Aerith is more empowered in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth than ever before, but at what cost?

If you’ve played the original Final Fantasy VII, there was one unavoidable question in your mind as you slowly worked your way through all of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth‘s many mini-games and towards the grand finale: would that death happen again?

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is very in touch with its own legacy. It’s actively in conversation with it. If you don’t know about that death, a character goes on and tells you exactly what happens just before the game reaches its final couple chapters. The Rebirth team knows what fans are thinking about, because a very hearty number of them grew up at FF7 fans themselves.

But what of the character who’s supposed to die, the focus of all our rapt attention?

The knowledge and the fall

Major spoilers ahead for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Even in Final Fantasy VII Remake, the first entry in Square Enix’s ambitious remake trilogy project, you got the distinct sense that Aerith knew she’s “supposed” to die. That feeling became even stronger in Rebirth, especially during and after the Temple of the Ancients.

Cloud and Aerith are seemingly transported to an alternate universe where the end of the world is imminent and people have made their peace with it. They go on a “date”—and if you got the intimate Aerith date at the Gold Saucer, it is an actual date, where Cloud says at the end he’d like to go out with Aerith again. But Aerith merely accepts this rare show of excitement, and she sadly sends him back to their own timeline. In other words, she totally knows what’s about to happen.

It gives her a bizarre sense of control over her own death. Cloud is actively striving for that control, too. But Cloud wants to control the event so that he can change what happens. Aerith, meanwhile, seems to have accepted her death and is instead focused on controlling what happens afterwards—which could be why we get the “ghost Aerith.”

Aerith is one of the most iconic waifus in all of gaming. Her death is arguably the most memorable in all of gaming. In becoming such a figure, her story has been wrested from her. In accepting her death when we all seemingly can’t, Square Enix has put Aerith’s narrative firmly back in her own hands.

But then again—at what cost? The scenes of Aerith’s death in Rebirth happen quickly and confusingly. Just as I start to cry, the scene moves on. Just as I start to cry again, Cloud gets my hopes up that Aerith is still alive. That confusion more-or-less lingers until you get a chance to chew it over during the end credits. Which means the absolute gut punch of Aerith’s death is missing from Rebirth.

It’s very possible that the final game in the trilogy will have more to say on this. After all, players of the original FF7 know whose face is the last one they see in the whole game.