About Neil's death and the bullet

[u/iosdev98]

https://youtu.be/SSzHno-reTM?si=R9JTPN8QWHJg2FYB

I don't know if this exact fan theory has been discussed before but, after watching Tenet so many times (I watched it yesterday and still amazes me that it gets better each time you watch it. A really underrated film and one of the best films ever made by Nolan, specially from a technical view, starring the best female Nolan character, too), the conclusion I came with that makes the most sense about Neil's death to me is this one, though I could be wrong.

From Neil's POV (i.e Inverted):

1) He inverts himself (after having acquired the algorithm and shared it with Ives and TP), either before tunnel is blocked or waiting to be unblocked from the explosion.

2) He gets though the gate (which is unlocked) and opens it for The Protagonist and Ives

3) When TP and Ives finish what they were doing, Neil locks the door (i.e unlocking it from TP and Ives' POV so they can get through it, kill Volkov and obtaining the final algorithm)

4) He gets shot "normally" by Volkov (i.e a forward bullet) few seconds after having locked the door and he dies, falling to the floor while having that killing bullet located in Neil's corpse. Nothing else, no magical bullet appearing or disappearing from nothingness

Now, from Volkov's POV (i.e Forward):

1) He puts an explosion trap at the entrance of the tunnel much time before any Tenet member (neither inverted or forward) can access the tunnel.

2) He locks the gate and prepares the algorithm explosives.

3) He faces TP and Ives and knocks down Ives.

4) He and Sator discusses with TP.

5) Sator tells him to kill TP.

6) Now's the key moment. He approches the gate to kill TP BUT, instead of firing a normal bullet, he is not really "shooting" but getting back the bullet. And he gets back that bullet by having Neil's corpse stand up by himself, the killing bullet is "retrieved" through Neil's head right to his gun, Neil is "alived" and unlocks the gate.

So, in a few words, the bullet is inverted, the gun is not. And Vulkov didn't know it, hence his surprise face retrieving a bullet instead of really firing it (well, that and watching someone come back to life and unlocking the gate that you originally locked is pretty shocking, too).

It's like that scientist scene at the beginning of the film, where TP is using a normal gun in front of a rock but instead of firing, he's getting back the bullet stored in that rock.

In other words, like in Neil's death, the gun is NORMAL but the bullet is INVERTED. It's the same thing.

[u/BaconJets]

Only Neil was inverted, he ran in, opened the door and got in front of the bullet to protect TP.

[u/Medzomorak → u/BaconJets]

I don't think it works, because this way the bullet either passed through his head (so he was hit by an inverting bullet going back to the pistol from his perspective) or the bullet slowly appeared in his head like the stab wound on the protagonist.

The first version means the bullet would have hit TP as well. But it didn't.

The second version obviously does not work. There was another thread about inverted lethal wounds and the whole thing does not work really well.

This is the paradox of the wounds and damages appearing out of thin air, just think of the stab wound, the bullet holes and the never standing building block.