***SPOILERS*** Question about the very last cutscene ***SPOILERS***

[Lersayil]

hermes is the ultimate hypocritical villain this expansion. When he didn't get the answer he wanted he urged the hivemind to end it all.

Worse I think. He was depressed, and when faced with despair, decided that his civilization as a whole should also feel that way, and they don't deserve to live unless they pass his utterly unfair "test". If he actually just wanted the world to end I'd hate his train of thought much less...

[KariTheFox]

Worse I think. He was depressed, and when faced with despair, decided that his civilization as a whole should also feel that way, and they don't deserve to live unless they pass his utterly unfair "test". If he actually just wanted the world to end I'd hate his train of thought much less...

On the one hand, yes, Hermes was in pain and that caused him to enact atrocities. But on the other hand, why didn't the society of the ancients have therapists? Why did thier culture seem to push people towards being isolated in thier pain?

[Lersayil]

On the one hand, yes, Hermes was in pain and that caused him to enact atrocities. But on the other hand, why didn't the society of the ancients have therapists? Why did thier culture seem to push people towards being isolated in thier pain?

Do you have a citation on the "seem to push people towards being isolated in their pain" part? From my point of view, Hermes had options. He chose the worst job for his disposition, and perpetuated the very things he was against. From what we understand about Ancient society, he could start his own activist group and argue for more controlled and extensive creation process, or even against living creations as a whole. We know he wouldn't be alone in his views.

Therapists help you identify your problems, and possibly help you come up with a way to combat them, but in the end its your fight. Maybe mental issues were rare enough that they didn't need them? Maybe they were something that people expected to overcome by themselves and in the majority of cases they did? Maybe society as a whole was so accepting that you could talk out your issues with basically anyone? I would speculate, but we're lacking information. Hell its possible therapists actually existed and Hermes just chose to self isolate with his problem.

[kaynide]

This is a thing pretty common in most loose storytelling like DND..especially things like DND-

You purposefully leave things somewhat ambiguous, so that you can drop it forever and it feels satisfying….but there is just enough wiggle room that if you need it to come back, you can pull it in and make it look like you had planned to do so the entire time. Not a retcon by any means, just an ability to expand upon something if it’s needed.

For example the very famous One Ring of the Hobbit was originally envisioned as just a simple magic ring that granted invisibility. It wasn’t until the LoTR sequel that the rings significance was worked out.

[Antoine_Lenheim]

Personally I like to believe that bird is Meteion herself because what, blue birds with twin tails are that common in Eorzea that they just casually flying around during the super important ending culmination of the expac? My own intrerpretation is that Meteion is observing the world her sisters wanted to destroy and learning to "walk" by flying around, relishing in joys this world can bring contrary to what her millenia long slumber dictated. I think she is completely aware how people think of her because of what her sisters did to this world so at least for now she conceal herself in that bird form and just enjoying the peace.

That's my own wild speculating of course but since we don't know for sure whether Meteion is alive or not, I am going for a more "happy ending" approach. Come with us, Meteion.

[Cleretic]

On the one hand, yes, Hermes was in pain and that caused him to enact atrocities. But on the other hand, why didn't the society of the ancients have therapists? Why did thier culture seem to push people towards being isolated in thier pain?

First of all: we don't know there weren't therapists, they might've just been off-screen. ...but yeah, I'm pretty sure they didn't. Remember how extremely conformist and unaware of alternate forms of thought those guys actually were; that is DEFINITELY a society that just hasn't really conceived of people who have no choice but to deviate from the norm.

[Rulakir]

I hope she's dead. I was uncomfortable with the 'Song of Hope' ending. No. No more singing, you have done enough. I don't care what sort of cutesy, innocent creature she reverted back into, she's still too dangerous to suffer to exist even without her sisters. Reminder that it only took one per planet to push them over the edge.

[Pofruin]

I do hope it's her. She suffered enough from her sisters now she is owed some happiness for once. And current day Etherys is perfect place for her. She is primed to explore and feel emotions. And multiple MSQ scenes showed that there are varieties OF emotions in Etherys nowadays.

How mechanically she is there, given its implied she died, is different matter. Perhaps this is just reference, perhaps reincarnation or the lifestream not really keeping creatures capable of unassisted space travel grounded. Would also explain why Midgarsormr was fooling around after death :P.

