Visited Priya's house before dusk with no friends. Seemed bungee-jumpable if one's tenets allow for some Cowboy Shit.

In Tenet, The Protagonist initially works for the CIA, tasked with a mission during the Opera Siege in Kyiv. This CIA operation aimed to extract a Ukrainian minister and recover a piece of the algorithm, but it went disastrously wrong, leading to the deaths of his entire team. Afterward, The Protagonist is captured and faces interrogation. To protect sensitive information, he takes a fake cyanide pill. This act of loyalty and willingness to die proves his integrity and earns him recruitment into Tenet, a far more secretive organisation.

The key difference between the CIA and Tenet lies in their nature and methods. The CIA is a covert organisation, meaning its existence is publicly acknowledged, but its operations are classified. In contrast, Tenet is a clandestine organisation, so secretive that neither its existence nor its operations are known. These differences are also reflected in their methods of identification. The CIA uses the call-and-response “We live in a twilight world” and “There are no friends at dusk” as a way to confirm affiliation. Tenet, however, uses the word “Tenet” along with the gesture of clasped hands.

This distinction is crucial when The Protagonist makes contact with a CIA case officer after his recruitment into Tenet. The case officer is surprised to hear from him, believing The Protagonist to be dead or retired from the CIA—referred to as having “left the building.” The Protagonist uses the CIA call-and-response to verify his identity, which confirms he is still trusted by the CIA. However, the case officer provides assistance that ultimately aligns with Tenet’s goals, suggesting that he might also have connections to Tenet or that Tenet has influence over CIA operations.

Tenet’s unique structure allows it to operate across various agencies and governments. For instance, Priya is part of Tenet but not affiliated with the CIA, while Sir Michael is with MI6 and also a part of Tenet. This intergovernmental setup ensures that Tenet can function without revealing its existence, embedding its agents within different organisations to conduct its missions.

The Protagonist’s transition from the CIA to Tenet underscores the difference between the two organisations. While the CIA is a known entity with covert operations, Tenet exists entirely in the shadows, with its own methods, identifiers, and a mission that supersedes national boundaries. The use of call-and-response phrases and gestures emphasizes these distinctions and highlights how Tenet operates beyond the scope of traditional intelligence agencies.

TLDR: THIS IS MORE A QUESTION THAN A THEORY IF ANYONE HAS ANY INSIGHT - I state what I believe the answer to my question is (my theory) below but, again, looking for if anyone has insight

QUESTION: if the protagonist founded Tenet, then how can the test at the beginning of the movie make sense where it was a fake suicide pill. The CIA guy told him it was a test - But why would he test himself?

————————————————————— My tentative theory:

Ok, not sure if this has already been brought up because I looked up this question and did not see much except one question that someone posted that loosely asked what I am about to ask.

The protagonist is the person who created Tenet…and at the beginning the CIA guy who first tells the protagonist about Tenet says he passed “the test” that ensures he would be a good operative for tenet by taking the suicide pill. Which makes it seem like the reason Tenet recruited him was because he is willing to sacrifice himself for the mission or whatever.

But then we find out later that The Protagonist is who founded Tenet. So one major thought I have been having - what’s happened has happened…

My theory question whatever - the protagonist actually did die after taking the suicide pill, but he was saved by someone from Tenet using inversion to go to the time before those thugs are able to kidnap the protagonist and his associate after the opera siege or at least before they start torturing them whatever. So when they say they rebuilt his mouth they did not actually rebuild his mouth. The protagonist we see is actually the one from before he is kidnapped.

But that of course makes no sense because then why does he have knowledge that he was kidnapped tortured and took the suicide pill.

So it has to be instead that someone inverted themselves and made sure that the suicide pill his associate gave him was a fake. Because it makes no sense that the CIA would give him a fake suicide pill - he has no test to pass if he is the one who founded Tenet. If it was the CIA who gave him the pill, it would be real. And I saw someone mention how the pill Sator has at the end is the Protagonist’s actual pill they disposed of before they began torturing him. So if the protagonist had taken his pill he would have died. Maybe there even is a timeline where he did take his pill and Sator’s team with this knowledge went back and informed the thugs who torture him that there is a pill he is going to take. So that is how the thug knew about it.

