Curious about whether Mia Goth’s Melantho survives the bloody suitor massacre in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey? The treacherous maidservant plays a pivotal role in the Ithaca subplot, betraying Anne Hathaway’s Penelope before facing the consequences during the film’s violent climax. With her loyalty shattered and her fate left hanging, audiences walked out of theaters debating what really happened to her.

Here is Melantho’s fate in The Odyssey explained, covering her betrayal, her punishment, and how Nolan’s version differs from Homer’s original poem.

Did Mia Goth’s Melantho die in The Odyssey?

Mia Goth plays the treacherous servant Melantho in Christopher Nolan’s 2026 epic The Odyssey. The character secretly works against Anne Hathaway’s Penelope while serving as her trusted maidservant. Reports suggest Melantho meets her end during the violent suitor battle inside the Ithacan palace.

Despite this, viewers disagree about whether the film actually shows her dying on screen. Penelope traps Melantho in the banquet hall alongside the doomed suitors after discovering her betrayal. The camera never returns to confirm her fate, leaving the outcome deliberately unclear for audiences.

Homer’s original epic poem gives Melantho a far more brutal and explicit punishment. Odysseus orders the disloyal handmaidens to scrub the blood-soaked hall clean after the suitor massacre. Telemachus then executes them by hanging, though debate persists over whether Melantho numbers among the condemned women.

Nolan’s adaptation alters key details from the ancient text by making Melantho the lover of Robert Pattinson’s Antinous. The poem originally pairs her with the suitor Eurymachus instead. The film further reimagines Melantho and Logan Marshall-Green’s Melanthius as twins rather than ordinary siblings.

Her brother Melanthius suffers a much more visible death in the film’s third act. Tom Holland’s Telemachus catches and kills him while he tries arming the suitors through an opening above. Marshall-Green stepped into the role after Cosmo Jarvis departed due to scheduling conflicts before production started. A deleted scene likely showed Melantho’s death but got removed for runtime reasons. Nolan needed the film under three hours because of IMAX format restrictions.

Fans continue debating what ultimately happened to Goth’s character after that final hall sequence.

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Curious about how Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey ending wraps up its epic mythological journey? The final act delivers a bloody palace battle, a heartbreaking confession to Penelope, and a deliberately ambiguous fate for Matt Damon’s Odysseus. With his crew dead, his kingdom overrun by suitors, and years of guilt over the Trojan Horse weighing him down, the ending leaves audiences questioning whether the legendary king truly survives.

Here is The Odyssey ending explained, covering Odysseus’s fate, who dies, and how Nolan’s version differs from Homer’s original poem.

The Odyssey’s last scene in ending explained with Odysseus and Telemachus’ fates

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey ends with Matt Damon’s Odysseus returning to Ithaca after a decade at sea. The shade of Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) in Hades advises him to disguise himself as a beggar before entering. He finds suitors led by Robert Pattinson’s Antinous have overtaken his court and plotted to murder Telemachus.

Odysseus reconnects with his blind ally Eumaeus (John Leguizamo) and secretly reunites with Tom Holland’s Telemachus. Still disguised, he confesses to Anne Hathaway’s Penelope his guilt over violating Zeus’s Law with the Trojan Horse. He reveals how the deception broke the sacred rules that hold civilization together.

Penelope then sets a challenge she knows only her husband can complete for the gathered suitors. She demands they string Odysseus’s old hunting bow and fire an arrow through twelve axe heads. None of the suitors succeed, but the disguised Odysseus completes the feat and reveals his identity. He and Telemachus then fight the suitors inside the sealed palace in a bloody climactic battle.

Odysseus kills Antinous and Corey Hawkins’s Polybus while Telemachus kills the traitorous Melanthius (Logan Marshall-Green). The remaining suitors surrender, and the disloyal maidservant Melantho (Mia Goth) is executed for her betrayal. Odysseus sustains potentially fatal injuries from multiple arrows lodged in his back during the fight.

The film becomes deliberately ambiguous about whether Odysseus actually survives his battle wounds. He opts to cede his throne to Telemachus and sails into exile with Penelope to seek peace. Zendaya’s Athena represents a Trojan priestess whose beheading Odysseus witnessed during the fall of Troy. Her haunting presence throughout reframes the entire journey as one driven by guilt and remorse.

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Warning: This contains spoilers for the end of “The Odyssey.”

You might have read “The Odyssey” before, but Christopher Nolan’s rendering of the epic poem, part of the Homeric cycle, offers up a brand new experience.

That’s especially true of the ending. Nolan reimagines what happens when Odysseus, played by Matt Damon, returns to Ithaca after 10 years fighting in the Trojan War and another 10 years trying to return to his kingdom.

Here’s what to know about Nolan’s twist on the ending of “The Odyssey,” how the real poem ends and the surprising, and unofficial, continuation of Odysseus’ story.

What Happens at the End of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’?

