Hades II: Ending Controversy Explained

**WARNING This article contains massive spoilers for the story of Hades II.**

Hades II in many ways is superior to its predecessor. The gameplay is tighter, there's a whole extra route to beat, there's overall just more content. However, now the game has landed in v1.0 and the ending has been revealed, fans are divided over it, with some critical of how Supergiant decided the story of Melinoë and Chronos would come to an end.

What's got people so annoyed, then? Once more, if you really want to avoid spoilers, we'd suggest looking away now. Otherwise, we're going to spoil the ending from here on out. Gone? Okay, good. To reach the ending in Hades II, you've got to beat both Chronos and Typhon numerous times. Each time you beat Chronos, Melinoë speaks with her brother Zagreus in the past through dreams and devises a plan to put a permanent end to Chronos.

All sounds good, right? Death to Chronos and all that. Except, when you've gone through the effort of killing Typhon and Chronos multiple times, you then pass the responsibility on to Zagreus, who instead of killing Chronos for good invites him to join the House of Hades and live with his family rather than imprison him. This then leads to the present Chronos giving up his mission and war against Olympus, freeing your family and basically becoming a good guy for the foreseeable future.

Fans online have shared their fair share of critique on the ending, largely pointing to how unsatisfying it feels. After embarking on a quest for revenge, you are left without it right at the very end because Chronos suddenly has a change of heart. Also, Melinoë's story being effectively ended by the protagonist of the first game does feel like she's had her moment taken off her.

I gave Hades a 10/10, and I stand by that score, but I'd be lying if I said I can't see where people are coming from with the ending. It feels like a bit of a cop-out even though we all knew that was going to happen. Hades II is a roguelike, which means that we were almost never going to get to a point where Supergiant would say "right that's it lads, you're not allowed to play anymore because you beat the game." We saw the same in Hades, but Zagreus testing out the House of Hades' defences felt like a much easier pill to swallow than Melinoë continuing to batter old bosses due to an MCU-level lot of timeline nonsense.

I disagree with the argument that it's out of character for Zagreus to spare Chronos. Zagreus' whole journey in Hades is about restoring his family, and so he's unlikely to kill his own grandfather just because a dream asked him to. Zagreus isn't going to permanently end Time without at least trying to make him see reason, and so when Chronos decides he won't exact revenge on his family members, you can see why Zag did what he did.

I do agree with other points, though. Zagreus being the one to decide how the story ends does rob Melinoë and therefore the player of the autonomy they've had before. Their mission is essentially wiped away. But, to Supergiant's strength, it's not like the writing is entirely unaware of this issue. Characters that pursued Chronos, like Hecate and Melinoë, are left with a bittersweet taste in their mouths as they now have to endure the presence of a Titan they've wanted to kill for so long.

Yes, Hades II had written itself into a bit of a hole with the seriousness of this story, and the ending felt like it would either be satisfying and stop us from playing more, or let us continue with the feeling that we've not really achieved much from a narrative perspective. However, for the entire time that Hades II was in Early Access fans had another theory for how it would end. Melinoë in Greek mythology is strongly associated with nightmares, and so the theory essentially pointed to the goddess torturing Chronos for eternity through the Black Stone of Chaos, reminding him that should he try and escape or fight her family again she would be willing to hunt him.

That is a dark ending. Probably too dark for Supergiant, which clearly wanted a more positive take on the story's finale. However, it would have been more satisfying to me personally to see that end, as it would feel like Melinoë's work can continue without there being too many question marks left about the world and what happened to it. As it stands now, Hades II's ending feels like a bit of a wet sponge. It's a lacking commitment either to the darkness of Melinoë being unable to kill Chronos, or the dawn of a new age without Time as she put a permanent end to him. It's difficult to say what Supergiant could have done differently, but as discourse continues following more people reaching the end of the game, we'll have to see if sentiment changes.