Calypso is the kindest of Odysseus’s obstacles. She rescues him from a shipwreck, takes him to her island, and falls in love with him. She offers him agelessness and immortality — to live forever as her consort, untouched by death.
He spends seven years there. The poem finds him on the beach in book 5, weeping at the sea, a captive in luxury. Athena petitions Zeus, who sends Hermes with a divine order: let him go.
Calypso is bitter — she points out, fairly, that the gods reserve their immortal lovers for themselves and punish goddesses who keep mortal ones — but she obeys. She helps him build a raft. She watches him sail.
What’s striking is what Odysseus chose: a mortal wife, a mortal kingdom, a death at the end of it all. Nostos over kleos, mortality over godhood.