Hades II: End of controversy explained

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

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

So why are people so irritated? Again, if you really want to avoid spoilers, we recommend you look away now. Otherwise, we’re going to spoil the ending from now on. Away? Okay, fine. To reach the end in Hades II, you have to defeat both Chronos and Typhon multiple times. Each time you defeat Chronos, Melinoë speaks to her brother Zagreus in the past through dreams and devises a plan to put a final end to Chronos.

Sounds all good, right? Death to Chronos and all that. Except, if you went to the trouble of killing Typhon and Chronos multiple times, you pass the responsibility to Zagreus, who instead of killing Chronos for good, invites him to join the House of Hades and live with his family instead of locking him up. This then leads to the current Chronos abandoning his mission and war against Olympus, freeing your family and basically becoming a good guy for the foreseeable future.

Fans online have shared quite a bit of criticism of the ending, largely indicating how unsatisfying it feels. After embarking on a quest for revenge, you find yourself at the very end without because Chronos suddenly changes his mind. It also feels like Melinoë’s story is effectively ended by the first game’s protagonist as if her moment was taken from 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 subterfuge, even though we all knew that would happen. Hades II is a roguelike, which means we would almost never get to a point where Supergiant would say, “Okay, guys, you don’t get to play anymore because you beat the game.” We saw the same thing in Hades, but Zagreus trying out the House of Hades defense felt like a much easier pill to swallow than Melinoë continuing to mistreat old bosses because of an MCU-level plot of timeline nonsense.

I disagree with the argument that it is not fitting for Zagreus to spare Chronos. Zagreus’ entire journey in Hades is about restoring his family, and so it is unlikely that he will kill his own grandfather just because a dream asked him to. Zagreus will not end Time permanently without at least trying to bring him to his senses, and so when Chronos decides he will not take revenge on his family members, you can see why Zag did what he did.

However, I do agree with other points. That Zagreus is the one who decides how the story ends robs Melinoë and thus the player of the autonomy they had before. Their mission is essentially wiped out. But to the strength of Supergiant, the writing is not at all oblivious to this problem. Characters who pursued Chronos, such as Hecate and Melinoë, are left with a bittersweet taste in their mouths because they now have to endure the presence of a Titan they have 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 satisfy and keep us from playing more, or leave us feeling like we didn’t really accomplish much from a narrative perspective. Throughout the time Hades II was in Early Access, however, fans had a different theory about how it would end. Melinoë is strongly associated with nightmares in Greek mythology, and so the theory essentially pointed to the goddess who tortured Chronos forever through the Black Stone of Chaos, reminding him that if he tried to escape or fight her family again, she would be ready to hunt him down.

That’s a dark ending. Probably too dark for Supergiant, who clearly wanted a more positive take on the story’s finale. However, it would have been more satisfying for me personally to see that ending, because it would feel like Melinoë’s work could continue without too many question marks about the world and what happened to it. As it stands, the ending of Hades II feels like a bit of a wet sponge. It’s a lack of commitment to the darkness of Melinoë that Chronos cannot kill, or to the dawning of a new age without time as she put a permanent end to him. It’s hard to say what Supergiant could have done differently, but as the discourse progresses and more people reach the end of the game, we’ll have to see if the sentiment changes.