FF7 Rebirth’s ending wants to have it both ways with Aerith

[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, as well as the first Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake.]

What does it mean for Aerith to die?

In Final Fantasy 7, Aerith represents that thought that no planet is saved from calamity without cost. She represents senseless and abrupt loss, how death can take individual you love at any time. As Polygon’s own Maddy Myers said to me once, she’s a stand-in for the planet, in a communicative about the planet’s impending death. She needs to die for the communicative to work. Character designer and script author for the OG FF7 Tetsuya Nomura once said that it was crucial that her death be “sudden and unexpected,” contrasting Aerith with the types of characters who had sacrificed themselves in earlier FF games. Our shock and grief at a good girl who never hurt anyone being killed while she prays for salvation is meant to motivate us, to push us forward, to anchor our emotional experience of the story.

From the very first moment, FF7 Remake traded on the question: Would Aerith survive? Her death could no longer be “sudden and unexpected”; that ship sailed decades ago. Remake centered a immense section of its game around the Whispers, supernatural beings attempting to keep the “story” on track; at the end of the game, Cloud and company virtually kill them. It’s Aerith herself who claims that this opens up the anticipation of “boundless, terrifying freedom.”

They may as well whisper in your ear, “This time it might be different. This time you can save her.”

Rebirth leans into this just as hard from the very first second, erstwhile a recently alive Zack cradles a seemingly dead Aerith’s body in the exact pose Cloud utilized to cradle her corpse in 1997, as her hair ribbon is undone and the White Materia clatters to the level in ultra close-up. “Will Aerith die?” is not the only motor driving Rebirth’s story, but it is by far 1 of the strongest and loudest, peculiarly for players of the original. As I played the game, I am ashamed to admit, I felt a certain… vigilance, looking for any sign of what the game was going to do.

The game’s final hours truly begin erstwhile the organization heads back to the Gold Saucer in search of the Keystone that opens the Temple of the Ancients. Just as in the original, Cloud is asked on a date by a organization member, but unlike in the original, part of this date is taking in a show: a production of Loveless, a play that has haunted the background of the FF7 metaseries through multiple games. At the end of this phase show, Aerith sings the game’s subject song for the audience while the organization members who took part in the QTE minigame of the show itself watch from the wings.

Y’all, the literal title of the song is “No Promises to Keep.”

Even a tiny bit of scrutiny reveals the lyrics are Aerith writing about her relation with Cloud: “I won’t say that it was destiny / I won’t say that it was destiny / but if not, what could it be / that drew you towards me?” She goes on to sing about how she wishes she could have lived without “all the burdens I was born to bear / lived a life without a care / in the planet save for you.”

Aerith’s increasing sense of work and even guilt about her function as the last surviving Ancient is simply a consistent thread in Rebirth, from her self-recriminating frustration at the White Materia being empty to her declaration to the festival-goers in Cosmo Canyon that, as the last of the Cetra, she has a work to the Planet. Even the communicative of the Gi tribe, fresh material for Rebirth that paints the Cetra in a considerably little flattering light, involves their leader charging Aerith as the last of her race.

In both the first and Rebirth, Aerith heads to the Forgotten Capital with the White Materia due to the fact that she firmly believes, as the last of the Ancients, that it is her work and work to halt Sephiroth’s plans through the Holy spell.

The difference comes in Remake and Rebirth infusing the ever-popular multiverse/alternate timeline trope into this story. As the final hours of Rebirth approach, we’ve understood that Zack is alive, but in an alternate timeline where a rift in the sky heralds the end times. In the events at the Temple of the Ancients involving the Black Materia, we find that Aerith can either inhabit or contact her alternate-timeline selves. 1 of them, in fact, provides the full charged White Materia that Cloud takes back to his timeline’s Aerith in place of the empty 1 she was carrying.

This is the key difference between reading Aerith’s death in FF7 and reading it in Rebirth: The first Aerith in 1997 very likely had no thought Sephiroth was going to show up and execution her, but it feels as if the Remake-continuity Aerith absolutely has this knowledge. The alternate Marlene, talking to Zack, tells him that Aerith revealed to her that she’ll die due to a man with long, grey hair, who will kill her erstwhile Cloud isn’t there to prevent it. Marlene begs Zack to aid Cloud wake from his coma so that he can scope Aerith in time to prevent this.

Thus we see a contrast between FF7’s Aerith dying a senseless, sudden, unexpected death, and Rebirth Aerith going dutifully to her own demise in the exact way that Nomura observed characters had in earlier FFs: sacrificing themselves to save others. On stage, Rebirth Aerith sings, “Till the day that we meet again / at our place, just let me believe / in the chance that you’ll come,” but it truly seems as if at this point, she most likely already knows her days are numbered. At the festival of lights in Cosmo Canyon, having spoken of the organization as “wonderful friends” who came into her life and showed her happiness she hadn’t experienced before, Aerith finishes by saying: “Even if I can’t lead a average life… there is 1 thing I can do — return their kindness. And effort to make the most of what I’ve been given.”

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Aerith has the strength and will to give herself up so others can lead happy lives, or at least that’s what Rebirth is selling us. In talking about “No Promises to Keep,” composer Nobuo Uematsu mentioned that he deliberately left out the “ill-fated” and “poignant” melody of “Aerith’s Theme” in favour of writing a song that showed “the other of this, the strength at her core.” Her willingness to quit her newfound happiness and freedom for the sake of her friends and the planet is that strength.

