So that ending. Did Cooper really make it through the wormhole alive? Did Murphy save the world with an unsolvable equation? The pleasure of Nolan's work is that we're invited to speculate, and the director teases enough to suggest there's no definitive answer. But it's hard to ignore the little nods to Inception - "the tesseract is collapsing" being one - with the biggest coming with that stunning shot of the the tubular space-station - the O'Neill cylinder - which felt an awful lot like the folding dream worlds of Inception. The more you think about it, the less likely a happy ending seems, and it seems too much like the ideal ending for Cooper: he gets to know his family led happy lives, that humanity was saved, and even that his new friend TARS made it through the blackhole "alive". For a man whose ideal was to have his children know the value of exploration and knowledge to see his daughter save the world is just too fitting for it to really fit. And don't forget, Mann told Cooper that the last thing he'd see would be his children's faces: that his will to live would manifest in love. The idea that his will would endure even despite certain death fits that narrative, and he could have manifested an entire fantasy in his dying moments to atone for his failure to save them and himself. So is Cooper dead? Did the world end with a whimper? Did you spot any other Easter Eggs and important references in Interstellar? Share your thoughts below in the comments thread.