Now for more somber part of the post

Do you have a citation on the "seem to push people towards being isolated in their pain" part? From my point of view, Hermes had options. He chose the worst job for his disposition, and perpetuated the very things he was against. From what we understand about Ancient society, he could start his own activist group and argue for more controlled and extensive creation process, or even against living creations as a whole. We know he wouldn't be alone in his views.

Does him opening up about his anxieties and getting shot down by Hythlo, of all people, during offering to join Convocation conversation not show that Ancient society doesn't have a thing with dealing with emotions? Add in Elpis flowers, vain platitudes of Emet when explaining why it's fine to genocide the "failed' creatures no one having connection to Hermis when interrogating people with Venat not show the "Push of society towards the isolation"?
And don't go with "he had options". Mental issues disable options that is why external help is needed. And in this society no one even understood, or perhaps cared, what he was talking about.

I would also argue that Hermis was not in any way Villain of story nor in Elpis, nor in Fandaniel/Amon forms:

I always wondered why that fake memory he crafted for himself was enough to dissuade him from trying again. He was desperate when he created Metea, and the fake memory was that she just poofed out randomly. How would that be enough for desperate person not to try again? I postulate that something changed in Hermis there that is unaffected by memory alteration. That after hearing Metea report he was overcome with despair and lost part of his soul, becoming functionally Blasphemy. And all his reflections shared that corrupted, voided out soul. Thus Amon wasn't fallen Hermis. He was what he was because Hermis was the one that fell.
This in essence makes Hermis first victim of Final Days, rather than villain.

[LystAP]

I hope she's dead. I was uncomfortable with the 'Song of Hope' ending. No. No more singing, you have done enough. I don't care what sort of cutesy, innocent creature she reverted back into, she's still too dangerous to suffer to exist even without her sisters. Reminder that it only took one per planet to push them over the edge.

It wasn't just her and her sisters. The Endsinger was also the accumulated souls of a thousand thousand dead worlds. Billions if not trillions of nihilistic tortured souls calling out for oblivion. Hermes didn't just give her the ability to talk to the living, but also to apparently absorb souls - "Welcomed their shadowed hearts into our own." The souls she happen to meet happen to be the worst souls to take in and talk too.

All those souls are gone now, either let loose into the universe to serve as part of a 'larger flow' as mentioned in the MSQ following the Ea part of Ultima Thule, or used to empower hope in Thule.

There's no practical way for her now to get that powerful again unless she visits more dead worlds and absorbs their demented souls.

[Alleo]

I am not really sure if she is still alive or not. She did say that she will sing one last song before she will fall forever silent. But it could easily have been that with the song of hope in action that she was bascially getting a second chance or that only her "bad" side died and she was "reborn" again in her blue version.

I would be fine with her being still alive and being able to observe the world, maybe even being reunited with a reborn Hermes. I did not see her as the true villian or even final boss. She just was the body that the despair of the whole universe used to manifest the Endsinger. That poor girl was basically just a little newborn, given the horrible ability to feel what others feel, without any way to stop that. And on top of that had a hivemind. For me it was fully Hermes fault. In his deep need to get better answers from outside their planet he created beings that bascially could not stand to be in the same room when he gets angry or sad That should have been warning enough that the Universe was not a good place to send them to. But he was probably so naive to believe that everyone out there must have been better. And to make it even worse he gives them a very flawed question.

Poor Meteion never stood a chance.

Yet even after over 12.000 years there was still good in here. There was still one blue bird inside the hive mind. And I guess if she survives that and is finally able to see the world how it is. With sadness but also with happiness, I would be quite fine with that. If she died there than at least if she had a soul she will get the chance to be reborn again, so that would also be a fitting ending.

I hope she's dead. I was uncomfortable with the 'Song of Hope' ending. No. No more singing, you have done enough. I don't care what sort of cutesy, innocent creature she reverted back into, she's still too dangerous to suffer to exist even without her sisters. Reminder that it only took one per planet to push them over the edge.

Hermes send out a huge numbers of Meteions. (We see them when they form into the Endsinger) Every single one of them found at least one horrible planet. Every single one of these experiences got delievered to the hivemind which is what Meteion is forced to report in Elpis. And as LystAP said it was not only them. They were after all seemingly able to communicate with the souls of the death. It was that combination AND the question that Hermes gave them that bascially transformed her in Elpis at the end.