Nolan’s “Odyssey” will be unfamiliar for those who read the epic poem.

It’s a bittersweet ending for Odysseus and his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway). After murdering the suitors who had been trying to court her, Odysseus is exiled from Ithaca.

He and Penelope leave their son Telemachus (Tom Holland) behind and sail west toward the setting sun, which is what Penelope dreamed they’d do when news of the Trojan War first broke out. Yes, he’s exiled — but at least they’re together.

Odysseus also reckons with the dire outlook for civilization at large and his role in it. Odysseus feels that the invasion of Troy broke “Zeus’ law,” cited throughout the movie — the code of conduct that says you should treat hosts and guests well, because anyone could be a god. The Trojan Horse, an act of war disguised as a gift, was a breach of the code.

Odysseus feels that this has led to the collapse of civilization. The “sea people,” spoken of throughout the movie with fear, are the returning Greek soldiers sacking towns, and spreading the violence that started in Troy.

He references the idea of oral history, which is how “The Odyssey” and its companion story “The Iliad” began. When people can no longer read, they will tell the stories of Troy in poems.

Scholar Joel Christensen, editor of “The Oxford Critical Guide to Homer’s Odyssey,” points out that Damon’s Odysseus does something Homer’s Odysseus doesn’t: Spares some of the suitors’ lives. He says Damon’s Odysseus is more of a “good guy” than the original.

“What I wanted to happen because it would have been more true to the poem is for him to kill the kneeling men,” Christensen says.

What Happens at the End of Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’?

“The ending of ‘The Odyssey’ is kind of strange,” Celsiana Warwick, assistant professor in the University of Iowa Department of Classics, tells TODAY.com.

The Hollywood version of the story might end with Penelope and Odysseus’ reunion. But that would have been “unsatisfying” to an ancient audience, Warwick says.

Instead, Odysseus has to face consequences for murdering all of the suitors, which compromise an elite swath of Ancient Greece’s population. The families of the suitors swarm Ithaca, wanting to get revenge on Odysseus and Telemachus. They’re about to rush into battle when the gods intervene. “Zeus hurls a thunderbolt, and Athena makes them swear a truce,” Warwick says.

Warwick adds that the ending speaks to an element of Greek culture during the archaic period “where blood feuds between aristocratic families could get way out of hand.”

“That’s something that would have been of great interest to an ancient audience, perhaps not so much to a modern audience,” she says.

Odysseus’ wandering continues, too, though his departure from Ithaca is not actually depicted in “The Odyssey.” Earlier on in the poem, the seer Tiresias tells Odysseus what he must do after killing the suitors.

In order to lift Poseidon’s curse, Odyssey has to take an oar and go on a journey until he finds men who don’t recognize it and know nothing of the sea. There, he will make a sacrifice to Poseidon, and all will be well. Tiresias predicted he would die of old age.

Jonathan Burgess, Emeritus professor of Classics, University of Toronto, calls the poem’s ending a “happy” one.

“There’s the recognition that things will follow. Poseidon’s still mad, but in the underworld, Odysseus was told how to stop Poseidon from being angry at him. There’s another adventure coming, but it’s a solution to anger from the divinity Poseidon — something you don’t want to hang over your life,” he says.

What Happens to Odysseus After ‘The Odyssey’?

“The Odyssey” ends with the gods intervening in a suitors’ battle. However, there’s more about Odysseus to be found in “other epics about the Trojan War and what happens after the Trojan War,” Burgess says.

“These existed apparently around the same time as ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey.’ Same meter, same kind of poetry, same tradition. They told the whole story, starting from Paris and Helen to the sack of Troy,” Burgess says.

Unlike “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey,” these poems don’t exist in full. Instead, only fragments survived. Proclus, a Roman grammarian, wrote down summaries.

“The cycle poems were valued as context for Homer, but the poems themselves were not valued enough to be sung or to be preserved by the Roman period,” Burgess says.

The epic cycle concludes with “The Telegony,” which is about what happened after Odysseus’ homecoming. Author Madeline Miller looked to “The Telegony” for her popular book “Circe,” about the witch who hosts Odysseus during “The Odyssey.”

“The Telegony” is about Telegonus, the son Odysseus had during his time with Circe. Telegonus is not mentioned in “The Odyssey.”

He goes out in search of his father, carrying weapons from his mom — one being a poison-tipped spear. Eventually, he uses that spear on his father.

“Telegonus has never seen Odysseus. Odysseus has never seen Telegonus. Odysseus assumes he’s some stranger trying to steal his cattle. So they fight, and Telegonus kills his dad,” Burgess says.

Then comes something, perhaps, even stranger. First, Telegonus and Telemachus bring the corpse of Odysseus back to Aeaea, the island of Circe, and bury the body.

“Some people say Circe married Telemachus, and that Telegonus married Penelope. So there’s this strange two new weddings at the end of ‘The Telegony,’” Burgess says.