Which: Fine. I didn’t have a horse in the race 1 way or the another on Aerith dying in Rebirth, though I was curious how it would all go down. I felt like it was just as likely that she would live or die, after all; Remake (and Rebirth, as I was playing it) is full of examples of the game hewing to FF7’s first past 1 second and then bait-and-switch veering sharply off course the next.

The problem I had, in the end, is that the game’s ending, laden with the cursed baggage of the multiverse trope, removes any chance of Aerith’s knowing sacrifice being meaningful.

Jackson Tyler has already written for Paste about a immense failing of the game’s ending sequence: the looming feeling of uncertainty and unsettledness that permeates the endgame events. Cloud arrives in time, but Aerith dies anyway… or does she? She’s covered in blood, but now she’s fine, I guess? After the large boss conflict with Sephiroth(s), she’s laid to rest, but we never actually see the body or what happens to it; we just see Cloud mourning alongside the party, but then talking to an Aerith that only he appears to be able to see. We see Zack back in his doomed timeline, determined to make it back to Cloud and Aerith someway after encountering them in the Avengers movie-ass final boss sequence.

Is she truly dead? What truly happened? We have no idea, and it fucking sucks.

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

To ellipse back to my first question, what it means for Aerith to die is that she is gone. That’s the core of her death in the first FF7: She very definitely, absolutely, without any uncertainty is gone from the party. After her death, we do not see her until the game’s ending. In fact, Aerith’s face is the last thing we see in the first FF7, but her presence is felt many times before this, even just in the ending sequence. Death in the FF7 universe — including in the Remake continuity — is frequently called “returning to the Planet” or “returning to the Lifestream.” Lore nerds say that due to the fact that Aerith is simply a Cetra, from a race of people profoundly connected to the Planet, she can direct the Lifestream itself, and is acting from beyond the grave in that way, but the first game is careful not to thin on that besides hard.

Grief exists due to the fact that we see and hear and feel echoes of the dead in our lives even after they’re gone, but for that grief to be real, they request to be gone. In the Rebirth continuity, thanks to the multiverse, we have no specified closure after Aerith’s deliberate sacrifice. She might be alive, somewhere; we might be able to bring her back. We might meet her again, but possibly we won’t? possibly Cloud is just dreaming her up. possibly Cloud has Space Madness or something, which is why he’s seeing things the people right next to him can’t. possibly it’s SOLDIER cell degradation at work, or possibly Sephiroth is inactive out there, whispering into his ear! Nobody knows!

Rebirth is simply a game that wants to kill Aerith, but for her to not be gone. It wants it both ways, and uses the multiverse angle to do it, but in truth, all this does is profoundly cheapen the communicative and emotional impact of her death. alternatively of being able to feel grief, or sadness, or even relief, we’re stuck in an emotional limbo. It feels like a pointless maneuver to pull us along into the remake series’ finale in part three, a maneuver that truly did not request to happen. We were going to follow this through anyway, guys!

I keep reasoning about what an alternate might look like. My favourite version is that alternatively of Aerith, it’s Cloud who dies for good midway through the game, which would be highly strange, but at least interesting. While I was reviewing the game I wondered many times if they were setting up Tifa to be killed instead, though the scenes at the Gongaga reactor put that to remainder for the most part.

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Largely I wondered: What would it mean for Aerith to live?

Modern audiences seem to be very mixed on this kind of happy ending. Yussef Cole, discussing Aerith’s death in Rebirth, outright says that “[t]here’s even a tiny part of us that wants her to be saved, even though we would never admit that, would never admit to yearning for specified a pandering retcon of gaming’s canon.” There’s a certain point of view on this where Aerith surviving is more betrayal than affirmative change. Cole’s usage of the word “pandering,” his implication that even wanting this to be actual would make us feel shame, is highly deliberate.

The promise of the multiverse or time-travel hook, story-wise, is typically “all of this went wrong, but you can change it this time!” nipponese RPGs usage this communicative hook liberally, even just looking at Square Enix’s oeuvre. The lesser-used but inactive valid alternate is “you can effort to change things, but any things are just meant to be”; stories about acceptance and adaptation alternatively than revolutionary change.

That promise is what Remake was selling us from the jump: not that it would save Aerith, but that it might. The problem is that erstwhile it came time for Rebirth to put up or shut up, it refused. She might inactive be out there! This might inactive happen! But it might not. You’ll just gotta stay tuned and find out in 2 to 3 more years. It fucking sucks.

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Even if it would be pandering, I’d alternatively see a version where Aerith is definitely alive than in this ridiculous, MCU-esque limbo of fractured multiverses. That would be something that makes the communicative abruptly and sharply jump tracks, just as Aerith’s death in FF7 did. If I can’t have that, though — and that’s fine — I would so much alternatively have her be actually, definitively dead. Let me actually experience and process loss, alternatively of forcing me to corkboard up conspiracy theories about what might have happened and be on tenterhooks waiting for actual closure.

As Reid McCarter said, the remake continuity frequently feels more cerebral than emotional, “something that operates more on the level of the brain than the heart, which is sometimes gratifying but yet works to dull what emotional power the first game holds.” The emotional part matters, though. Grief or sadness, joy or relief, something; I wanted Rebirth’s ending to leave me feeling something real, something powerful. alternatively what I got was a deep confusion and a gnawing suspicion that, whatever comes in part 3 to wrap this tale up, it will value “modern” storytelling tropes and convoluted game twists far more than helping the player to actually feel something in their heart.