The Green Knight: Ending Explained Who is the Green Knight? Who Is Alicia Vikander’s Lady of The Manor?

What did I just watch? It is the question that has been in my head since a few days ago I finished The Green Knight the cryptic premiere of Amazon Prime. And it is that David Lowery has done it again, he has taken a myth as classic as the ghost stories or Peter and the dragon to blow our minds. Of course, this Arthurian story is about that, about decapitated heads, but in the end the head that has ended up rolling on the ground has been mine, that of the spectator.

The film adapts the chivalric romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight written in the 14th century and which was already made into a film with Sean Connery as the main character in 1984. Among the Excalibur by John Boorman and Pan’s Labyrinth, Lowery respects the original material like few others updating the Arthurian iconography to a digital aesthetic where Byzantine icons coexist with art deco and charming excesses and if you like ridiculous like that of that digital fox accompanying the hero. Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) is Sir Gawain, the most humane of the round table knights. When we meet him, he has yet to perform any important feats, he does not know what to do with his commoner girlfriend (Alicia Vikander) and he still lives with his mother Morgana, waiting for an opportunity to show his worth.

One day, a mysterious Green Knight who looks like an Ent from The Lord of the Rings (by the way, Tolkien was crazy about this story) challenges King Arthur’s court to a Christmas game: he will let himself be struck by his own ax giving honor and glory to the knight who defeats him, but in return in a year and one day that knight will have to travel to the Green Chapel and let him strike back. Gawain accepts the game and beheads him. Then the Green Knight gets up, picks up his head with laughter, and reminds him that they have a date in a year and a half.

The Green Night Ending Explained

How quickly time passes when you are famous. The date is approaching and Gawain leaves on a journey to his destination. Scared, yes, he’s going to have his head cut off, but determined to behave like a noble gentleman. And along the way he will show chivalry and loyalty, at least until the most difficult test of all, precisely because he does not appear so, when he arrives at the castle of Bertilak de Hautdesert and is welcomed by the lord and the lady of the lands in which the Capilla Verde, and by a mysterious old woman.

There are no surprises. Finally Gawain will reach the Green Chapel. How can such a simple story be so cryptic? We are facing the classic linear search for a hero and his maturation process, but if something has characterized the legends of the Arthurian cycle, it is a density open to the most varied interpretations: theological, psychoanalytic, historical, mythical … And David Lowery has not renounced it.

The end of The Green Knight condenses years of Sir Gawain’s life into a few minutes and ends up open to viewer interpretation. We are going to explain it, but first we must recapitulate what everything we have seen so far means. With spoilers.

The Green Color Of The Green Knight?

The key to The Green Knight is where else, in its title. Why green? Why not blue? Or red? will ask Gawain the Lady of Bertilak Castle (again, Alicia Vikander in a double role). When she explains it to him in a long, poetic and perhaps too explicit monologue, we will know that it is not the green of I love you green, nor the green hope, nor the green of nature.

Green is what remains when the burning fades, when passion dies, when we too die. When you leave, your footprints will be filled with grass, moss will cover your tombstone, and when the sun rises the green will spread over everything, in all its hues and shades … And no matter how hard you try, everything you appreciate will succumb to it. Your skin, your bones. Your virtue.

The Green Sash From The Green Knight?

The other key element is the green sash that his mother Morgana gives to Sir Gawain. As long as you wear the girdle around your waist, nothing and no one can harm you. With it you can survive the Green Knight and return to Camelot triumphant. It is at the same time a talisman of protection and a trap, a symbol of shame and cowardice. At the beginning of his adventures Gawain will lose the girdle – perhaps you have to think that the thief was doing him a favor – but he will recover it in the castle shortly before his encounter with the Green Knight, when the Lady of Bertilak gives it to him in exchange. to give in to their courtship.

It is a capital moment in the film. After overcoming numerous adventures and demonstrating his virtue, by obtaining the green sash Gawain stops behaving like a knight and deceives his host, to whom he had promised to give everything he found while he went hunting. Obviously, Gawain does not intend to give him the talisman that can guarantee his survival. “You are not a gentleman,” the Lady will sentence as soon as she hands him the green sash.

Although it may not seem like it, we are facing the topic of the fall of the hero. In the original story it is even clearer than in the film, revealing at the end that Bertilak and the Green Knight are the same person, dedicated to putting knights to the test. And he leaves one more detail: that mysterious “old woman” with her eyes covered is, according to the romance, Gawain’s mother, Morgana. Everything was a test for the protagonist.

Who is the Green Knight?

It is not necessary to resort to the original story from the 14th century to reveal who the Green Knight is. Whether or not Bertilak, Gawain’s host, is clear that he is something of a knight’s judge. Gawain can confront him with the sash knowing that nothing and no one will be able to harm him and return to Camelot alive to celebrate the newly acquired glory, or he can take a leap of faith and behave like a good knight who accepts a death more than likely because he gave the word to do it.

Gawain’s mission is actually a quest for recognition and status, for true (or false) honor. A journey through medieval England of green ivy and mysterious forests, battlefields strewn with corpses and plains of despair inhabited by giants, yes, but a coming of age of a lifetime. The passage to the maturity of the hero.

In the closing minutes of The Green Knight Gawain sees what will happen if he decides to wear that girdle for the rest of his life. He will survive the Knight to live a life in green of decadence, full of success but also of betrayal of the commoner he loved. Until the end, because everything ends in life, in a Round Table of greenish tints, dying beheaded at the moment in which he decides to remove from his body the green ribbon that since then has controlled his destiny.

So, back to the Green Chapel, Gawain will decide to put his head at the disposal of the knight without tricks. He detaches himself from the green sash and confesses: “Now I’m ready.” Ready to die. “Well done, my brave knight,” acknowledges the Green Knight. And when we think that everything is over, he continues: “Now, to have your head cut off.” Cut to black. The movie is over. How?! What did we just see?

The End Of The Green Knight

So, do they cut off the head of the now gentleman Sir Gawain? David Lowery himself has answered the question: it doesn’t matter. What is relevant is that Gawain has agreed to die with honor when necessary: ​​either in the Green Chapel or back in Camelot. As Arturo Pérez Reverte would say, “nothing happens, human beings have died for millions of years”. The important thing, according to Lowery, is that Gawain will no longer have a green life. He is a gentleman. What is important is that we know that we are becoming the best that we can be, that we are living our lives with goodness and integrity, with a sense of justice that is not defined by greatness or legacy, but by our personal sense. Of value.