Written By: Brandon Perton

Spoiler Alert: This is about major spoilers for the original Final Fantasy VII and the first two parts of its remake, FFVII Remake and Rebirth, so stop now if you’re avoiding spoilers!

Since the day I finished playing FFVII Remake, I have had one big question about Rebirth: will they or won’t they kill Aerith? When I finally got my hands on Rebirth four years later, I was confident I’d thought through the likely possibilities. However, I failed to come close to the ending the developers actually went with. Buckle up, because this is going to take some recapping.

Defying Fate: The End of Remake

At the end of Remake, the party defeat a group of “whispers” (and a boss whisper) that keep fate on track, and they see flashes of future events from the original game, opening up the possibility that unlike in Remake, which closely followed the original plot from here on out, the remakes could diverge significantly from the original storyline, including regarding Aerith’s once-shocking, always-tragic death, which was sure to be the subject of the second game’s finale.

The Multiverse Twist

Remake set up one other crucial new factor: the whispers of fate weren’t only protecting the plotline of one world, but of a multiverse. This was indicated by what breed of dog the Shinra mascot Stamp is; when we see a scene in Remake where Zack survives (unlike in the original), we know it’s an alternate universe because Stamp is a terrier, not a beagle like in the ‘prime’ remake universe.

(Note: I’m no dog whisperer, so I’m labeling each dog’s breed based on online explainers. Not everyone agrees on what species are represented; I’m going with the breeds from this helpful graph.)

Zack and the Alternate Universes

Rebirth regularly reminds players of the multiverse through “Zack” scenes in between chapters. These “Zack-lives” scenes seem to be part of the Terrier-verse until near the end. In them, both Cloud and Aerith are in comas at Aerith’s house in Midgar instead of being off saving the world.

Toward the end of Rebirth, the multiverse shenanigans spill over into the Beagle-verse (prime) plot. Zack has to make a choice: deal with Cloud’s coma so he can save Aerith, or stop Biggs from a doomed anti-Shinra assault.

The Zack who goes to Biggs exists in Pug-verse. Presumably, the Zack who helps Cloud stays in Terrier-verse. (There’s also a Shiba-or-Corgi-verse Zack, but we can ignore him for now.) The third most important universe after Beagle and Terrier is Spitz-verse. A multiverse-crossing Aerith draws Beagle-Cloud into this universe and gives him a fully charged White Materia to take back to Beagle-Aerith to help save their world.

Keeping Up with the Plot

Final Fantasy plots are convoluted to begin with; the addition of a multiverse makes this one extra baffling, and we don’t even have the ending (part three) yet, so we’re all just doing our best to keep up. Let’s plunge onward.

Sephiroth’s Multiversal Ambitions

By the end of Rebirth, we’ve learned that there’s a multiverse, that some of its worlds (with rainbow streaks in the sky) are dying, and that Sephiroth aims to become god of the entire multiverse by sucking up Lifestream energy from the wreckage of as many worlds as possible. 

We’ve also learned that characters can cross universes somehow to swap inventory and to collaborate in fighting Sephiroth Reborn (oh hey, there’s the title), a version of Sephiroth reaching across the universes to destroy, combine, and rule them, and he has a big, glowing materia belly button.

The Fate of Aerith: A New Question

To get back to the main question (what happens to Aerith), I now realize that ever since finishing Remake, I’ve been asking the wrong question: will they or won’t they kill her? During Remake, I was steeling myself to suffer her death again, so when Remake’s ending challenged fate, I spent the years before Rebirth’s release distracted by the possibility of her survival. It put me back on an emotional razor’s edge where I was hoping she wouldn’t die instead of preparing myself for that inevitability.

The Multiverse Climax: Life and Death

This struggle between hope and fear kept me from asking the right question: how will the story deal with a multiverse of Aeriths, some  who die and some who don’t? (and some who are non-factors in comas.) Multiverses hurt my brain, so I didn’t think too hard about Zack’s barely-teased Terrier-verse from the Remake ending. I think the developers were counting on this, because it let them blindside me when they gradually moved the multiverse plot to the center of a climax where Aerith both dies and lives.

Cloud fights through whispers (of fate) to reach Aerith and successfully blocks Sephiroth’s deadly ambush of Aerith. However, as this fragment’s fate unfolds, the cutscene itself becomes fragmented, revealing conflicting scenes. After seeing Cloud save Aerith, we see blood trickle down Sephiroth’s sword and flashes of Aerith’s death and aftermath that are recognizable from the original game. Yet we also see flashes of a world where Aerith lives.

Two Universes, Two Realities

Once the dust has settled, our party of characters seems to be living in two different universes. Cloud is experiencing a universe where Aerith is alive (she fights with him against Sephiroth and talks with him in the final scenes. Yet, throughout these aftermath scenes, everyone besides Cloud is clearly mourning a dead Aerith and doesn’t see her, though Nanaki/Red XIII senses her petting him at one point and asks, “Aerith?” without seeing her.

What Does It All Mean?

Only Final Fantasy VII: Revelation (part three of the trilogy) can tell us what this means. However, the ending of Rebirth gives us crucial clues. The main development is that we’re no longer in a multiverse simply of worlds with living Aeriths and worlds with dead ones: instead, those universes overlap and individuals in the same world can experience different universes or, like Red XIII, experience more than one universe (grieving Aerith but sensing her presence).

Unanswered Questions for Revelation

Rebirth tells us explicitly that worlds can separate but can also (re-)unite; how will that play out for Aerith and our Beagle-verse party? How will Revelation resolve its multiple Aeriths and worlds? Will worlds reunite so that the Beagle-verse has a living Aerith, or a dead one? Or will Beagle-verse cease to be itself as a new Stamp-verse is formed from the collision of Beagle-verse and other universes?

Conclusion: The Rollercoaster Continues

Rebirth had its cake and ate it too by both killing Aerith and having Cloud save her. In doing so, it prolongs the emotional rollercoaster for fans of the original (and mourners of Aerith) by postponing answers about her ultimate fate until the final part of the trilogy.

If you feel like this is a cop out, that’s fair: we don’t have an answer, after all, to questions about Aerith’s fate. However, the devs have tied Aerith’s fate into Sephiroth’s newly multiversal apocalyptic plans, and it makes sense that the one won’t resolve until the other does. Sephiroth aims to conquer multiple worlds, and so the fates of multiple Aeriths are at stake.

Using that to extend and complicate fans’ emotional journey with Aerith strikes me as interesting rather than cheap as long as they pull it off in a satisfying way in Revelation. However, they’ve got me waiting impatiently for that final chapter to arrive, so for me, Rebirth has told its surprising story well.

About The Author:

Brandon Perton has been buying, selling, and obsessing over video games since 2008 as the founder of The Old School Game Vault. While his roots are in retro gaming, the Final Fantasy series was one of his first loves in the RPG world and has kept him glued to every new release. He covers the FFVII Remake series and more on his blog.