May be lots of spoilers as far as plots go, I wasn't paying attention the entire time. For the most part these are just theories.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet. Right after Louisoux sends us into the future, when he looks up... I do realise Megaflare is about to own everyone, but the brighter light looks much more blue than it should for fire. At that moment when he smiles I also hear a cluster of noises: A horse whinny, a couple of bestial roars and a loud screech.

This is just theory, but after trying to incite help from the Twelve and the Aethyr in "Living on a Prayer", maybe something happened at that moment. Maybe Odin, Garuda, Titan, Ifrit and Leviathan showed up (I'm just guessing the last three, but the screech sounds very much like Garuda, and I'm pretty sure Odin is the only person to ride a horse in FF lore).

The only reason I say this is that there is a lot of flora, and fauna too I assume, in ARR. If it is set 5 years in the future, something must have saved bits of The Black Shroud -- No trees can grow that big. La Noscea looks as green as ever, and Thanalan has thriving plant life too. Many, many weeds.

Now I'm not saying that all the NPCs will live, as much as I want them to. However, I do think that something happened at that last moment and saved Eorzea from entire desolation.. And hopefully some NPCs. In saying that, I do think there is importance in death, especially in a storyline that ended the way this one did, and would not be surprised if many of the NPCs we know and love will not turn up in 2.0.

On a side note, Urianger was not in the End of an Era vid. Again, not sure about this because I didn't really care about him until too late in the storyline (and wasn't paying attention), but could he be from the future? He dresses strangely compared to other NPCs and has a strange weapon, and while he is very tied in to the Dalamud storyline, and has been from his rambling /shouts at the beginning, we know little of his real motives and less of his background. So could he be from the future, could he have shown Louisoux how to send us there? Or in the very least, will he be there to meet us when we come out? After all, he and Louisoux were the only two who seemed content that Eorzea would be safe as long as we could make it into the future.