'Number 24' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: Who Was Erling Solheim? Is Gunnar Dead? (2025)

Number 24 is a thrilling war biopic based on the life of Gunnar Sonsteby, Norway’s greatest war hero, who bravely led the notorious Oslo gang, which hunted down Nazis in the country during WWII. The plot charts a young Gunnar Sonsteby’s introduction into life as a member of the Resistance, despite never being involved with the military or the government before, and his rise into being one of the most decorated and revered citizens of Norway. Overall, Number 24 is quite an entertaining and enjoyable watch, especially for those who are not well versed with Sonsteby and his contributions against the Nazis.

Spoiler Alert

What is the film about?

Number 24 begins at a school in the town of Rjukan in Norway, where an elderly man is invited onstage to address a big group of students seated inside a hall. The scene is set in modern times, and the elderly gentleman is Gunnar Sonsteby, one of the most respected citizens of the country, known to most of the students as a renowned businessman who had also played some part during WWII. But as he starts to speak about his time in the Norwegian Resistance when the Nazis took over the country, the extent of Gunnar’s remarkable accolades and achievements is revealed, making it clear why he still remains the only person to have been awarded the War Cross with three swords, which is Norway’s highest military distinction.

As the elderly Gunnar speaks about his experiences during the war, Number 24 takes us back to the era through the visuals while also intermittently returning to the present. Back in 1937, Gunnar Sonsteby was a young adult man whose favorite pastime was to climb the snow-covered mountains around Rjukan with his close friends. During one such adventure, he was shocked by an article in the newspaper about the burning of books by the Nazis. His companion, one of his close friends, was not too stirred by the incident, and believed that the Germans must be doing all this to contain the spread of Communism, a political movement that was mostly disliked in Norway as well. But Gunnar was extremely disturbed by the deteriorating political climate on the continent and was of the opinion that the Nazis were curbing people’s freedom of choice and thought, which was terribly concerning.

Just as he had suspected, the Nazis did not stop at just fighting Communism, but soon started to invade other countries in Europe, with their army marching into Oslo in 1940. While most of the citizens began to get used to the cycle of running and hiding as soon as sirens went off, Gunnar showed a spirit of resilience, even though he was just a simple accountant at some mere company. But his life changed completely when he decided to join the Norwegian army’s fight against the Nazis in other parts of the country, and this is also when he realized how bleak the chances of stopping the invaders were. The army had to retreat very soon, and the erstwhile Prime Minister, Vidkun Quisling, collaborated with the Nazis to save his skin. Thus, Gunnar Sonsteby felt the need to join the Resistance and, together with his friends, started a unit of the force in Rjukan. Operating out of a local bakery, the unit began with printing a newspaper aimed at motivating Norwegians in the fight against the Germans, but Gunnar soon decided to get more directly involved.

How did Gunnar become Agent No. 24?

Gunnar Sonsteby’s first big action on behalf of the Resistance was to meet with a representative of the erstwhile Norwegian government, which had entirely fled to England, at a spot in the neighboring country of Sweden. Gunnar had already created multiple identity cards for himself, all under different names, by this time, and so he easily made it to Sweden and sat down with the representative. It was here that he was admitted into the secret British Special Operations Executive unit and was made Agent No. 24. He was offered the chance to go to England and train for sabotage missions, which would have arguably been a safer place to live in, but Gunnar resolutely chose to return to Oslo and run an SOE unit there. Thus, his work as a secret agent truly began, and he was charged with securing the printing plates used for Norwegian banknotes. With the Nazis invading every facet of life, including businesses and banks, the Resistance needed Norwegian kroner notes, which they could acquire only by printing the notes themselves.

When Gunnar walked up to the manager of the Norwegian Bank and asked for the plates, he was denied any help, despite the manager also being an ally of the Resistance. Such were the times that nobody could be trusted, and so the manager had to get Gunnar’s identity verified, which was done in a few days through secret radio communications. With the plates, his team in Rjukan started to print Norwegian kroner notes and smuggle them to Sweden, from where they were distributed among the Resistance forces. Soon, the team started to collect sensitive information about the Nazi military installations being built in Norway, including camps and army stations, and all this data was sent to Sweden as well. But the Nazis were also starting to suspect that a Resistance unit was actively working against them, and with new recruits in Norway, the Gestapo decided to track these rebels down.

In a move that totally shocked Gunnar and his friends, many Norwegian citizens switched sides and became collaborators of the Nazi administration, shamelessly selling out their fellow countrymen and even directly torturing them in many cases. Reports of atrocities started to get out, and the brother of one of the agents in Gunnar’s unit, Andreas, was tortured and killed in the most gruesome manner. Over the next few months, the Gestapo rounded up as many Resistance workers as they could and interrogated them in the most gruesome manner in order to find out the identities of their leaders. During one such interrogation, in which a young man was held up very close in front of a room heater, causing terrible burns on his face until he revealed information, the name of Gunnar eventually came out.

Although Gunnar had created a genius plan of renting numerous apartments all over the city and constantly moving between them to avoid any possibility of getting caught in random Nazi checks, he was now in considerable danger. Despite being able to get away from the usual searches on the streets with the help of his fake ID cards, the man’s rented apartments were found by the Nazis, and the Gestapo sent men everywhere to get him arrested. This is when Gunnar had to leave his homeland and flee to the safer lands of the UK, particularly to the Scottish town of Leuchars. Here, the British SOE thoroughly scrutinized his report and repeatedly questioned how he had been able to escape the grasp of the Nazis despite many other Resistance workers having been arrested, tortured, and killed. Such was the cunning and fearless nature of Gunnar that he had indeed managed to stay away from trouble with the Nazis for the most part, but he also convinced the SOE of the same.

What were the contributions of the Oslo Gang?

