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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.

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

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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.

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.

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.”

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Ashley Lee is a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she writes about theater, movies, television and the bustling intersection of the stage and the screen. She also co-writes the paper’s twice-weekly Essential Arts newsletter.

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The Whale Ending, Explained: Is Charlie Dead?

Darren Aronofsky’s drama film ‘ The Whale’ presents the tragic story of a man’s dying days as he searches for atonement. Charlie , who struggles with chronic obesity, lives alone as a reclusive online English teacher . Apart from his friend, Liz, the man has no one else in his life as he grapples with the crushing grief of a recent misfortune. However, in these numbered days of his life, the man finds a possibility for redemption when he finds an opportunity to connect with his daughter , Ellie. Nonetheless, their complicated past casts a cloud of strife over whatever time they have left together.

The film equips an empathetic take on the life of an aggrieved man who has made many mistakes in his past. While Charlie’s self-loathing seems to have sealed his own fate, he retains his willingness to shine his hopeful possibility onto others until the end. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Whale Plot Synopsis

In Idaho, Charlie has built a life of isolation for himself. He teaches his students online with his camera perpetually turned off, and his friend, Liz, remains the only person he actually interacts with. All of this is a result of his compulsive eating disorder, which has resulted in medically critical obesity. Nonetheless, despite his condition, the man refuses to seek professional help. In fact, one day, he experiences a near-fatal attack while watching an explicit film on his computer. Fortunately, a missionary knocks on his door at the same time. Weirdly enough, instead of allowing the young man, Thomas, to call for help, Charlie asks him to read out an essay he has about the book ‘Moby Dick.’

Afterward, Charlie’s attack diminishes, and he calls his nurse friend, Liz, who brings unfortunate news of his congestive heart failure condition. On the other hand, the woman expresses her annoyance at Thomas’ presence. As it turns out, the Church the young man belongs to, New Life, had something to do with the death of Charlie’s boyfriend. Therefore, Liz makes quick work of getting rid of Thomas before unsuccessfully trying to convince her friend to visit the hospital. Nonetheless, despite her half-hearted persuasion, she seems to have accepted Charlie’s fate as helplessly as the man himself. Therefore, she settles into the routine of bringing her friend food and keeping him company.

However, the next day, a wedge is thrown into Charlie’s miserable routine when Ellie, his daughter from a failed marriage , arrives at his doorstep. The teenager clearly holds burning hostility toward her father. When the girl was eight, Charlie fell in love with one of his students and left her mother for him. As such, the two haven’t seen each other in years. Thus, in her bitterness Ellie seems to have no love lost for her father. Alternatively, in his dying days, Charlie is eager to repair their relationship. For the same reason, he offers to do his daughter’s school assignments and give her all his savings in exchange for her company. At the mention of 120 thousand dollars, Ellie begrudgingly agrees.

The two continue to sport a taut relationship, with Ellie holding her grudges close and Charlie desperately trying to connect with her. Eventually, Liz clues Ellie’s mother, Mary, in on her visits, leading to a confrontation between all four of them at Charlie’s house. Although it results in some cathartic arguments between the former family, it doesn’t do much to repair the father’s relationship with her daughter. Furthermore, Mary insists that her daughter has a deep evil inside of her, which cannot be helped. On his part, Charlie insists that there is something special about Ellie that he wishes to foster because he wants to do something good with his remaining life. The night devolves in further anguish after a late visit from a frantic Thomas, who insists that he’s finally realized his purpose is to help Charlie deal with his boyfriend, Alan’s death.

The Whale Ending: How Did Alan Die?

While Charlie’s issues with his health run far and wide, Alan’s death seems to be a central impetus to his condition. Alan came from a hyper-religious family involved in the New Life Church. As such, he grew up with certain teachings and expectations tied to his existence. After his father compelled him to go on a Church mission to South America, he expected his son to marry a woman of his choosing. Nonetheless, Alan chose to embrace his sexuality rather than make himself miserable to meet his family’s expectations. For the same reason, his father kicked him out of the Church and his home.

Still, after Alan joined a night class—taught by Charlie—he found a glimmer of hope in his life. Likewise, Charlie also fell in love and decided to leave his existing family—Mary and an eight-year-old Ellie—for Alan. Although the two were able to build a happy life together, Alan couldn’t ever fully overcome his internalized homophobia on account of his orthodox upbringing. For the same reason, as the years went by, his mental health worsened. He stopped eating food—perhaps developing an eating disorder—and began overworking himself. Eventually, the pressure became too much for the man, and he decided to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. Since Charlie wasn’t his family, his sister—Liz—had to go in to recognize his body.

Consequently, in the aftermath of Alan’s death, Charlie becomes dejected, unable to deal with the fact that he couldn’t save the love of his life. He develops a severe eating disorder wherein he gorges himself on food to near himself to death. The same forces Liz to relive the horror of her brother’s last few days. Yet, she’s unable to help in any substantial way. However, Thomas claims to have the answer. Although Thomas claims to be a missionary for the New Life Church, he actually holds no ties to it. A while ago, the young man became addicted to marijuana, which compelled his family to force him into the Church. However, he soon grew frustrated with the organization’s ways.

