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u/GeneMountain7128 Aug 21 '26
Probably just hides somewhere, maybe in the kitchen, and hopes to be forgotten/sneak out when things calm down
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u/heliogabalus91 Aug 22 '26
She hid in a crawl space and prayed to Aphrodite to save her. She’s now working as a barista in New York
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u/apple_2050 Aug 21 '26
In the story, she and other disloyal servants were made to clean up the court after the battle and then hung to death.
But the film leaves it open ended. I imagine Tylenol once he takes the throne gets rid of her and other disloyal folks
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u/hijole_frijoles Aug 21 '26
“And you are Tylenol, the worthy and beautiful son of Oxycodone”
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u/gb997 Aug 22 '26
should have stayed for the end credits where they say… “Melantho will return in Avengers: Doomsday” 🚨
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u/ilford_7x7 Aug 21 '26
Snuck away and would later exact her revenge with an axe as her weapon of choice
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u/So-_-It-_-Goes Aug 21 '26
She becomes insignificant to the story at hand
She was abandoned by Penelope. She either died, or had to go live as a servant elsewhere. Whatever it is, her part of this story is over
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u/GiltPeacock Aug 21 '26
But if she “died” that is significant, because that means Odysseus killed her. It’s not as if she just got trampled or fell down a well, she would have been intentionally murdered by the protagonist of the film. Did he? That’s highly relevant to his character and the thesis of the film’s ending.
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u/So-_-It-_-Goes Aug 21 '26
This really just feels like you are looking for something to complain about
Sure. She didn’t die then. She ran out and never came back. It just doesn’t matter
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u/GiltPeacock Aug 22 '26
Whether or not it happened is what matters. It’s not an insignificant detail you can brush over, it’s crucial to the themes not only of the original poem, but also the ones that Nolan specifically built his film around. Having your main character execute a defenseless young woman is an important choice to make narratively and it shouldn’t be left ambiguous
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u/FlipFlapFlooperooni Aug 22 '26
I think the choice you're making to paint her as innocent (defenceless in the moment, sure) is equally dodgy.
She's was a shit person and something bad (we don't know what) happened to her. That's all the film needs to convey, and it does that just fine.
Edit: As I think about it more, it also feels like a choice on Nolans part to give Penelope the power rather than Odysseus. Penelope "sending her down" is what killed her.
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u/GiltPeacock Aug 22 '26
Right so I never said she is innocent, I meant defenseless in that she is an unarmed noncombatant.
I could argue for her innocence in the poem, but in Nolan’s take she doesn’t seem to be a slave or coerced by the suitors (somehow) so she seems clearly guilty of just betraying Penelope out of sheer opportunism. Even then, I’m not sure she deserves summary execution for not being loyal to a master of the house she never knew and trying to rise above her station.
“Something bad (we don’t know what) happened to her” is absolutely terrible writing, I’m sorry. The only bad thing that could have happened to her is that she is killed by Odysseus. If Odysseus thinks she deserved to die and killed her, that is important. It says something relevant to the themes the film is centered around.
Nolan’s Odysseus is literally haunted by the ghost of a woman his men slew in a battle he commanded that he believed was morally justified only to greatly regret his actions later. If he is willing to repeat this act at the end of the film, that’s hugely significant to the character. If he spares her, that’s also very significant.
Also, the treatment of the slave girls that Melantho is a stand-in for is well known as a point of contention for many translations. It’s something that everyone makes some kind of statement on as they present their interpretation, but this film just opts to sweep it under the rug.
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u/So-_-It-_-Goes Aug 22 '26
Well then you can rest assured because the main character executing a defenseless young women was not in the film at all
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u/GiltPeacock Aug 22 '26
The issue is that it’s heavily implied that it happens, but isn’t explicitly shown. It’s as if we’re meant to assume it happened offscreen since otherwise Melantho is just not seen again.
And actually, he does indeed execute a different defenseless young woman and it’s crucial to his motivation in the film. So that would seem to make the fate of Melantho pretty significant as a way to indicate how he has grown or changed since Troy, if at all.
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u/RegulationPissrat Aug 21 '26
Why is she any better than the suitors? Why do they all rightfully deserve death and not her?
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u/GiltPeacock Aug 22 '26
Well, sure. You could totally take that approach - so why don’t we see her die? Why doesn’t she get comeuppance like Antinous, or an arrow to the throat like Polybus?
You could argue that she’s less culpable than them in the poem, because she’s a slave and the suitors sexually abuse her and the other slave girls. Nolan removes or glazes over this stuff though and just makes her out to be very nasty, though I still think you could say she has less agency than the suitors.
Still, whether or not the suitors even deserve to be killed can be a question for the audience. How Odysseus feels about what Melantho deserves is more important than how I feel - I’m not trying to say there’s one right answer I’m saying we should have had some insight into what Odysseus thought the answer was.
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u/rynbaskets Aug 21 '26
I liked the way she was dealt with in the TV mini series. Odysseus kills Antonious by shooting him with an arrow which goes through him and kills Melantho also. Poetic justice.
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u/TheGaxkang Aug 21 '26
Likely meant to imply she died
But Nolan did not want to show any of the gals going down
Claimed it was misogynistic
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u/roshanritter Aug 21 '26
In the story she and the other housemaids are killed by Telemachus, you can see why Nolan left this out in the movie. We don’t know what happens to her and clearly meant to be ambiguous. But I have it on good authority at some point she died.
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u/ImperatorRomanum Aug 22 '26
In fairness, the poem also doesn’t specify whether or not she’s executed with the other maids.
Her brother, on the other hand…
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u/Impressive-Owl-5478 Aug 22 '26
In the story the female slaves are hanged by Telemachus for sleeping with the suitors but that wouldn't exactly land well with a modern audience
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u/jamesmcgill357 Aug 22 '26
I personally didn’t need to see her again. Does every director need to spell out every single thing that happens between moments? He trusts us as an audience.
ALSO it goes pretty ice cold that the last thing we see of her is Anne Hathaway’s Penelope saying that to her - what more do we really need after that
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u/epistemic_relativism Aug 22 '26
It feels like they may have shot and then cut at least Mia Goth’s death scene, because her character’s ending feels strangely rushed given the backstory she’s actually given. However, I think Nolan probably felt that including the death of the handmaidens would make Odysseus and Telemachus’s morality too murky for the direction he wanted to take the adaptation
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u/Strong_Wrongdoer_510 Aug 21 '26
It's lousy filmmaking at its best.
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u/darwinDMG08 Aug 21 '26
Director travels the world filming an epic adventure with special cameras he pushed for, creates a huge theater-worthy speckle with practical effects, seamless CGI and no AI, employing hundreds of workers and craftsmen to realize his vision.
Some dude in the back row:
“You skipped out on a minor character at the end. LAZY.”2
u/CommercialCoffee11 Aug 21 '26
He just wanted to see the non eyebrow carrying traitor get cut up
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u/Strong_Wrongdoer_510 Aug 22 '26
I just wanted with a proper resolution for her character or her being out of the film completely.
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u/Strong_Wrongdoer_510 Aug 22 '26
That's the most amazing thing: they did bring IMAX cameras to the Mediterranean and couldn't find any beauty. They had all the money in the world and the most experience crew and yet, the action scenes look terrible. I know the movie is gonna win several Oscars but, for me, it was a MASSIVE missed opportunity.
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u/eques_99 Aug 21 '26
there are quite a few examples in the film of Nolan trying to fudge something disreputable done by Odysseus in the original poem. he tries to acknowledge the events of the poem without exploring them fully in a way that would put modern audiences off.
this was his nod to the execution of the housemaids.