum weight of sei whales. It is 50 tons, not 10 tons. The article has been corrected.

More cruise news

Living at sea: Travelers on a 9-month world cruise are going viral on social media. For some travelers, not even nine months was enough time on a ship; they sold cars, moved out of their homes and prepared to set sail for three years . That plan fell apart, but a 3.5-year version is waiting in the wings.

Passengers beware: It’s not all buffets and dance contests. Crime data reported by cruise lines show that the number of sex crimes has increased compared to previous years. And though man-overboard cases are rare, they are usually deadly .

The more you know: If you’re cruise-curious, here are six tips from a newcomer. Remember that in most cases, extra fees and add-ons will increase the seemingly cheap price of a sailing. And if you happen to get sick , know what to expect on board.

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Book Reviews

'whale fall' centers the push-and-pull between dreams and responsibilities.

Kristen Martin

Elizabeth O'Connor's spare and bracing debut novel Whale Fall opens with an isolated Welsh island on a precipice. It is September 1938, and the community's fishermen have begun encountering the Royal Navy out at sea.

When a whale washes ashore, the minister, who shares developments from out-of-date newspapers at mass, suggests that submarine radar could explain its fate. To the elders, the beached whale seems to be an omen, though they're not sure if it portends good or bad. Either way, "it felt as though something was circling us, waiting to land against the shore," O'Connor writes.

We gain entrée to this remote, superstitious world through Manod Llan, Whale Fall 's gimlet-eyed, 18-year-old narrator. Her family is one of 12 left on the tiny fictional island, where livelihood revolves around the roiling sea — men like Manod's father, a lobsterman, do the fishing, and women prepare the catch for sale on the mainland. Each year, some men are lost at sea, and some young people move to the mainland for the promise of a better life.

Manod dreams of such a life. She has newly completed her studies at the island's single-room schoolhouse, where she learned English from reading the Bible and distinguished herself as especially bright. But in her culture, as her mother often lamented before her death, "There's no job for a woman to get except wife." Manod's life is even further circumscribed — with her mother gone, she must raise her 12-year-old sister Llinos and tend her father's house. Images from magazines left behind in the chapel fill her daydreams of the kind of life she could lead on the mainland.

When the whale beaches, Manod's options appear to broaden. A pair of English ethnographers from Oxford University soon arrive, eager to see the whale and to document the island's customs. Edward and Joan barely speak Welsh, so they employ Manod as a translator, giving her newfound power through language and stoking her desire to lead a worldlier life. But she struggles with being an object of their anthropological gaze, with their romantic misrepresentations of her culture, and with what it would mean to leave the island — and Llinos — behind. In bringing us to this world through Manod's eyes, Whale Fall provides a stark reckoning with what it means to be seen from the outside, both as a person and as a people, and a singular, penetrating portrait of a young woman torn between individual yearning and communal responsibilities.

In a note on the text, O'Connor writes that she based her fictional island on her research into "an amalgamation of islands around the British Isles," including Bardsey Island off the coast of the Llŷn Peninsula in Wales, where the long-term population in 2019 was just 11. As she told Publishers Weekly , she was also inspired by her "family connection to people who live with the sea and shore," particularly grandparents who were raised in coastal enclaves in Ireland and Wales and moved to English cities during World War II.

From this solid foundation, O'Connor constructs her setting with precise, atmospheric detail that captures a world slowly being eroded. Damp invades everything from the moss-covered chapel to a romance novel whose pages are "shaped in waves." The sea is close enough "to spray the house with water at high tide, and eat away at the paint." Month by month, the whale's body decays on the beach. It invades the women's dreams, where it appears alongside "a woman coming out of the water"; it animates the children's play, as they place flowers around its body and paint pictures of it.

Joan and Edward find the islanders' customs and myths charming, and over their months-long stay, they make phonograph recordings of songs about shipwrecks and tales about the sea jealously stealing daughters and returning them as whales, which Manod translates and O'Connor intersperses between short, impressionistic chapters. For all their efforts to meticulously document, the ethnographers' assumptions about the island and its people cloud their depictions from the start. In her first conversation with Manod, Joan compares the island to Treasure Island , which she presumes Manod has never heard of (Manod has read it). The island fulfills Joan's dream "of a place untouched by cities, where the people were like wildflowers" — a gross simplification of the arduous way of life there.

Through Manod's relationship with Joan, O'Connor grapples with the dark side of idealizing isolation. Manod initially looks up to Joan for her university education and fine clothing — she represents the kind of feminine role model Manod lost when her mother died. She thrills to Joan's attention, and strives to represent herself and the island in the best possible light, lying that she "was named after a kind of coastal herb" and concocting inaccurate tableaus for Joan's photographs. Gradually, though, Manod becomes aware of that Joan's pride in Britain and its Isles — and her conscious refusal to see the island as it truly is — is rooted in fascism. By exploring the looming threats of World War II through the personal, O'Connor concretizes the stakes for the island, avoiding what might otherwise be a plodding rehashing of history.

In the end, Manod is pulled between her feelings of being seen by Edward and Joan and being wholly misunderstood by them, between her yearning to leave the island and her obligations to protect her family, her community, and her culture from exploitation and even extinction. It all makes for a haunting and lucid exploration of the moments leading up to immense change.

Kristen Martin is working on a book on American orphanhood for Bold Type Books. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, The Baffler, and elsewhere. She tweets at @kwistent .

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

China’s Dead-End Economy Is Bad News for Everyone

By Anne Stevenson-Yang

Ms. Stevenson-Yang is a co-founder of J Capital Research and the author of “Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy.”