Burgess says Odysseus also remarries, according to certain myths. After leaving Ithaca to make a sacrifice for Poseidon, he travels to Epirus in northwest Greece. He married Callidice and has a son, Polypoetes, Burgess shares. After Callidice dies, he returns to Ithaca — setting the scene for “The Telegony.”

“The Telegony” place in relation to “The Odyssey” remains a mystery.

“Clearly, ‘The Telegony’ knows of ‘The Odyssey,’ but does ‘The Odyssey’ know of ‘The Telegony’”? Warwick asks.

She thinks “The Telegony” might speak to the idea of tying up loose ends.

“I think it is meant to be a happy ending. This is a way for his family to be happy without him,” Warwick says.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com

Spoiler alert! We're discussing important details about the ending of “The Odyssey” (in theaters now). Stop reading if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know what happens.

By and large, Christopher Nolan plays by the book.

The director’s ambitious new take on “The Odyssey” honors everything you remember about Homer’s mythic poem from eighth-grade English class. Like the book, the movie follows Greek king Odysseus (Matt Damon), who spends 10 years at war and another decade lost at sea, encountering cyclops, sirens and giants along the way.

But Nolan also throws a meditative new wrinkle into the story, as Odysseus comes to grips with his role in the Trojan War, leading the charge as his men raped, murdered and pillaged in his name. The character’s remorse and disgrace become a pivotal part of the movie’s third act, which ends almost entirely differently than Homer’s nearly 3,000-year-old tome.

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What is ‘The Odyssey’ movie ending?

After losing all his men on his treacherous journey home, Odysseus returns to Ithaca disguised as a haggard beggar, with the intent of reclaiming his throne from the dozens of suitors who have been harassing his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), for years. His now-grown son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), slowly recognizes his father, although Penelope remains in the dark about his true identity.

Through a chilling flashback of the sacking of Troy, Odysseus explains that it’s impossible to ever truly feel at home again after the horrors that he’s incited and witnessed. In one symbolic moment, we see a crestfallen Athena (Zendaya) – the goddess of wisdom and warfare – decapitated by his army. Athena is a confidante of sorts to Odysseus throughout the film, and he worries that he’s defiled the gods with his savage actions.

Fed up with the suitors who have desecrated her palace, Penelope then poses an impossible task: If one of them can string Odysseus’ old bow and shoot an arrow though 12 axes, she will take that man’s hand in marriage. One by one, suitors including the devious Antinous (Robert Pattinson) fail at the challenge, until Odysseus volunteers and succeeds with ease.

Odysseus reveals who is really is, and with the help of Telemachus, kills all the suitors in a breakneck fight to the death. But the showdown ends with the battered king gravely wounded, telling Penelope that he would like to travel west as a way of honoring his fallen soldiers.

“The Odyssey” culminates in Telemachus taking the throne as his father and mother sail off into the open ocean: gazing at the horizon and talking of brighter days ahead. The final moments of the movie jump around in time, making it unclear whether Odysseus really did go into self-imposed exile, or if he actually died right on the floor of the throne room before his dream could be realized.

How does ‘The Odyssey’ book end?

Speaking to USA TODAY before the film’s release, Nolan said that the movie is imbued with a mix of hope and cynicism about the state of the world, showing that human history is in many ways cyclical. (To quote Nolan’s own “The Dark Knight”: “The night is darkest just before the dawn.”)

Homer’s book, meanwhile, is much tidier and outwardly optimistic. The gods are front and center in the finale: As Odysseus picks off Penelope’s suitors in the throne room, Athena is up on the ceiling redirecting his opponents’ spears so none of them pierce Odysseus. After he casts out the male and female servants who betrayed him, Athena pours “attractiveness” onto Odysseus to make him taller and stronger ‒ like the strapping warrior he was when he left Ithaca 20 years earlier.

Penelope initially struggles to accept that this youthful man is really Odysseus. She explains that she's dealt with "so many dishonest, clever men" over the last 20 years, and she can't tell whether he's another suitor just trying to trick her. But after a night of reminiscing and lovemaking, her skepticism melts away and the couple reforges their bond.

War soon threatens to spill out once again, as the fallen suitors’ families come together seeking vengeance. Concerned, Athena consults the all-powerful Zeus about what Odysseus should do.

“He has already punished all the suitors, so let them swear an oath that he will be the king forever,” Zeus tells Athena. “And let us make sure the murder of their brothers and their sons will be forgotten. Let them all be friends, just as before, and let them live in peace and in prosperity.”

Athena commands that Odysseus and his men drop their weapons, or they risk the wrath of Zeus. And so, Homer’s book concludes with these simple (yet anticlimactic) final words:

“He was glad to obey her. Then Athena made the warring sides swear solemn oaths of peace for future times – still in her guise as mentor.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Odyssey' ending explained, and how the movie changes the book