Athena (Netflix) Ending Explained: A quite interesting take on Humanity would be to understand how we process grief and loss; everyone has their own ways and the amount of time taken also varies. Netflix has released a new French Action Thriller Film titled “Athena” that talks just about that. Two brothers, Karim & Abdel’s life spirals out of control when their younger brother is murdered. How both of them deal with the loss is what the film is about.
The film stars Dali Benssalah as Abdel, Sami Slimane as Karim, Anthony Bajon as Jerome, Ouassini Embarek as Moktar, Alexis Manenti as Sebastien, and Karim Lasmi as Imam.
Brothers Abdel & Karim have been greatly affected by the loss of their younger brother who has been murdered which is said to have been done by the Police themselves.
Karim, on one end, starts building a group in the Athenian Community to weaponize to fight against the French Police and force the names out of the Police while Abdel is on the side of the law and believes that in due time, justice will be done. Opposing views to the similar condition, Karim starts to view Abdel as a traitor to his own community.
When Karim takes a policeman hostage, Abdel steps in to save the Policeman but Karim is adamant about getting the names out of the hostage. Raged Karim tries to throw an explosive that causes him to burn to death. Unable to process the loss of another brother, Abdel goes into a state of shock and beats Imam to death after Imam tries to let go of Karim’s body from Abdel’s arms.
Abdel is later informed that the whole building is going to be blown, its not until later that the Policemen say that the real killers are not from the Police but someone from the extremist groups but provides no names to Abdel and after shooting a shot close to the Policeman’s face, he lays on the floor hopeless. Abdel does not even make any attempt to try to escape but lays there full of grief and loss.
At the end of the film, we see a video clip of a young boy lying on the floor as men wearing Police uniforms enter a van. After they burn their Police attire, we can see that one of them is wearing a Celtic Cross which matches with the theory of the extremist group killing Idir as part of a religious hate crime. This theory holds very strong merit given all the clues, especially the video at the end.