Tenet Opening Opera Scene Explained

The bag contains a strange metal object that, if you’re watching this for the second time, you will immediately recognize as part of the Algorithm (a secret formula for inverting the flow of entropy on a global scale, bringing past and future crashing together and ending the universe as we know it). Then Pete hoofs it to the rally point to meet up with Well-Dressed Man and the rest of the Fake Cops.

Pete says the Ukrainians are expecting a passenger. This is a Ukrainian opera house, so presumably he’s talking about the cops. Is the Ukrainian government behind this? No time to discuss that because we’reswapping outfits!

Well-Dressed Man, who I guess now is just Regularly-Dressed Man, puts on a SWAT uniform while a Fake Cop puts on the suit, presumably meaning he is now the Well-Dressed Man, and I’m sorry I may be making this more complicated than it needs to be, but please give your characters actual names in the future, Chris.

Pete tells the Regularly Dressed, Formerly Known as the Well-Dressed Man that he’s “never seen an encapsulation like this,” referring to the bit of Algorithm. “Encapsulation” is a term that often refers to the storage of nuclear waste, so Pete clearly thinks he’s there to retrieve parts of a nuclear bomb.

RDFKATWDM says, “We don’t know how old it is, but it’s the real deal.”

Pete wants to know if RDFKATWDM has an out, he does, the sewer, so Pete tells him to take that route, because he doesn’t trust the one they had planned. Pete also asks if the bomb (the cop bombs, not the nuclear one) can be defused. It can’t, and there are more among the audience. So even though it isn’t his mission, Pete goes back to rescue all of the audience members who didn’t get killed by stray bullets when he was climbing over them earlier.