Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: Ending Explained

Quick Links

• Did Cloud Just Save Aerith?

• Why Does Cloud See The Breach?

• Why Is Cloud Dimension-Traveling?

• What’s It All Mean, Though?

So, you’ve finished Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Which means you were subjected to that ending. If you’re feeling a little lost, you’re arguably doing better with all this than most of us were the first time we saw those credits roll.

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There’s a lot going on in the FF7 Rebirth epilogue and its preceding endgame stage. Some of it is pretty darn cool. A lot of it comes at players so hard and fast that we’re left reeling. Here’s our full-scale analysis of it all.

Don’t take our thoughts as [Great] Gospel. We’ve done our best - just as many other fans have - to break it all down, but odds are good we’ll have gotten at least some of it “wrong” when FF7 Remake’s third and final entry reveals the answers.

Did Cloud Just Save Aerith?

If you’re an OG FF7 fan, or you were simply on gaming-oriented message boards in the late 1990s or even the 2000s, then the fate of Aerith in Final Fantasy 7 is lodged in your head to one extent or another.

Given how openly the developers at Square Enix informed us prior to Rebirth’s release that this chapter would end at the Forgotten Capital, all eyes were on how they’d recreate this iconic moment.

To no one’s surprise at this point, the ending subverts expectations. We see Cloud defy Sephiroth’s will to defend Aerith from her fated fall by Sephiroth’s blade.

But it isn’t presented in full heroic splendor; rather, the screen shifts its hue to imply - as Rebirth has done several previous times - that we’re witnessing Cloud’s mind-warped viewpoint rather than the reality of the matter.

Seconds later, we see Aerith struck by Sephiroth’s deadly Masamune despite prior imagery. The rest of the party, upon reaching this tragic scene, seems only to see the corpse of Aerith; Cloud, meanwhile, implores Aerith to wake up, and… she does.

Importantly, the corpse doesn’t stir in the eyes of Tifa, Barret, and the rest of the gang.

But Cloud, uh, keeps seeing Aerith afterward. They even converse. As far as everyone else is concerned, she’s done and dusted. What gives?

Why Does Cloud See The Breach?

Which leads us to another, equally important, distinction in Cloud’s perspective relative to everyone else’s: he sees the breach in the sky that Zack did during his alt-universe shenanigans throughout the game. The breach symbolizes a rift tearing open between worlds; the worlds, in this case, being variations of Final Fantasy 7’s universe.

Indeed, while factions of Whispers in ‘our’ reality battle in a bid to either maintain the status quo of a predestined world or uproot it via Sephiroth’s chaotic machinations, there are other dimensions with their own fates.

Zack was in one, after all, and we have more than enough evidence at this point in the story to determine that the iterations of Shinra mascot dog Stamp (whose breed shifts between dimensions) is more than just fuel for fandom theorizing. It’s a full-blown signpost as to which dimension we’re seeing as players in any given scene.

Why, then, is Cloud seeing this big, glaring, breach that should be freaking everyone else the heck out, but isn’t? It’s because Cloud has been to one of those other dimensions, specifically when he ‘reunited’ with Aerith in a dimension that’s either the same one that Zack had been traipsing through or near enough to it.

This happened prior to the Forgotten Capital (more or less), giving Cloud a sort of clairvoyance thereafter.

Does this mean the breach isn’t happening in Rebirth’s main dimension? Or does it mean that it is, and others can’t see it? Well, why not both?

As best we can tell, and based on hints strewn throughout Sephiroth’s side of the script, this is the “inevitable” destiny of all worlds. And, you know, maybe it is. Maybe all these realities must converge in Part 3; maybe our intrepid heroes manage to make the best of it somehow, and our reality survives more or less intact. Who knows.

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Why Is Cloud Dimension-Traveling?

Either way, Cloud has been left with a two-pronged blessing: he’s communicating with Aerith and he’s been clued-in on things to come. But it isn’t necessarily our Aerith - there’s no reason to firmly doubt that what the other party members see at the Forgotten Capital isn’t the truth, that Aerith’s lifeless body isn’t lying on the ground following Sephiroth’s infamous act of villainy.

It could be a cross-dimensional traveler of sorts, so it could be our Aerith and all the rest of them. Aerith, after all, is an Ancient, the last surviving member of the Cetra race, and if anyone is going to defy the conventional laws of… everything, surely it’s her. Well, her… and Sephiroth… and Cloud… and… Zack? They’ve all gone dimension-hopping at this point.

Cloud’s shown at several points across FF7 Rebirth to have a link to other dimensions (see, for instance, him waking up from a nap at the Gold Saucer in Chapter 8 after ‘dreaming’ he’s the comatose Cloud that Zack is watching over).

Zack, well, the Zack we’ve been playing as, has survived precisely because he’s in one of those dimensions where everyone sees the breach in the sky.

Aerith is all over the place, clearly; and Sephiroth is acting as an interloper, most notably when he spots Aerith and Cloud during their sojourn to another dimension, claims Aerith has been “hiding” from him there, and waxes further poetic over the inevitability of his victory.

In any case, Cloud mysteriously now possesses the Black Materia, which Sephiroth uses in the original Final Fantasy 7 in order to summon the terrible Meteor upon the world. In the Remake continuity’s case, the Black Materia is also something the Gi tribe desperately desires, so there’s… that little wrinkle as well.

But how does Cloud possess it? This revelation is as sudden as anything else, albeit occurring at the very end before the credits.

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What’s It All Mean, Though?

There’s so much to dissect with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s ending that this article will no doubt receive numerous updates in the future. Developer hints via the upcoming release of the Ultimania - these are exhaustive (and unfortunately, Japanese-only until years after release) books covering each Final Fantasy with heaps of interviews - will likely be helpful.

But the writers were coy enough in FF7 Remake’s Ultimania to avoid spoiling too much, so we can’t expect them to drop enormous bombshells this time around, either.

We haven’t even scratched the surface of the deal with Zack, though not for lack of trying. We can pretty definitively say he’s seen the outcomes of various realities: his choice of whether to follow Biggs or try to save Cloud ends up playing out in three versions.

He’s also grown increasingly aware that things are not quite right. And, with due apology to the guy, if even Zack can see it, that’s saying something.

It might seem odd to suggest our readers also read elsewhere, but there are plenty of fantastic analyses by fellow fans online, and the number will only climb in the years to come as we anxiously await Part 3, which we could joke-label Regenesis if we’d like. But we won’t, because that’s weird.

Truly, though - check Reddit, check other journalist interpretations, check streamer thoughts, check it all. In doing so, you can link commonalities between our beliefs on FF7 Rebirth’s ending in the same way that we’re all linking commonalities in the ending’s own depictions to ascertain what’s true, what’s misdirection, and all the things we can’t yet put a precise bead on.

But do maintain a vigil on our own updates here at TheGamer, because you can be assured we’ll be replaying this great game in all its glory… and scratching our heads at an ending that is arguably a bit too ambiguous for its own good every time.

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