Caleb Prior in Divergent: Actor, Story and Fate

Caleb Prior is the brother of Tris, the heroine of the Divergent series, and Ansel Elgort plays him in all three films. He is credited as "Caleb" in Divergent (2014), directed by Neil Burger, and as "Caleb Prior" in Insurgent (2015) and Allegiant (2016), both directed by Robert Schwentke. Elgort is billed ninth in the first film, fifth in the second and seventh in the third.

Tris grows up in Abnegation, the selfless faction that runs the government of walled Chicago. At the choosing ceremony in the first film she leaves her family and picks Dauntless, the brave faction. Caleb is among the survivors who escape the city by train with her at the end of Divergent (2014), after the attack on Abnegation. In Insurgent he sides with Erudite, the faction led by Jeanine Matthews.

He is a supporting character rather than a lead, but he is the one remaining link between Tris and the family she left behind, which is why the story keeps coming back to him. For the wider cast, see our guide to the Divergent characters and the full Divergent cast.

Caleb's most important relationship is with his sister, Tris Prior, and nearly every scene he has is shaped by it. After Divergent (2014) the films keep the siblings in the same orbit of fugitives, and they use his choices to test how far her trust can stretch. When he sides with Erudite in Insurgent, a family disagreement becomes a political one.

His link to Jeanine Matthews is the most uncomfortable, because she is the architect of the attack on Abnegation, the faction that raised him. Caleb ends up in her camp even though she stirred up the distrust that led to the assault. The films show the alliance but do not spell out his private reasoning, so it is safer to describe what he does than to guess why.

Peter Hayes is the other member of the fugitive group, and the pairing is an instructive one. Peter is the aggressive rival who targets Tris in Dauntless initiation, yet he is the one who helps her fake her death in Insurgent. Alongside them are Four and Christina, who travel with the group and have their own conflicts with it. Caleb's mother, Natalie, played by Ashley Judd, and his father, Andrew, played by Tony Goldwyn, appear in Divergent (2014), and their deaths in the attack shape the grief Caleb and Tris carry through the later films.

In my opinion, Caleb's best moments come in Allegiant, because the film finally lets him act instead of just react. His arc is uneven across the saga, and it could be argued that Insurgent asks the audience to accept his turn toward Erudite with little set up, but the third film gives it a payoff.

The first is the escape over the wall. Tris and Four freeing him and climbing out of Chicago reunites the siblings as fugitives, and it sets the tone for the rest of the film.

The second is his work at the gas hub. Tris and Caleb destroy the hub together, which stops the amnesia gas from erasing everyone's memories. It is the clearest point at which his help matters to the plot.

The third, and my pick, is the hovercar. Caleb blowing up David's vehicle breaks the cloaking shield and exposes the Bureau, so the secret behind the city is finally out. For a character who spent the middle film on the wrong side, it is a fitting way to close his account. If you want a view of how the trilogy holds together, our Divergent movies ranked page weighs the three films, and Divergent books vs movies covers how the screen version differs from Roth's novels.