Critique of Endwalker Characters

[Iscah]

Why? Is it just because there had to be a death or it's not a serious story? I could see narrative reasons for either of those which could be stepping off points to different story points, but the reason I see given most often is that a story isn't serious enough if there's isn't a death.

I don't agree with the general calls that someone should die for the sake of some arbitrary quota of meaningfulness, or because they've finished their story arc, but for those specific story events it absolutely would have been appropriate for those characters to die in those situations and it would have been a good story point.

For all that I like G'raha and it's nice that he's still with us, pre-5.3 he was so heavily waving the death flag that i was all steeled to bid him farewell and have a good cry over a well-earned death scene in a story with running themes of the impermanence of life... and then he didn't die, and I still have mixed feelings over that. From the characters' perspective, it's a happy thing that he survived; from a story theme perspective, I don't think it was really the best narrative outcome. (But he's here now, and he's a lovable dork, so no use fretting over it.)

Done right, at the right time (that being very sparingly, and not sacrificing regular cast members once per expansion), character death can be a really good thing and an ongoing rallying point for fans to remember the character fondly, and as an ongoing plot point in the story itself.

I agree that a portion of the fanbase might not take it well – I might not have once upon a time either, but I think that has changed with maturity, and perhaps it is experiencing more of those plots that teaches you to appreciate them. If the Exarch had died it would be sad but in a bittersweet way and he was, ultimately, an old man who had lived through a lot and seen all his lifelong goals come to fruition, and somehow the story needed to resolve the fact that he was immortal and that was made out to be an undesirable thing in the long term.

I've said before – I think he should have truly died there even if they still wanted us to wake young G'raha up afterwards. Make him a separate character and not a continuation of the Exarch. Pass along his memories, but not his soul.

I do think the writers are spooked by the thought that some of the fandom might be "sad" if characters die. I recall them implying in an interview that they had considered another ending for 5.3 but wanted to give us a happy one since the real world had been rather miserable of late with the pandemic and everything. Though oddly, contradictorily, the sadder ending might have been the more enjoyable one for me.

All that said, there aren't any points in Endwalker's narrative as it stands that feel like any one person should have rightfully died. I think for what was going on in Ultima it really has to be all of them or none of them surviving in the end, not just one somehow arbitrarily failing to reconstitute. Though instead we get Hades and Hyth at long last getting the voluntary "return to the star" that their race views as a good death at the end of achieving their goals.