In the movie Interstellar , (the firstborn son of Tom Cooper and grandson of Joseph Cooper) died off-screen from a lung ailment caused by the deteriorating environmental conditions on Earth .

Jesse first appears as an infant in a recorded video message sent by Tom. In the clip, Tom proudly cradles his newborn son and shows him to the camera. Tom notes that he originally wanted to name the baby "Coop" after his father, but his wife Lois preferred to wait for a future child.

: The tragedy is a major source of tension between Tom and Murph. Murph eventually confronts Tom, accusing him of being willing to wait for his second child to die just like Jesse did by refusing to leave the dust-choked farm.

Shortly after this message, Cooper and Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) descend onto Miller's ocean planet. Due to its extreme proximity to the supermassive black hole Gargantua, one hour on Miller's planet equates to seven years on Earth.

When Cooper returns to the Endurance after a disastrous few hours, 23 years, 4 months, and 8 days have lapsed back home. He sits down to watch a backlog of accumulated video entries. In a somber message recorded years later, an older Tom reveals that Jesse has passed away. He mentions that the boy was buried on the family farm’s "back 40" acres, right next to Tom’s mother, Erin Cooper, and grandfather, Donald. The Medical Cause: The Dust and The Blight

When Cooper sits down to watch 23 years' worth of messages, the tragedy unfolds in real-time:

I think there’s a small mix-up:

While his death occurs entirely off-screen during Cooper's deep-space mission, it serves as a critical, overlooked narrative turning point that shapes the emotional decay of the Cooper family remaining on Earth. The Timeline of Jesse's Life and Death