Was Interstellar an infinite loop?

Question

As we can see in the movie that Cooper brought themselves in the Tesseract and sent NASA coordinates etc. But when the bulk beings close the Tesseract, we saw him floating and redirecting back to the Saturn and we see him touching Amelia.

So does it mean, Cooper and other explorers are coming through the Wormhole again (thus a loop) and going to do same thing again and again (thus an infinite loop)?

PS: This was not mentioned that the Wormhole is closed once Cooper is seen floating near Saturn. So is it correct to determine that the whole movie is infinite kinda loop?

Edit:

One More PS: At exactly 2 hours and 3rd minute, we are shown that elder Murph has opened a basket and she is looking at the watch given by her dad and yes, we can see that second hand is floating which means apparently that Cooper has already fed data into that watch while on the same moment we see him and Dr. Mann fighting on icy planet. So is it safe to presume that whole movie is an infinite loop?

Answer 1

It's not an infinite loop as traditionally considered in SciFi time travel stories. It is a single loop. Every action that takes place happens once, when viewed from outside of time. After the events revolving around time happen, time moves on in a simple linear fashion. Like taking two U Turns in a row then keep driving on.

And infinite loop would result in the same events being experienced multiple times. Groundhog Day is a common example of an infinite loop until he breaks out of it. From the outside perspective, the character is going around and around multiple times in time. In the driving example, it's a driver using the same two U Turns over and over, never leaving the same stretch of road.

Answer 2

No, it isn't a loop. Inside the Tesseract, Cooper was freely "travelling" through time (but only one location, Murph's room) and giving signals we saw in the first part of the movie.

As he is leaving the Tesseract towards the Saturn, he briefly encounters that moment when a "being" shook hands with Amelia and it turns out that that being was, much like the "ghost", Cooper himself.

The location where this happens is between the black hole (where he left off) and the Saturn (where he ended up), and the time is between when he gave Murph the data through the watch (which is the moment in time that he left Tesseract) and between the present of a normal timeline (the time in which he emerges). That moment was on his way, both in space and time.

At the end, he goes to Amelia, who we see setting up a camp "by the light of our new sun, in our new home". The time goes on and there is no loop.

Answer 3

Since we see that the tesseract closes and Cooper reaches the station, we could say that there is no infinite loop anymore.

However, Cooper mentions that the tesseract was created by future humans who are 5th dimensional. Future humans could only become 5th dimensional if Murph completes the equation. And the tesseract is only present if Murph creates the equation.

For the wormhole and the tesseract to be already present Murph has to have already completed the equation. If there is no tesseract, Murph won't be able to complete the equation. It's like the chicken and the egg.

The events that we see in the movie is the last iteration of a loop. We know where the loop ended so it's not infinite. But how did the loop begin?

Answer 4

I do not see what everyone interprets as the infinite loop starts within the wormhole. I see the point of origin for the infinite loop within the black hole.

While he does see himself in the wormhole and shakes Amelia's hand, the wormhole was a place along said timeline. Where I contradict myself is we cannot tell if it is an infinite loop because we only view this movie timeline as linear. We do not have knowledge that Cooper went back in time and repetitively enacts the same action(s) over and over again. We only see him do it in two occasions, but his travel back through the wormhole for a handshake, shows us that Cooper can see his past-self in the ship.

Inside the black hole, somewhere near or at the singularity, Copper realizes that "they" are not bound by time and space, but realizes he belongs to "they." Even though the tesseract closes, it was not until after the tesseract was closed that Cooper became capable of crossing time and space.

So, my thesis is Cooper did not have an infinite loop because he went through a wormhole, but because he used Newton's third law to experience the black hole and time-traveled from there. The handshake was a stop before continuing forward, while showing us the ability to travel into the past, then the future by Saturn.

Also, he is able to travel to the past when he isolates a point in time in Murphy's room but may be right when he stops and maybe hits the singularity.

Seeing the distortion for the first time and Amelia shake the hand of the being, while also realizing in the near future that he is the one that distorted it, let's me believe that it is a loop, even after having the ability to move forward on his timeline because when wormhole Cooper sees the distortion and distorted Cooper acknowledges his presence there at that time, then allowing wormhole Cooper to do the same when he becomes distorted Cooper.

Theoretically, is it possible to travel to the past without changing anything and creating an infinite loop? As fifth dimensional beings, they went back in time and began changing gravity, creating wormholes, and guiding the three dimensional beings. I feel that one cannot go back in time without creating an infinite loop. Going forward could work but then, if we are allowed to visually manifest our future, we would be given the choice to remain on our set-path or choose to betray our "destiny."

To not create an infinite loop with the past, I feel we must be exactly what was explained when going through the wormhole: "Instruments won't work here. All we can do is observe and record." If it weren't an infinite loop, wormhole Cooper should not have been able to see the invisible and distorted Cooper. Then again, like Donnie Darko, he could have been a finite loop because he was required to do something that required change and until he did, was an infinite loop.

Answer 5

So, I am posting my interpretation of Interstellar. May be it is the one or may be not.

So... when you just go into the wormhole, a never ending loop starts.

So first things first, Cooper is chosen by NASA scientists or someone (OR somehow) to go in the wormhole and go to the foreign galaxy.

Cooper and his fellow astronauts enter the wormhole, go to Miller's, Mann's planet. Then Cooper jumps in blackhole, send co-ordinates to little Murph's watch.

"Therefore we can see the 'information' in the watch when Cooper and Mann were fighting on icy planet. Because the 'information' was already fed in previous iteration".

The tesseract closes, Cooper is sending out of wormhole. Another iteration begins, Cooper sees Amelia and shakes hand, Cooper is out of Wormhole and Cooper from another iteration again goes to Miller's planet and do same things.

Where on linear timeline humans have solved equation and floating on Cooper station near Saturn, etc. etc...

My take is: "Wormhole is infinite loop. An infinite timeline." What we saw in the movie (from the first point where they enter in wormhole and Cooper exited from wormhole) is may be second or Nth iteration.