When the SOE finally believed Gunnar’s story, he was finally cleared to train for tougher missions in Scotland and was then allowed to return to Norway a few months later. Although Gunnar had been a part of the Norwegian Resistance for many years now, his return marked the beginning of a new chapter in his life, as he was now supposed to carry out more direct attacks against the Nazis. Going from a mere rebel to a spy, he was now supposed to play the role of a saboteur, and this is when he formed the notorious group that came to be known as the Oslo Gang, together with his friends. One of the first big missions that they took on was to blow up the city archive, in an effort to stop the Nazis from sending Norwegian men to fight for the Germans in Russia. Number 24 brilliantly plays out the tense nature of the operation, in which the members had to enter the archive, which was supposed to have been empty, trigger an explosion inside, and ensure that no Norwegian citizens got hurt, all while two members had to keep watch outside the building.

Gunnar’s generally unassuming nature and his ability to slip under the radar of his pursuers right after carrying out the most dangerous of acts ensured that he and his team were allowed to drive away after routine checks by Nazi soldiers while the archive burst into flames a few kilometers away. He did have to lay low for some time after his parents were repeatedly questioned by the Nazis, and he had gained quite some notoriety, but Gunnar knew that the Resistance needed to push on further. The Oslo Gang’s next target was the Kongsberg weapons factory, where cannons were being manufactured for the German army, and the only possible option for the Allies to stop this operation was to carpet bomb the factory from above. However, this would have destroyed Kongsberg completely, killing innumerable Norwegians in the process, and so the Resistance decided to give Gunnar the responsibility of getting into the factory and sabotaging it from within.

After the successful bombing of the factory, Gunnar received the chance to meet the erstwhile King of Norway, who had been living in exile, and found further inspiration to help his country out. Thus, he soon decided to take his operations a notch higher and assassinate Nazi officers. Despite having to kill in cold blood, Gunnar and his team never hesitated to mete out the same level of violence that the Nazis were subjecting thousands of others to throughout the continent by this time in 1944. Beginning with a high-ranking Gestapo officer named Gunnar Lindvig, the gang killed numerous important men, including the Nazi head of police in Norway, Karl Marthinsen, who was one of the most reviled men in Norway at the time.

Who was Erling Solheim?

In the last half of Number 24, the film’s narrative takes a different approach to tell a personal story about the protagonist, Gunnar Sonsteby, as he faces the questions of a few students in the present timeline. One girl in particular asks a number of questions about the role of the Resistance forces during the Nazi occupation, and she is clearly interested in finding out whether the actions of these forces harmed Norwegian citizens as well. The elderly Gunnar states that some citizens were indeed sometimes tortured and killed by the Nazis, in retaliation for actions committed by the Resistance forces, but there was no direct connection between the two. However, the girl remains persistent in finding out more and eventually reveals that the brother of her great-grandfather, a man named Erling Solheim, had been killed by the Resistance members, despite having no direct connection with the Nazis.

The name of Erling Solheim immediately stirs some emotions in Gunnar, and although he claims to have not known anyone like that, the flashbacks from 1945 tell a different story. While Erling was indeed just an ordinary Norwegian citizen, he had decided to help the Nazis track down and arrest Resistance workers, as many of the rebels happened to be his childhood friends. Unlike most others, Erling had seemingly grown up to become a subservient man who wanted to protect himself and his family. He had married amidst the war and had been clearly looking for a happy domestic life, while the rest of his country, and continent, was burning in the flames of conflict. The man genuinely believed that accepting the German invasion and allowing them to rule over Norway was the only way to stay out of trouble, and for this he decided to spill the names and addresses of all the Resistance workers he had once known during his childhood.

It is also very possible that Erling Solheim had secretly started to agree with Nazi principles, for he happened to be the very same friend of Gunnar Sonsteby who felt that the burning of books and the building of concentration camps were not really objectionable. This meant that Erling was giving the Nazis information about Gunnar too, the man with whom he had grown up and who was once his best friend. Once Gunnar found out about this development, as Erling’s letter to the Nazis was intercepted by the Resistance, he had no option but to call for the elimination of the very man who was once a dear friend. Thus, it was Gunnar himself who had ordered the execution of Erling, and the latter was finally killed on the 27th of February, 1945. Among other struggles during wartime, Number 24, also poignantly brings out the harrowing nature of broken friendships, only because a war had created differences in ideology between two friends.

What does the last scene signify?

Throughout his entire time on the stage, the elderly Gunnar Sonsteby refuses to speak about Erling Solheim or the Resistance’s need to eliminate Norwegian citizens. Even at the end of the session, when the girl walks up to him and reveals how she is related to Solheim, he states that he does not know anyone by that name.

In Number 24’s ending, Gunnar is seen sitting alone with the student and telling her something, all while tears roll down his cheeks. It is evident that Gunnar actually tells her what had happened with Erling and also apologizes to her, in a way apologizing to one of his closest friends, for having given the order to take his life. The film begins and ends with one of Gunnar Sonsteby’s most famous quotes from after the war, in which he spoke about how his mind, and memories, are compartmentalized into five drawers. The top three drawers are often used, while the fourth drawer is rarely opened, possibly because some very personal memories are stored inside it. The fifth and last drawer, Gunnar says, has been locked up since Liberation Day in 1945. Unlike some of his friends, who had eventually taken their own lives after the war, Gunnar Sonsteby continued to live a successful life and became a renowned businessman. It is perhaps because of this compartmentalization of his mind that he managed to do so. But sometimes in the most desperate of situations, like in the ending scene of Number 24, when he apologizes to the girl, Gunnar did need to search through the horrific memories of war until his death in 2012.

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'Number 24' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: Who Was Erling Solheim? Is Gunnar Dead? (2025)
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