Who’s the Real Winner of Challengers’ Final Match?
Spoilers below for Challengers.
Tashi, Art, and Patrick might not be in ooey, gooey love with one another, but perhaps the one unassailable fact about Challengers is: The three lead protagonists don’t need to be in love with one another. They simply need to be in collective synergy. As Tashi puts it early in Luca Guadagnino’s box office hit, “Tennis is a relationship.” The only way the three of them can succeed is with their forces combined.
Never is this more obvious than in Challengers’ electric final scene, in which former BFFs Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist) have met on the court of the New Rochelle Challenger circuit, where Art—by now a tennis champion, boasting multiple Grand Slam titles—hopes to regain the gumption he needs to clinch the U.S. Open. Patrick and Art, once inseparable, don’t talk much these days—at least not since Art married Patrick’s former girlfriend, the one-time burgeoning tennis star Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). While in college with Art at Stanford, Tashi suffered a career-ending knee injury on the court; Art rushed to her side shortly after an explosive argument between Tashi and then-boyfriend Patrick, and the rest is (awkward) history. Now, unable to dominate the court herself, Tashi has become Art’s coach, leading him to become one of the most accomplished players of his generation. Patrick, meanwhile, is a washed-up outsider sleeping in his car and competing in Challenger circuits to try and recoup his earlier tennis promise. Patrick wants to prove he belongs. Art wants to save his marriage. Tashi wants everything she’s been denied.
By the time Patrick lifts his racket to make his final serve in their Challenger match, we as the audience already know he slept with Tashi the night before. (Tashi did this, in part, to convince Patrick to throw the match so Art would win, thereby boosting her husband’s confidence and his likelihood of securing the Open.) But even as it seems predetermined that Patrick will lose, he can’t resist eyeing Art, then—gently but clearly—positioning his tennis ball at the neck of his racket.
This, viewers will recognize, is a callback to an earlier scene, when Patrick and Art were still crass teenage buddies. Patrick had returned from his first date with Tashi; naturally, Art was curious if they’d had sex. Patrick, playing the gentleman, refused to kiss and tell. So they devised a bro code: If the supposed sex actually took place, all Patrick needed to do was place his tennis ball at the neck of his racket. And so he does, first in this initial scene, then again in the film’s final sequence. Both times, Art notices. Both times, he gets the signal.
The resulting anger between the former friends plays out in a bonkers tiebreak, during which their rally seems to stretch on for hours. Here, Guadagnino goes a little crazy, allowing viewers to watch from the first-person perspective of the tennis ball itself, ricocheting back and forth in a kaleidoscopic dance across the net. Finally, Art seems to rocket into the air, Superman-style, all physics abandoned in favor of raw physical power. He’s aiming to volley the ball into Patrick’s big dumb head, but instead he tumbles over the net itself, tangling with Patrick until their limbs are no longer distinguishable from each other. Tashi, eternally poised on the bleachers, launches to her feet and shrieks, “COME ON!!!” Her lovers have done the impossible: They have made her feel like a part of the game again.
But even this glorious climax does not answer the question of the final match itself. Who is the ultimate victor? Art? Patrick? Or, as some might argue, Tashi? And was Challengers ever really about winning?
The Case for Patrick Winning
The likelihood that Patrick would actually secure the tiebreak win seems low. At this point in their careers, Art is his athletic superior, and—to further way the scales in Art’s favor—the guy is outrageously pissed off. But Patrick had already agreed to throw the match, so winning in tennis no longer seems his objective as he mocks Art. He wants, instead, to be back inside the relationship Art and Tashi have closed off to him. His decision to place the tennis ball at the neck of his racket is more than an act of vindication. It’s a strategy to secure his rightful place in their trio.
As O’Connor told Entertainment Weekly, “In the end, despite the messiest way of navigating themselves there, Patrick realizes in a moment that he’s got both of them there, forgets everyone else in the stadium, and it’s just like, ‘I know exactly how to get [Art] into a place that will satisfy me, him, and [Tashi].” In this sense, Patrick gets exactly what he wants, win or no.
The Case for Art Winning
tBecause Challengers cuts to credits before the match can continue, there’s no actual way of divining the tiebreak victor. Guadagnino does not want us to know.
In a piece for Vulture, writer Joe Reid breaks down the (complicated) rules of tennis and makes the case that Art would probably win. “But ultimately,” he continues, “Art never came to New Rochelle to win a Challenger tournament. He came to get into a mental space where he can win the U.S. Open, and now he can.” Under this lens, Art appears to be the most obvious winner of Challengers: However humiliated he might have been by Tashi’s cuckolding, he has (likely) won the match; redeemed himself in the eyes of his wife; reunited with his best friend; and discovered he possesses the drive to conquer the Open. “COME ON!!!” indeed.
The Case for Tashi Winning
It’d be tempting to proclaim Tashi the champion: After all, she has two men wrapped around her finger. But this possession has never been her ultimate goal. As she tells Art earlier in the film, “What makes you think I want someone to be in love with me?”
Tashi makes it clear throughout Challengers: She wants to watch—and, ideally, play—great tennis. Her relationship with the game is the relationship that fuels her. When she can no longer compete herself, she finds a proxy in Art. When Art fails to live up to her vision for the sport, she employs Patrick to raise the stakes. Only with all their actions converging does Tashi win.
The Case for…All Three of Them Winning
“We discussed a lot about how we could flesh out the basic point that the triangle is not just two people after one, but the corners touch together all the time,” Guadagnino told The New York Times. “You’re not jealous of your girlfriend or your boyfriend. You’re jealous because you’re not chosen by one and you’re losing the other.” Only when, in the final scene, the three are at last united—not two against one, or two going after one—does the game become more than a game. The goal for Art, Tashi, and Patrick was, perhaps, not to win a Challengers match. The goal was to ascend it entirely.