14 Years Later, Inception's Biggest Mystery Can Finally Be Answered

Christopher Nolan ’s Inception was widely regarded as the celebrated director’s best movie before Oppenheimer, and it still holds its own against the march of time. Captivating, convoluted, and visually stunning, Inception takes its viewers for a bizarre ride in someone’s head alongside an experienced dream thief, Leonardo DiCaprio ’s Dom Cobb. But as per Nolan’s nature, the movie’s finale is ambiguous.

Inception’s Has the Most Talked-About Ending

Christopher Nolan managed to truly break into his audience’s minds with Inception. During the course of the movie, we learn that Cobb has a special totem he spins to learn whether he’s in a dream or in the real world — but as he gets his happily ever after, the viewers get a decade of frustration because of the final scene’s uncertainty.

In the finale, Cobb reunites with his kids, and when he spins his totem to confirm that he’s not stuck in a dream and everything is real, he gets distracted. The scene cuts to black before the totem falls, meaning that it’s possible that Cobb was indeed trapped in a dream and his happy ending was but his mind playing tricks on him.

Over the years, Inception’s ending has proven to be one of the most discussed movie finales ever, but two subtle details give us the definitive answer.

So, Was Cobb Dreaming in the Finale or Not?

While Inception has been dissected countless times in the past decade, there are only two details you need to pay attention to to learn the truth. The first one is Cobb’s wedding ring, and the second one is his children. Here’s why these details matter.

In the dream world, Cobb always wears his wedding ring, unable to prevent his mind from materializing it, but in the real world, he doesn’t — not in a single scene, that is. In the finale of Inception, we can see that Cobb doesn’t have the ring on his finger.

When it comes to Cobb’s kids, the proof is much more obvious. In his dreams and even memories, Cobb has never been able to see their faces, but in the finale, he can see them clearly. This effectively seals the debate considering how Cobb’s mind has never been capable of either remembering or faking his children’s appearances.