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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.