On separate visits to Beijing last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen bore a common message : Chinese manufacturing overcapacity is flooding global markets with cheap Chinese exports, distorting world trade and leaving American businesses and workers struggling to compete.

Not surprisingly, China’s leaders did not like what they heard, and they didn’t budge. They can’t. Years of erratic and irresponsible policies, excessive Communist Party control and undelivered promises of reform have created a dead-end Chinese economy of weak domestic consumer demand and slowing growth. The only way that China’s leaders can see to pull themselves out of this hole is to fall back on pumping out exports.

That means a number of things are likely to happen, none of them good. The tide of Chinese exports will continue, tensions with the United States and other trading partners will grow, China’s people will become increasingly unhappy with their gloomy economic prospects and anxious Communist Party leaders will respond with more repression.

The root of the problem is the Communist Party’s excessive control of the economy, but that’s not going to change. It is baked into China’s political system and has only worsened during President Xi Jinping’s decade in power. New strategies for fixing the economy always rely on counterproductive mandates set by the government: Create new companies, build more industrial capacity. The strategy that most economists actually recommend to drive growth — freeing up the private sector and empowering Chinese consumers to spend more — would mean overhauling the way the government works, and that is unacceptable.

The party had a golden opportunity to change in 1989, when the Tiananmen Square protests revealed that the economic reforms that had begun a decade earlier had given rise to a growing private sector and a desire for new freedoms. But to liberalize government institutions in response would have undermined the party’s power. Instead, China’s leaders chose to shoot the protesters, further tighten party control and get hooked on government investment to fuel the economy.

For a long time, no one minded. When economic or social threats reared their heads, like global financial crises in 1997 and 2007, Chinese authorities poured money into industry and the real estate sector to pacify the people. The investment-driven growth felt good, but it was much more than the country could digest and left China’s landscape scarred with empty cities and industrial parks, unfinished bridges to nowhere, abandoned highways and amusement parks, and airports with few flights.

The investment in industrial capacity also generated an explosion in exports as China captured industries previously dominated by foreign manufacturers — mobile phones, television sets, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles. Much of the Chinese economic “miracle” was powered by American, European and Japanese companies that willingly transferred their technical know-how to their Chinese partners in exchange for what they thought would be access to a permanently growing China market. This decimated manufacturing in the West, even as China protected its own markets. But the West let it slide: The cheap products emanating from China kept U.S. inflation at bay for a generation, and the West clung to the hope that China’s economic expansion would eventually lead to a political liberalization that never came.

To raise money for the government investment binge, Beijing allowed local authorities to collateralize land — all of which is ultimately owned or controlled by the state — and borrow money against it. This was like a drug: Local governments borrowed like crazy, but with no real plan for paying the money back. Now many are so deep in debt that they have been forced to cut basic services like heating, health care for senior citizens and bus routes . Teachers aren’t being paid on time, and salaries for civil servants have been lowered in recent years. Millions of people all over China are paying mortgages on apartments that may never be finished . Start-ups are folding , and few people, it seems, can find jobs.

To boost employment, the party over the past couple of years has been telling local governments to push the establishment of new private businesses, with predictable consequences: In one county in northern China, a village secretary eager to comply with Beijing’s wishes reportedly asked relatives and friends to open fake companies. One villager opened three tofu shops in a week; another person applied for 20 new business licenses.

When mandates like that fail to create jobs, the party monkeys with the employment numbers. When monthly government data revealed last year that 21 percent of Chinese youth in urban areas were unemployed, authorities stopped publishing the figures. It resumed early this year, but with a new methodology for defining unemployment . Presto! The number dropped to 15 percent.

But Mr. Xi’s policy options are dwindling.

With the real estate market imploding, the government can no longer risk goosing the property sector. It has begun touting a revival in domestic consumption , but many Chinese are merely hunkering down and hoarding assets such as gold against an uncertain future. So the government is again falling back on manufacturing, pouring money into industrial capacity in hopes of pushing out more products to keep the economy going. With domestic demand anemic, many of those products have to be exported.

But the era when China was able to take over whole industries without foreign pushback is over. Many countries are now taking steps to protect their markets from Chinese-made goods. Under U.S. pressure, Mexico’s government last month reportedly decided it would not award subsidies to Chinese electric vehicle makers seeking to manufacture in Mexico for export to the U.S. market; the European Union is considering action to prevent Chinese electric vehicles from swamping its market; and the Biden administration has moved to encourage semiconductor manufacturing in the United States and limit Chinese access to chip technologies, and has promised more actions to thwart China.

China won’t be able to innovate its way out of this. Its economic model still largely focuses on cheaply replicating existing technologies, not on the long-term research that results in industry-leading commercial breakthroughs. All that leaves is manufacturing in volume.

China’s leaders will face rising economic pressure to lower the value of the renminbi, which will make Chinese-made goods even cheaper in U.S. dollar terms, further boosting export volume and upsetting trading partners even more. But a devaluation will also make imports of foreign products and raw materials more expensive, squeezing Chinese consumers and businesses while encouraging wealthier people to get their money out of China. The government can’t turn to economic stimulus measures to revive growth — pouring more renminbi into the economy would risk crushing the currency’s value.

All of this means that the “reform and opening” era, which has transformed China and captivated the world since it began in the late 1970s, has ended with a whimper.

Mao Zedong once said that in an uncertain world, the Chinese must “Dig tunnels deep, store grain everywhere and never seek hegemony.” That sort of siege mentality is coming back.

Anne Stevenson-Yang ( @doumenzi ) is a co-founder and the research director of J Capital Research, a stock analysis firm. She spent 25 years in China as an entrepreneur, analyst and trade advocate.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .