Claire Stoermer and Zendaya on Oct. 14, 2019. PHOTO: 

MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY 

Warning: Challenger spoilers ahead!

The ending to Challengers is so polarizing — even Zendaya and her mom can’t seem to agree!

In New York Times journalist Kyle Buchanan’s spoiler-filled excerpts from his recent interview with Zendaya, 27, her Challengers director Luca Guadagnino and costars Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, Zendaya revealed that her mom Claire Stoermer “read the [movie’s] ending so different.”

“My mom is like, ‘She’s pissed because they realize that they don’t need her anymore,’ ” she said. “I was like, ‘But I smile a little bit at the end!’ My mom was watching it behind me and every time my character does something bad or cheats on her husband or whatever, she’s like ‘Why do you do that?’ She’s so angry with Tashi, she’s so upset.”

“But it’s interesting, I was like, ‘What? I don’t know where you got that from,’ ” she added. “I’m in the movie and I feel like I have a good sense of what I thought this ending was supposed to be, and she was like, ‘No. This is what is is. So sorry.’ ”

Zendaya in 2024’s ‘Challengers’. 

MGM /COURTESY OF EVERETT

In Challengers, Zendaya portrays a budding tennis star named Tashi Duncan, who meets two other young athletes, Art (Faist) and Patrick (O’Connor). The film cuts back and forth between a present-set storyline in which Tashi and Art are married and she works as his coach, preparing for an important match against Patrick. In flashbacks, the group of three meet and Tashi initially engages in a relationship with Patrick until a significant injury derails her own playing career.

The film ends with a climactic match between Art and Patrick that begins directly as Patrick tells Art he and Tashi have recently slept together. The movie does not clarify who ultimately wins the match and ends as Tashi reacts to the pair colliding during a tiebreaker point.

While speaking with the Times, director Guadadigno, 52, said he liked Zendaya’s mother’s interpretation of the film’s final moments. “But Tashi’s a director. She’s like Lermontov in The Red Shoes, she makes things happen,” he said. “And maybe your mom is right, maybe Tashi wants them to find each other.”

“Maybe,” Zendaya added. “I was like, ‘Maybe she’s pissed. I don’t know.’ ”

Zendaya and Josh O’Connor in 2024’s ‘Challengers’. 

NIKO TAVERNISE/METRO GOLDWYN MAYER PICTURES

“Isn’t it so beautiful that we have an open ending that people like?” Guadagnino told the Times. “Because everybody says, ‘No. Never open ending. You have to know what happens at the end.”

Challengers was the highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office in its first weekend in theaters following its April 26 release.