This article discusses the ending of the Netflix film Athena (2022) and will contain spoilers.
Athena is a Netflix film telling a story based in France about the death of a young boy that sparks conflict in the city. His three older brothers are all separated into different communities after his death because they have their perspectives about who killed him and why. Two out of the three brothers communicate with each other, while one, Abdel, wanted to start an investigation.
Netflix film Athena ending explained
There are many moving parts in Athena and each brother has a different way to navigate the situation. However, once they are together, their difference in approach causes conflict between them. Karim who is a rebel wants to gain some leverage towards the police. He captures one and in return, they want the cops who killed his brother Idir. As the mob chases Abdel, he asks his other brother Moktar for protection, who is hiding in part of the Athena estate himself. The brothers have different suggestions to get out of this predicament and get justice for their younger brother. Moktar believes that if they kill the captured police officer it would send a message to them. Instead, Abdel suggests that they offer the police officer as a sign of surrender, therefore receiving a pardon and he can escape. After the death of Karim, Moktar suggests that they escape together. Out of such anger that his brother is so heartless he beats him up and switches sides to join the rebels. Abdel starts to interrogate the police officers and whoever he can get his hands on as he becomes frantic. At the end of the movie, Athena’s director Romain Gavras ends up showing what had happened to Idir in the first place. Idir is beaten up and left for dead. Those who did it ended up taking their police uniforms off as the flames burn it all to pieces. They had markings on their necks with a symbol of a cross inside a circle. This became more than a hit and became a more personal story about religious beliefs.
What did you think of the ending of Athena? Comment below.
Read our review of Athena (2022).
Will there be an Athena 2? Read our post discussing a sequel.
Read everything we know about Athena.
You can stream Athena exclusively on Netflix.
The cross within a circle is usually used by racists, therefore i think they killed Idir and blamed the cops in order to damage both sides (migrants from the banlieues and les flics) as much as possible.
or they were just racist cops… occam’s razor man… simplest answer is most likely the correct one here. It is even a bit redundant since there are many clues that the situation was not caused by random extremist outsiders. The main one is that the CRS captain outright says that they don’t exist on the phone at some point…
The ending was too cryptic. I like to know the deeper details. The tattoos on the necks of the team in the very last scene mean what? Just more questions. We’re they non police, pretending to be police or police , not wanting to be identified. Thus too many questions about the plot to justify a lot of blood, hooliganism, hate, sweat and tears. A disappointing ending. The music and choir were very dramatic and enriched, in fact saved me from the rather endless cacophony of anger and perspiration.