And then the protagonist of the future knew he was going to take his associate’s pill so he made sure that the pill was fake. Talking about what’s happened has happened it is confusing but there is some sort of loop created during that time.

Again this is a theory but there is something about the beginning that makes no sense - Tenet has to be involved with what happened at the beginning with the suicide pill because the guy who recruits the protagonist acts like he was recruited into the organization because he took that pill and is willing to sacrifice himself. But that makes no sense because Tenet was founded by the protagonist and is not necessarily affiliated with the CIA. It makes more sense that the protagonist of the future saved himself just like how Neil saved him at the Opera house.

That is my theory but I mean it as a question if anyone gets what I am saying.

Sorry if this has been said already, but I just finished my nth rewatch of this movie, and I have become convinced that Protagonist's handler, who he calls after arriving in Mumbai to request an assist to meet with Sanjay/Priya, is his future self: the Founder of TENET.

"No friends at dusk. I was told you left the building?"

The Founder (as I'll refer to him from here on) has a very similar accent and cool way of talking as Protagonist, but a little older and wiser. The way the Founder quickly responds to Protagonist's prompt, "We live in a twilight world", has an air of confidence to it, as if he has been saying the response for years, and already knew this was the call he was expecting from his younger self. Even when the Founder says "I'll see who's on deck", it seems almost certain that he knows it's time for him to send Neil, who has been on standby waiting for this exact moment, when he is going to be sent to meet the Founder's younger self, Protagonist, for the first time. I can imagine The Founder saying to Neil after hanging up the phone, "You're up. It's time to go." before saying their final goodbyes.

"You're well informed." "It pays to be in our profession." "Well, I prefer soda water." "No, you don't."

Neil has a similar air of confidence and excitement about him upon meeting Protagonist for the first time at the Bombay Yacht Club, as if he was literally just with the Founder, having been sent by him personally to meet his past self. He already knows his preferred beverage, and orders for him as if he had just poured the Founder a Diet Coke for the last (or second-to-last?) time before meeting Protagonist.

I got through the rest of the movie having not found anything that could could refute this. The Founder is also the only person participating in this operation that we don't explicitly see in person. And I don't recall many instances of the characters personally encountering overlapping versions of themselves moving in the same temporal direction, except for at the Oslo freeport (correct me if I'm missing any others).

"Whose policy [to supress]?" "Ours, my friend. We're the people saving the world from what might have been."

"This whole operation's a temporal pincer." "Whose?" "Yours!"

Any further thoughts on this?

So glad I found this sub, first of all.

I have some questions regarding Neil after I read another post in here.

1. If Neil is from the future and inverted to the past, where has he been before the events of the movie? Like is he just sitting in a container for 20+ years waiting for mission date?

2. What happens to your body while its been inverted that long?

When she is shot the one who is more concerned is TP and Neil would have probably let her die if that meant dragging the mission, what you guys think

If I eat an inverted meal (let’s say a hot bowl of stew), does it uncook in my stomach and separate back into the core ingredients inside me?

So The Protagonist (P) is someone who recruits Neil into Tenent. Let’s assume that at the end of the movie, the loose ends are tied up and P now embarks to recruit members for Tenet.

To make it simple, let’s say P meets someone named Neil (25 yo). P will spend the next 5 years building a relationship with him, training him on inversion, etc. After 5 years (Neil now 30 yo), is the same age as we met Neil in the movie.

So, at this point, P tells Neil of all the stuff Neil has to do during the events of the move. P aims to invert Neil back 5 years + 2 weeks so that Neil can accomplish the mission from the movie.

Pause: Is what I said so far accurate? If so, let me continue.

My question: so Neil will really have to live in a chamber with supplied O2 for 5 years + 2 weeks to invert to the point of the beginning of the movie?

Yes, this is a fictional movie, but I’m trying to reconcile how the Neil we see in the movie has all this history with the P. This implies that the Neil we see in the movie has inverted from many years in the future back to the current time of the movie.

In the lab it's explained the bullets go backwards in time, so they go back into the gun. But how can they be in the wall before the gun is fired? As that is the moment they go into the wall.

I will say with the benefit of hindsight it was a bit on the nose in the opening scenes where the protagonist is literally tied to a chair, and the bad guy sticks a clock in his face and winds it back while two trains cap either side of the screen - one going forward, the other opposite.

