The following contains spoilers for Challengers. Please be advised before reading.
Team Art this. Team Patrick that. Team Tashi forever. In other words, there are no teams. It’s a three-way love story, brilliantly crafted to showcase that the adoration burning through each of them is more significant than anything they could find elsewhere. Challengers isn’t about a love triangle; it’s about complex people who make messy choices.
The riveting aftermath of Challengers is the strength that lies in how evocative the film is. No matter how we deconstruct the ending, there’s truth in each viewpoint. Yet, what often happens with movies like this is that our inherent need as human beings to choose something to root for starts to take center stage. But the film isn’t asking us to pick sides, not really. It’s asking us to watch a game—a ricocheting ménage à trois that’s crucial for the three characters to each feel alive and satisfied.
Challengers Ensures That Its Characters Have Agency
It might be easy to come out of the film wanting to point fingers, but it’s necessary to ask questions instead. Because, ultimately, the assumptions people make and the accusations they throw around take away the agency that’s very much present within all the characters.
For instance, when vilifying one character as the sole manipulator of the entire film, we minimize the role of the others. In other words, there’s a point in the film where they’re all wrong because they choose to be. They also acknowledge the other’s faults (wordlessly or through signals) and choose to look past them. So, yes, Art does plant seeds of doubt in both Tashi and Patrick’s heads. But they choose to act on his words. Patrick immediately sees what Art is doing and calls him out. He then acknowledges how he likes seeing him fired up something, even if that’s his girlfriend. In this moment, we see Patrick’s need to have them both, but we also see the veiled desires in Art. As Luca Guadagnino says when analyzing the churro scene for the New York Times, “They’re fighting, but they’re taking care of one another. […] It’s about being jealous of one another and wanting one another.”
Art isn’t lying when he tells Patrick that he doesn’t want to feel left out of the relationship. It’s why the signal is such an effective driving force for him to understand that even as he’s repressing his sexuality, he needs and wants them both. Whether Art’s intentions are malicious or not, the one thing about him is that he doesn’t have the same confidence they have.
He doesn’t flip the script with the firm belief that it’ll actually cause a rift between them, but he tries to serve to see if he can be part of the game, too. He does feel guilty in the end. It destroys him, but he also doesn’t act on that pain because, unlike Tashi and Patrick, he needs someone to tell him what to do. He needs to be pushed. He needs to be coached. Patrick isn’t wrong when he calls him a lap dog (I say this affectionately), but Art’s survival and satisfaction are directly tied to how he could please people, with Tashi and Patrick at the top of that list. Is it healthy? Nope. But alas.
Further, when people vilify Tashi, they refuse to recognize how much she takes care of others. Is she profoundly scarred and broken because she can’t play tennis anymore? Absolutely. Is she living vicariously through Art and in some twisted way, through Patrick? Without question. Does her dream die again with Art’s decision to retire? 100%. Yet, of all the characters, Tashi has the most agency. She’s fully aware of it, even if, in hindsight, it seems like she doesn’t. Deep down, she knows tennis is her one true love, and she isn’t bound to Art or Patrick against her will. She knows exactly what she’s doing when she tells Art she’ll leave him if he doesn’t win the game. She knows that it’ll destroy him and simultaneously fuel him.
She also knows exactly what she’s doing when she goes to Patrick, asking for him to let Art win. If she hated one more than the other, why on earth would she do that? Yes, she knows that Art is a better player than Patrick and there’s a good chance he could actually win, so if she wanted to leave him, why bother saying something like that? She could simply walk away. She has that choice. Art isn’t an abusive husband who’d threaten her life if she ever truly wanted a divorce. He’d give it to her because he’d give her anything—that much is clear. Does she resent Art to a degree? Absolutely. She also resents Patrick. They each feel this way at one point, which is largely where their intimacy boils and unfurls. To a degree, they also resent themselves. (Someone send them to therapy, please.)
Tashi isn’t trapped. She chooses to kiss Art in the parking lot, she chooses to marry him, she chooses to have a kid with him, and then she chooses to sleep with Patrick, too. And, most importantly, she’s entitled to these choices, which is why she fights back when Patrick accuses her of hating Art because it takes away her part in the decisions she’s made after life took away the one thing she loved most. The only thing Tashi didn’t have control over was her accident. Everything that came after was a direct result of the choices she made. Challengers makes it unmistakable that even while Tashi Duncan is hesitant to be vulnerable, she won’t do anything if she doesn’t want to.
