Spoilers, obviously, ahead
Wimbledon is still a few months away, so you'll just have to settle for director Luca Guadagnino’s critically-acclaimed, extremely sexy new tennis film, Challengers, until then.
The spiciness stems from the love triangle at the heart of the film, which jumps around in time to tell the story of retired tennis star-turned-coach Tashi Duncan's (the excellent Zendaya) conflicted relationships with tennis pro Art Donaldson (portrayed with nuance by Mike Faist) and his best friend, Patrick Zwieg (Josh O’Connor, making his leap into certifiable Hollywood heartthrob).
In the latter stages of their shared timeline, a down-on-his luck Patrick winds up in a New Rochelle tennis match against Art – who’s just about done with the tennis world, but is too scared to tell Tashi, now his wife and tennis coach – and old frustrations, tensions and rivalries are reignited on the court.
Set to the pulsating beat of Trent Reznor and Attitus Ross’s equally energetic soundtrack, the movie culminates in the grandest of slams. But what actually happens in the end, and who wins?
Challengers ending explained
The night before Art and Patrick’s match, Art finally plucks up the courage to tell his wife, Tashi, that this will be his last match. He wants to retire. Rather than erupting, she appears to take this all in her stride, before dropping the bombshell: if he loses this match, she’ll leave him.
Is this some sort of fucked-up reverse psychology to help him win the next day? Likely, as Art’s always believed that Tashi is only with him – as his wife-slash-coach – out of a vicarious desire to live out her own tennis fantasies, the ones that were cruelly dashed by the injury she suffered at university.
She lets Art fall asleep in her lap like a docile puppy, and as he asks her just to hold him all night, something switches in Tashi. A new game plan. Despite slapping Patrick across the face earlier for suggesting she quit working with Art and become his coach instead, she calls the number he left on a scrap of paper.
But when they meet up in his car – wind whipping all around them – they clash, especially after she asks him to swing the match so that Art wins. Inevitably, their chemistry is what really wins out, and they soon end up shagging in his car. The fact that they’re still hooking up now, especially as we’ve been shown it happened previously at a match in Atlanta, has you questioning whether Tashi made the wrong romantic decision all those years ago.
When Tashi returns to her room, Art has left their bed and is bunked up with their daughter in her bed, meaning that he would have woken up and realised Tashi had left. Bear in mind that Art previously had suspicions about Tashi and Patrick hooking up in Atlanta, when he saw them holding hands before vanishing together from the bar.
The match
The (very long and drawn out! Sorry!) match at the heart of the whole film culminates with both men on a tie-break. We expect Patrick to throw the match, as requested by Tashi, but to give him a good fight and not make it obvious in the process
Art, already suspicious of Tashi’s behaviour the night before the match, seems to question Patrick – in a way that mirrors an earlier scene, at university, when Art asks his friend if he’d slept with Tashi when they first started dating.
In the earlier scene, Patrick had picked up on a little “tic” of Art’s when he’s serving: he touches the ball to the triangle of the racquet before he hits it. So during practise, when Art asks the question, Patrick holds his ball to the triangle to confirm that yes, he has. Fast forward to the match at the end of the film, and Patrick does the same thing to confirm that yes, he did have sex with his wife the night before.
Art appears to have a mini, silent breakdown, with the beads of sweat from the game mixing with actual tears of betrayal, but it gives him a new, passionate motivation to win the game. There’s some more serious eye-balling going on, with Art then appearing to come to some place of acceptance; all’s fair in love and tennis, apparently.
With it coming down to the final point, Art smashes ball down while jumping high up in the air. Patrick also jumps up, but they clash and end up in an embrace. What happened?! Tashi is celebrating – suggesting that it’s Art who has won, meaning her reverse psychology tactic has worked. Perhaps it will reignite Art's determination to succeed in tennis and she doesn’t have to follow through on her threat.
The embrace also seems to suggest that the bond Art shares with his Patrick is just as strong – for better and worse – as the one he shares with Tashi. They are all intertwined, forever. And, with that, it ends abruptly. Who wins? Everybody! Nobody? Only Luca Guadagnino knows.
