1) Some fun between the madness
Seems people are catching up with TENET; I wanted to discuss a spoiler, but if youve seen the hashtag #Protagoneil you can probably guess. My hot take is I think their dynamic purposely resembled homosexual wakashudō relationships of feudal Samurai

2) For those not familiar, here's an article about the well documented practice of same sex relationships between Samurai and their "beloved retainers" during the feudal era of Japan. I see several similarities here in the arc of the Neil & The Protagonist https://www.tofugu.com/japan/gay-samurai/

3) Okay, TENET ****SPOILERS****

FOR REAL

We learn that Neil is actually an Inverted Agent (as opposed to a spy movie Double Agent lol) from the future sent to aide The Protagonist in his critical role in the past and present of the Future Time War. In other words:

4) I called TENET a romance and I was not joking. History is full of relationships between warriors, deeper than normalized heterosexual ones, that were very likely sexual as well. Hell, the earliest story known in recorded human civilization is about that

5) The other part to this is much farther in the realm of conjectural fan theory, but it seems to make some sense in context: some believe that Neil is actually Max/"Maximilien", the son of Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) https://www.vulture.com/2020/09/tenets-neil-is-max-fan-theory-explained.html

6) Tangentially, fan theories fit Nolan's movie universes quite well. For example, someone theorized that The Joker in TDK was a wounded soldier and it actually tracks (his acumen for firearms, demolition, squad tactics and the seemingly throwaway "truckload of soldiers" line)

7) One could argue that the link to wakashudō isnt really clear, but I think thats because in most western media there isnt really a direct analogue (that I know of) for masculine warrior master/apprentice romance; e.g. the Jedi stuff in Star Wars is intentionally asexual.

8) The only thing which immediately comes to mind that comes anywhere near wakashudō in recent American mainstream cinema are the Schumacher Batman films, and we saw how fiercely their homoeroticism was rejected by audiences at the time
(if you have other examples let me know)

9) So anyway that's my fun little theory about TENET. The moral of the story is that Christopher Nolan is a huuuuuuuge weeaboo dweeb who should make more/explicit hardcore Yaoi action movies. "TENETO" is available now on home video and VOD, enjoy!

10) BTW, I am a cis hetero guy and my knowledge of queer history is limited, but I am also speaking from my experience at war witnessing relationships between men; if anybody of the community wants to add or piggyback off this thread with more insight that would be most welcome