Thus, at the end of the day, Tashi needs Art as much as he needs her. Coaching him and building a foundation together is the second best thing to being a professional tennis player. However, Tashi also needs Patrick. She needs his grit and his confidence. She needs his fire. She says it to them when she first meets them: You’re fire and ice. They go together. One cannot exist without the other because otherwise destruction and pain will follow.
Who Chooses Who?
Additionally, Patrick isn’t meant to settle down. It’s why he and Tashi fight as hard as they do because he isn’t Art. Even though Art planted the seeds, the two of them would eventually clash because they operate differently. (This is why all three of them work better for the sake of balance, but more on that later.) He’s the brilliant wild card who needs to test the waters. And this is where Patrick’s agency comes in as a rich man who pretends to be poor. Patrick is stubborn, but he’s also deliberate. He likes the uncertainties and the challenges simultaneously. The world’s edges are where he finds his joy, which is precisely why he needs both Art and Tashi. It’s why he tells them he misses them at different points in the film because they’re intertwined in a way that enhances the game, their lives, and everything in between. He tells Tashi he’ll throw the match, but by the end, it’s no longer about that. It’s not just about Art winning and saving the marriage, with the two of them returning to the way things were—it’s about Patrick reconnecting with his best friend, too. It’s about breaking the walls in front of them, and it’s about being transparent in the only way he knows how.
Thereby, when he signals to Art that they slept together, Patrick knows he doesn’t have to spell it out for him. Art’s going to remember. He’ll get it. They haven’t entirely forgotten the language they speak. There’s also something to be said about how Art likely knows about Atlanta but chooses not to acknowledge it. He’s not stupid, and he doesn’t lack an imagination either. I believe he’s fully aware of what happened that night after they were there one minute, then gone the next. So this time, when he gets the confirmation again, it signals the same reaction as it did the first time. He’s not shocked, but what destroys him is that he was left out of it. Again.
Patrick is fully open about his sexuality. We have confirmation that he’s bisexual because of the split second with the Tinder matches showing both men and women. Art represses his sexuality like his life depends on it because, once more, Art needs people to guide him. There are thousands of ways the threesome scene could’ve gone if Tashi didn’t stop them from kissing. Still, what Art doesn’t realize (even while he thinks he’s too old) is that his need not to feel left out is linked to his desires for both of them. Thus, when he screams in the end, it almost parallels the scream he heard from Tashi the first time he watched her play. He’d never seen anything like it, and he had never experienced anything similar, either. This time, it’s almost like it finally clicks. It’s freeing.
It’s at that moment where Art (maybe, hopefully) understands that this is all possible. After all that frustration is out of him and he continues playing, he and Patrick enter back into a relationship. It turns into a sort of love-making that’s even rarer than anything Tashi hoped she’d see. But this relationship does not end after a winner is crowned. It’s something that’s going to continue off the court, too. Patrick and Art can’t spend two seconds together without giggling and pushing each other’s buttons. They’re finally back in that place, and it feels right again.
When Tashi screams at the end with her glowing smile on full display, it’s because she finally gets what she wants, which is some good fu%$ing tennis. And the best part of it is that she gets it from her husband and their soulmate. It’s jarring how people could come out of this movie and choose sides when the invisible string threading them together isn’t all that hidden. It’s bold. It’s obvious. Tashi needs Art’s tenderness, but she also needs Patrick’s gravitas, too. Patrick needs Art’s playfulness, but he also needs Tashi’s fire. And Art needs every part of them with every bone in his body.
They all need therapy. After therapy, they need to devise a system. Then, they live happily ever after, riling each other up and calming each other down, allowing the back and forth between them to fuel their lives until the end. In other words, once again, they each have the agency to choose for themselves, and it’s boldly evident that all three of them need one another to find fulfillment in their lives. So much of this is a testament to the directing and performances, making it unmistakable that the love burning through all of them isn’t the kind of flame that’ll ever dim.
Challengers is now playing in theaters.
First Featured Image Credit: ©MGM