Inception ending explained: Is it a dream?

Inception, the first film Nolan made after the career-altering success of The Dark Knight, sees Leonardo DiCaprio portray Cobb, a professional thief whose speciality happens to be entering people’s dreams and stealing thoughts from their subconsciousness.

Because of reasons explained much later in the film, Cobb is a fugitive from America and wants to go back home to his family, so accepts a job from businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) that he thinks is near-impossible.

His mission is to plant an idea inside the head of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the son of a corporate rival who is imminently set to inherit his father’s business upon his passing.

Saito wants Cobb to plant the idea to break up Fisher’s father’s conglomerate of companies.

The job requires Cobb to create several dream worlds to plant the idea deep enough within Fischer’s subconsciousness.

Because of dreams appearing to be as realistic as the real world, Cobb carries with him a small spinning top that tells him if he’s dreaming or not – if it falls, he’s in the real world.

Due to the deepness of the dreams, Cobb and his team are also at risk of never returning to the real world, as dying in a dream would usually wake the sleeping person - but in this instance, they would be trapped in limbo.

This is particularly important given Fischer’s subconsciousness has been trained to defend itself in the form of a private army.

Cobb also reveals that he has been to limbo after experimenting with dreams with his deceased wife Mal, where they experienced 50 years in one night and began to lose their grasp on reality.

DiCaprio's character reveals that Mal did not want to return to reality and their children, and that he performed inception on her to try and convince her to come home - but it didn’t work and she still believed she was dreaming.

Mal then killed herself and framed Cobb as her murderer in an attempt to get him to do the same, but he refuses and flees America.

After a series of wildly inventive action set-pieces across three different dream levels and warding off a murderous projection of his dead wife, Cobb succeeds in planting the idea within Fischer’s subconsciousness - but he and Saito are lost to limbo.

What happens at the end of Inception?

Cobb searches across decades for Saito in limbo, eventually finding a much older man who he reminds of their deal.

Saito remains good to his word and Cobb passes freely through US customs and returns home to his children.

When arriving home, Cobb places the spinning top on a table and the camera watches as it spins and spins before cutting to black, with Cobb not waiting to see if it falls or not.

Since the film’s release, the final scenes of Inception have been analysed like the Zapruder film, with some fans thinking it’s a dream sequence and others convinced Cobb has returned to the real world.

But Michael Caine – who appears in the final sequence – puts it simply: "When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it, and I said to [Nolan], 'I don't understand where the dream is.'

"I said, 'When is it the dream and when is it reality?' He said, 'Well, when you're in the scene, it's reality.' So, get that – if I'm in it, it's reality. If I'm not in it, it's a dream."

Nolan himself has deliberately been vague despite being asked about the scene in virtually every interview he has done since, but it is most likely as simple as Cobb performed his job and Saito gave him what he promised.

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