For the same reason, Thomas stole money from the New Life Church and ran away to start his own missions. Ellie manages to grill this same information out of him during their impromptu meeting and leaks it to the Church and his parents. Yet, in a turn of events, his parents end up forgiving Thomas, extending an invitation to return home. Therefore, he returns to Charlie’s house with new vigor, convinced more than ever that God intended for him to help out the older man. Much like everyone else, Thomas accepts Charlie’s demise. However, he asserts that he can help him by making him understand Alan’s death to bring him peace. Still, Thomas and his insistence that Alan’s sexuality is to be blamed for his death was bound to invite Charlie’s ire. After all, it was a hateful upbringing and rampant homophobic rhetoric that pushed Alan to fall victim to his own dark thoughts.

Why Does Charlie Hold on to the Moby Dick Essay?

The story sets up Charlie’s acceptance of his imminent demise from the get-go. His introduction into the narrative arrives on the heels of the near-fatal incident. However, Charlie’s reaction to his near-death is the most peculiar detail about the instance. Instead of seeking help or survival, Charlie reaches out for an essay written about ‘Moby Dick.’ The essay is uncomplicated and delivers the simple truth of the reader’s thoughts on the book. Yet, it seems to be something infinitely valuable to the man. As the narrative delves further into Charlie’s lackluster life, some of the reasons behind this become clear.

Charlie is an English teacher who constantly encourages his students to deliver honesty—however brutal and unacademic—in their writing. His methods are unconventional and unappreciated in the classroom, yet they remain a key cornerstone of his character. As such, in his lowest, most anguished moments, he demands honesty from his students and ends his teaching career by revealing his face to his students before smashing his laptop up. Charlie is desperate for the same candor that he found in the ‘Moby Dick’ essay he holds near and dear to his heart. Even so, his attachment to the essay seems exaggerated, considering it’s the last thing the man wants to hear before he dies.

Eventually, a visit from Ellie explains the breadth of Charlie’s attachment to the essay. The duo’s precarious relationship so far has been functioning on the father’s offer to do the teenager’s homework for her. Although Ellie consistently puts on a tough exterior—with her rude language and brash insults—it’s clear she’s also desperate to spend time with her father for reasons she can’t understand. The same is evident in the moments where she tries to pry into his life or writes a haiku at his insistence despite insisting on apathy. Ellie wants to know more about Charlie so that she can understand the reality of why he abandoned her.

After all, at the end of the day, Ellie’s understanding of Charlie remains the same. She sees him as a man who abandoned his daughter for his boyfriend. Charlie may hold up flimsy excuses about Mary keeping the kid away from him—but as he stands on the edge of his intentional doom, he has little defense for himself. The simple truth is that Charlie has made mistakes. Still, it isn’t as if he never tried. In fact, a few years ago, he pestered Mary for an update about Ellie and got a copy of a book report in return. The book report was on ‘Moby Dick’ written by eighth-grader Ellie. As moved as Charlie was by the exceptional writing on that report, he was even more besotted by the fact that his daughter wrote it. Consequently, he wanted it to be the last thing he heard before dying.

Does Charlie Die?

Throughout the film. Charlie’s death remains an accepted fact between all characters. His grief has consumed him to such an extent that he’s unable to imagine a happy life for himself. While the same stems from Alan’s death, Charlie’s own past also has a significant role to play in it. Charlie abandoned his family to lead a new life with Alan. As a result, he hurt Mary and their young kid, instrumentally scarring the latter. Although the ‘Moby Dick’ essay helps assuage some of his guilt, he cannot run away from the reality of his influence on the teenager once she seeks him out.

Ellie isn’t a regular rebellious teenager. She gets suspended from school for harassing her classmates. She regularly commits casual acts of cruelty for her personal pleasure, and she remains jaded through and through. Even so, Charlie sees moments of beauty within her. From her writing to the way she seamlessly includes him in her—however underwhelming—lunch plans, the teenager showcases moments of honesty and selflessness. For the same reason, Charlie is so desperate to believe Ellie reached out to Thomas’ family to save him rather than to hurt him. Charlie ruined his previous life for Alan and then failed to save him. Therefore, he now wants to at least help Ellie before he dies to ensure his life isn’t without meaning.

After their confrontation, which reveals the essay’s origins—simultaneously revealing Charlie’s love for his daughter—the man undergoes another attack. Much like the attack that began the story, Charlie isn’t interested in help. Instead, he wants his daughter to read out the essay to him. The action is dual-pronged. It’s Charlie hearing the words he has decided he wants to die to, and it’s a simple act of selfless kindness that Ellie can commit to cement that she isn’t a truly evil person. Thus, in the end, as Ellie reads the essay out loud to him, Charlie walks toward her—despite his clear inability to do so—to showcase his own willingness to try for his daughter. As the two meet in the middle, the screen cuts to white—cementing Charlie’s death.

What Does the Ending Flashback Symbolize?

As weighty as the end of Charlie’s narrative remains, the film’s visual ending presents an even more perplexing conclusion. After the screen bursts to white, the narrative cuts to a flashback of Charlie and his family on the beach. The man is in the water while a young Ellie makes castles in the sand. It’s a stark departure from their teary reunion at his messy apartment, and it harks back to a time long gone. However, it is this same sense of reminiscence that infuses life into the scene.

In his dying days, Charlie has been plagued with frustration, guilt, and self-loathing. It’s no secret that his doom was self-inflicted. However, his final moments, wherein he establishes his willingness to try and receive his daughter’s kindness in return, are equally as self-written. Therefore, as the ending shifts focus from the father-daughter duo’s drab reality to a brighter-lit past, it offers a more hopeful ending to the tragic tale. In many ways, it’s the perfect conclusion for Charlie’s story, reflecting his ability to see the best in everyone.

Read More: The Whale: Is the Movie Based on a True Story?

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