Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 - Ending, Explained

Quick Links

• The First Hellblade

• The Story Of Hellblade 2

• The Ending Of Hellblade 2

• What Really Happened In Hellblade 2

In the Hellblade series, we follow Senua, a Nordic woman from around the 8th century, as she faces the darkness in her mind and in the minds of others. The first Hellblade was a critical darling, dealing with heavy subjects while having a clear-cut ending that made clear what was going on.

8 Lingering Questions We Have After The End Of Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2

These questions will be lingering in your head at the end of Hellblade 2 like the voices that follow Senua.

The second game, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, isn’t as clear regarding its ending, or its story overall, for that matter. Senua interacts with plenty more characters this time around, leaving players to wonder if the events are really happening or if everything is in Senua’s mind.

The First Hellblade

The first game in the series, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, has Senua travel to Helheim with the head of her deceased lover, Dillion. She wants to save his soul, since she feels responsible for his death at the hands of the barbaric Norsemen, who sacrificed Dillion to the gods.

Her journey through Helheim seems to be custom-made for her, since each encounter has her fighting her own inner darkness. Each fight makes her accept parts of herself and her story, like the real circumstances of her mother’s death and the fact that Dillion’s death wasn’t her fault.

Senua faces off against Hela at the end but can’t beat the goddess. She first wonders if any of it is real, only to later plead to the deity to save her lover’s soul, even if her own soul is the price; Hela answers by stabbing her and leaving her to die.

However, as Hela picks up Dillion’s head (Senua’s been carrying it throughout the game) and drops it to the depths below, she ends up being Senua, and Hela’s body is the one dead on the floor. The widely accepted interpretation of this is that Senua was never in Helheim to begin with, and this was all just how her mind processed the death of Dillion and all the other traumatic events.

The Story Of Hellblade 2

In the second game, Senua lets herself be captured by Northmen slavers to learn where they take the people and what they do to them. She learns that the slavers are using the people they capture as sacrifices for the giants, otherworldly creatures that roam the land at night and devour anyone they come across.

Senua decides to defeat these giants, so that no more sacrifices would be needed. Thorgestr, one of the Northmen, tells her that the giants can’t be killed, but a wise man named Fargrimr leads her to the Hiddenfolk, magical beings that might hold the answer to their defeat.

Fargrimr also calls Senua a seer, giving the notion that her condition isn’t just a mental illness but a special awareness of the world around her.

After a harrowing journey through cavernous depths, Senua learns the key to the giant’s defeat: their true name. The giants didn’t come from Jotunheim, as she was led to believe, but were all once human, and some form of trauma turned them into monsters.

Thus, she faces off against both Illtauga and Saegeirr, learning their true names and stories, and finally putting them to rest. She finally travels with Thorgestr to see his father, Godi, the leader of the slavers. She planned to tell him that the sacrifices are no longer needed, since the giants could be defeated.

Yet the final giant was Godi all along, and it turns out that he created the giants so he could continue to rule the land with fear. Godi kills Thorgestr, leading to a final confrontation between him and Senua, where our heroine emerges victorious in the end.

The Ending Of Hellblade 2

Senua has battled the darkness in her throughout both games, but it keeps taunting her that she’ll end up just like her father: a dark, bitter man who will do anything to keep his hold on power. Killing Godi would only make her more like her father, but Senua knows that there is another path.

We aren’t exactly shown what she does in the end, but we do know that people will follow her, likely as the new leader of the settlement. With both Godi and Thorgestr gone, the people will look to Senua for guidance, the giant killer that can keep the darkness at bay.

That, at the very least, is the clearest part of the ending: Senua begins to trust in people, so they, in turn, trust her to lead them forward. The most confusing part is everything that came before, if any of it was real or if it was all in Senua’s head.

Was It All In Her Head?

This would be a tempting answer for everything that happened, especially if you played the previous game, since it is made pretty clear there that Senua didn’t actually go to Helheim. Here, though, Senua meets far too many characters for all of them to be figments of her imagination.

The Hiddenfolk, for example, are a real part of Icelandic folklore, something Senua learns from Fargrimr during her travels in Iceland. While actually meeting the Hiddenfolk could just be in her head, most of the conversations with Fargrimr are likely real.

Is It All Real?

Short answer: no. There are far too many scenes that clearly happen in Senua’s head, like moments where she’s surrounded by enemies that all of a sudden aren’t there or all the conversations with the Darkness. She even claims, at the end, that the giants aren’t real, even though she’s been fighting them this whole time.

Senua does perceive it all to be real, however, including the events of the first game. This is why, when talking to Fargrimr about killing the giants, she says she’s killed a god before: she’s talking about Hela, who we know Senua never faced at all, but she doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

What Really Happened In Hellblade 2

What follows is, of course, an interpretation of the story, using the themes and hints to weave a cohesive tale of what happened. But we can all agree that the second Hellblade is a different beast from the first, and not everything is in Senua’s head this time around.

On the island where Hellblade 2 takes place, a volcanic eruption clouds the sky and leads people to famine and desperation. Godi, the leader of Borgarvirki, rallied his people to unite against the struggle, using fear to keep them in line.

Years later, as the climate got better, the people stopped living in fear, and Godi felt that his time as leader was at its end. He decided to give a new fear to the people, the giants, terrible human-eating monsters that, if not properly worshiped, would kill everyone on their path.

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He said the volcanic eruption opened a portal to Jotunheim, letting several giants enter their world. Illtauga was the giant responsible for the earthquakes and eruptions, and Saegeirr was responsible for tidal waves and heavy storms.

These climate phenomena were happening either way; Godi simply put the blame on the giants so people would flock to him for all the answers. Since the giants needed sacrifices, Godi sent his son Thorgestr to collect slaves and hang them on the city outskirts.

Sometime later, Senua enters the story, letting herself be captured by Thorgestr. He tells her of the Draugr, undead men that fell in battle and are now hunting and eating people; these are likely hungry people driven to cannibalism to survive, but now Senua sees them as demonic undead due to Thorgestr’s influence.

The same happens with Illtauga, the first giant, and the Hiddenfolk: she’s first told about them by Fargrimr, and she later encounters vivid versions of them. Senua defeats Illtauga by finding out her true name, which in reality translates to showing its true nature: not a giant at all, but a natural disaster.

People around Senua act as if they can see the giants because that’s how she perceives it, and the same ends up happening with Saegeirr. The stories we learn about these giants could be about real people, perhaps how the myth of each giant first came to be.

In the end, Senua showed the people of Borgarvirki the truth, that there are no scary giants looking to eat them, and there never were. She stays to lead them, defeating Godi and his lies, leading a path through the darkness.

11 Games To Play If You Like Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2

If you enjoyed Hellblade's sequel and want to have more introspective adventures like the one Senua had, check out these titles.