Why endwalker ended the way it did. My theory. (MASSIVE SPOILERS)

[Raigoth]

Alright, so as I mentioned in the title, spoilers ahead, and this is also just a theory that I thought about while in the shower. (Yay shower thoughts!) Sorry for the wall of text!

So, I will start off by saying that yes, they could have gone with something different than "Hey, go back in time and figure this out OH WAIT EVERYONE BUT YOU AND ONE OTHER PERSON HAS THEIR MEMORY WIPED!"

However, within the confines of what the story is I think it all fits together rather nicely.

While I was playing through the first time, I always wondered why Emet-Selch decided to help us so much. At the time I thought "Oh, he just wants to use me as a new light warden" and to an extent that was true until he said that he was disappointed in our strength and was hoping that we would be able to handle it (Or something to that extent) and again, questions were there. Then the stuff with Elidibus started happening, and soon I realized that there was some hidden connection. I started thinking that I was an Ascian myself! Why would they recognize me as Azem? Did I come from that time and just...forgot my entire existence up to that point where I started adventuring?

After the two were gone, I thought that was the end of it, but NOPE! Hythlodeus came in in his created shade form. Calling us his "New old friend." Again "I have to be an ascian" entered into my mind (And honestly it would have been an amazing twist in hindsight) but for those that finished the game, we know this isnt true.

Before Elidibus and Emet die, they both recognize our character, thinking that he is Azem. In Elidibus's case, I think it was simply the time that passed and his obsession with his job that made him forget, but anyone who played through the game knows why Emet forgot. So how did he recognize us?

Well, thats the next part. When Hermes uses Kairos, I believe that it is a flawed system, which is actually alluded to early on while on Elpis. We figure out that some of the creations continue to exhibit the same instincts even after Kairos is used on them and erasing all of their memories. I believe that this is why at the end (Before he dies) Emet remembers us as being Azem. In his subconscious, he still harbors the same memories, and thats why he helps us the way he does. This is why Hythlodeus is different from the other shades in Amaurot. Kairos couldnt get rid of the subconscious memories and instincts that Emet had from all those ages ago.

[Raigoth]

Now, onto the big theory, as to why things had to happen the way they did. I see a lot of questions about why, after the WoL goes into the past and reveals everything, didnt Venat start doing everything she could to stop everything from coming to pass in the first place? The simple answer; SHE COULDNT.

Why? One reason. If she had, we wouldnt have existed, and no one would have been there to warn her as to what was going to happen, and what she would have to do to keep everything from going to hell. If we didnt exist, no one would have gone to the past and Hydaelyn would never have come to be. Existence as we know it to be now, would no longer be there. THAT is why she had to do things the way she did, so that we could be born and do what we needed to do. Everything up to Endwalker had been part of the plan to bring stability to the universe and prevent the end of days from happening anywhere else. I think one thing that people fail to realize how much weight the decision Hydaelyn had to make was since she was both Venat and Hydaelyn both. She knew everything that had to happen, and yet, she needed to let it happen. Can you imagine how much of a toll that took on her? Here she was, a MASSIVELY powerful being that could very well fix everything before all of the calamities happened. Before all the death and destruction. But she was forced to sit back and watch, because if she didnt, then at any point, things could go tits up due to us not being born.

We are the key to everything. If we didnt exist, if we didnt do everything that we did up to the point where we go back in time, then the universe wouldnt exist in the state that it is in.

However, now the game is at a point where we are within control of our own fate. No more Hydaelyn. No more Zodiarc. And from what I can tell, Meteon is the only one of her kind left, and shes, as of now, just a bird. From what I gather, it was the other entelechy's that caused the end singer. When the singer was defeated, all but Meteon was left, and as a last act, she used her power to change the song that was being sung. Without the others, shes no longer a threat.

Without Hydaelyn, Zodiarc, or Meteon causing universal disasters, our fate is now our own, and we are able to do what we want. This is what the ending of the last story mission was putting across. We are no longer being led towards a specific fate.

So, thats my theory. None of this is set in stone, all of these are simply thoughts going through my mind. Thank you for reading all of this if you did. Sorry, but no TLDR here.

[Jennah]

I don't buy that Venat wouldn't try to stop the Final Days. She's the former Azem, and doesn't play by the rules, being Chaotic Good and all.
Perhaps there was no time to convince anyone else to do otherwise; perhaps she tried, but the End of Days were already there.
Assuming she could think of no way to reach the Meteions, she probably couldn't stop Zodiark from being summoned; and then she probably thought it was the right thing to do to become Hydaelyn and do the Sundering.