Other than that, a visually stunning film with a thinker of a storyline. The protagonist could have been cast better but I guess the main guy was alright. I think Nolan must have been going for a grey man type forgettable spy, sounds good in theory but it fell a bit short.

Am I the only one that thought this movie had more funny moments than it gets credit for? Hot sauce aside, this movie had some humor to it.

If anyone has watched the TV show Tehran on Apple TV, I loved the soundtrack for that show but it did not consistently keep me. Tenet soundtrack is so energizing and keeps me in a way Tehran did not. I really doubt I will ever grow tired of it. ESPECIALLY 747 - when the Tuba [someone correct me if that is not the right instrument] is in fortissimo, it always draws you back to that plane scene in the best way possible

In my reverent love for it though, I keep wondering what would it have sounded like if Hans Zimmer composed it. Like many, I love Hans Zimmer. I know it would never happen but I would love a Tenet Soundtrack: Zimmer’s Cut😭 Absolutely adore what Ludwig did though and still just as enrapturing as Hans.

This film has melted my brain but I broadly understand it, I think, except for this aspect…

The future scientist broke up the algorithm into pieces, inverted them, hid them, and sent them to the safest place - the past.

So they are travelling into the past in their hiding places and they’re ’in the lead’.

So how was the evil organisation able to tell Sator where to find them? Surely the pieces wouldn’t be there by the time Sator receives any time capsule messages/gold because they’ve travelled into the past?

During the Tallinn car chase, characters use radios to communicate between inverted and non-inverted timelines, and somehow, inverted transmissions are received by non-inverted radios, but in reverse.

Objects with inverted entropy move backward in time, but how would that apply to radio waves? Wouldn’t a radio wave, once emitted, travel in one direction regardless of the inversion of the source?
Photons are both waves and particles, but their mass only comes from their energy based on their frequency. Can they even have entropy in the same sense that bigger objects do?

Once an inverted photon is picked up by a normal radio antenna, how could that possibly be received as backwards radio transmission. All the superconductors etc. in the radio would also have to make sense of that kind of interaction, but on a quantum level, does entropy really work the same way?

Also, electrons would have to flow backwards in the circuits and the chemical processes in the batteries would also have to haven in reverse. Does the charge change for an inverted electron from negative to positive? Wouldn't that also make an inverted electron a positron?

I've taken courses in thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, solid state physics, and quantum mechanics serval years ago, but I can't wrap my head around this part of the movie.

So in the car chase scene, are the cars that reverse Sator and the reverse protagonist in also reversed? If not then just by driving the cars they are influencing it to behave like it’s also going back in time?

At the end of the scene where Sator almost beats Kat in their yacht bedroom, he decides to leave.

From moment he walks away from the bed, to when he reaches the door, I think that snippet is running backwards.

I wonder if that’s the midpoint of the movie’s runtime minus credits.

SneakyNolan

Neil and Kat coming out of the Freeport, after TP de-inverted himself, should not have TP wait for N&K to come out of the Freeport.

Let me explain. When TP, Kat and Neil arrive back at the Freeport in Oslo, TP does his dance with himself and then enters the turnstile. Neil and Kat follow after TP to also de-inverse themselves. After all three of them are de-inversed (i.e. back in normal timeflow), they exit the Freeport to drive away in the yellow bus,

However, because Kat and Neil entered after TP in their inversed timeframe, it would mean that they had to come out of the Freeport before TP in normal timeflow. In the movie, this didn't happen, as we see TP clearly outside in the yellow bus waiting for K&N to exit the Freeport.

Or am I missing something?

So in the end we see there are 2 parties one linear along the time in which TP(Protagonist) is with and the other party which is inverted in which Pattinson is.....so in the team is inverted it means they have had already been at the war when TP nad party arrives....so couldn't the two parties communicate among themselves and figure out a better strategy to war thus preventing the casualities and chaos in the end.... Also this sounds too much of a rookie mistake for Nolan to make so I know I must be missing an actual plot point or something so please correct me if I am wrong....

I have a question.

In the hypocenter, from Neil's pov, he locks the gate so that the gate opens for TP and Ives. But my question is, to lock/unlock the gate, Neil must had the key of that gate. From where did he get the key?

Someone please explain.