Later on though ... my personal head-canon is that she DID try to stop some of the tragedies we told her of. Starting with the First Rejoining. Which lead to that whole situation with the 13th and the Void.
Going to go out on a long limb here and guess that her saying "screw causality" is what summoned all the Voidsent; not just having too much dark aether.
Which would explain why she never intervened again, not even to tell us things in ARR, HW, StB, ShB and early EW...

As a corollary, it would mean that G'raha's own complete disregard for causality should be coming to bite us in the butt any day now...

[Saraide]

The ancients were fine as long as they were in their perfect paradise but were not prepared mentally to deal with something outside of their sphere of influence. They massively gave in to despair. To really defeat the endsinger and not just hide from it you need to accept that there is suffering in the world and perservere through it. All the ancients managed to do was to summon zodiark and stall out the final days but that could have never solved the cause.

I am not entirely sure why emet selch took so long to realize who we were. My impression is that subconsciously he doesnt allow himself to realize this because he knows that we are going to be enemies. Rather than accepting to fight a former friend to death he pretends that we arent azem and that we're just a broken husk. Easier on his mind as long as the self illusion isnt broken.

[NegativeS]

All I'm thinking is that it's insanely lucky that Ardbert just so happened to be another sundered piece of Azem.

Is every MC WoL in the shards a sundered piece of Azem?

[yajnaji]

Why do people still mistake ancients with ascians?
Ancients are the people that lived in the world before the sundering, ascians are the members of the convocation that banded together to plot the calamities throughout the millennia in order to cause the rejoinings and thus the unsundering.

Also stop calling Emet-Selch "emet". There's an hyphen which means is ONE word name. Calling him "Emet" is the same thing as calling Elidibus "Eli" or Lahabrea "Laha".

Both things annoy me more than it should but annoy they do, so stop.

[TaleraRistain]

Why do people still mistake ancients with ascians?
Ancients are the people that lived in the world before the sundering, ascians are the members of the convocation that banded together to plot the calamities throughout the millennia in order to cause the rejoinings and thus the unsundering.

Also stop calling Emet-Selch "emet". There's an hyphen which means is ONE word name. Calling him "Emet" is the same thing as calling Elidibus "Eli" or Lahabrea "Laha".

Both things annoy me more than it should but annoy they do, so stop.

Wow, who died and made you the decision maker on what someone's allowed to call someone?

[Darthgummibear]

Both things annoy me more than it should but annoy they do, so stop.

[Kamatsu]

I don't buy that Venat wouldn't try to stop the Final Days. She's the former Azem, and doesn't play by the rules, being Chaotic Good and all.
Perhaps there was no time to convince anyone else to do otherwise; perhaps she tried, but the End of Days were already there.
Assuming she could think of no way to reach the Meteions, she probably couldn't stop Zodiark from being summoned; and then she probably thought it was the right thing to do to become Hydaelyn and do the Sundering.

I personally took her last comments to the WoL, and what showed in the cutscene of her actions leading up to the End Days (ie part of it was her trying to convince her fellow Ancients to not give into despair and turn to Zodiak) to indicate that is exactly what she did - that she did try and do everything she could to try and prevent the future we had presented to her from happening. She did say that she wasn't going to give up, and try and change her timeline to one where the End Days never happened.

Some might say this is impossible due to time paradox, but it's exactly what Graha did... this works if you also believe in alternate reality theory: that you can go back in time and change things, but in doing so the changed timeline would be a different dimension/reality, and thus you'd still return to 'your' timeline/reality with nothing changed (else time paradox gets you).

So I personally believe that yes Venat did try and change things - knowing that if she did there was the possibility of saving 2 different dimensions/realities - because we had the info we needed for our reality/dimension (and in our dimension/reality she would have still turned into Hydealyn and thus sundered the world, etc), and if she could stop the End Days herself then her reality/dimension would be saved for the Ancients, and their life could continue.

Later on though ... my personal head-canon is that she DID try to stop some of the tragedies we told her of. Starting with the First Rejoining. Which lead to that whole situation with the 13th and the Void.
Going to go out on a long limb here and guess that her saying "screw causality" is what summoned all the Voidsent; not just having too much dark aether.
Which would explain why she never intervened again, not even to tell us things in ARR, HW, StB, ShB and early EW...

That is actually an interesting thought about what happened to the 13th... maybe she did actively get involved and try and prevent the Ascians from doing the rejoining, which resulted instead in the flood of darkness and the void. It would explain why she became more hands off as time goes on - as well as her diminishing power as time goes by and the Ascians succeeded in each rejoining.