My Wild Theory About the Final Fantasy VII Remake Ending

Two weeks ago, we discussed the controversial Final Fantasy VII Remake ending and what it potentially means for the future of the remake.

As I mentioned, there are many different theories out there, and I’ve been working on one of my own.

The more I read other people’s theories and analyses, as well as the developers’ comments about the ending, the less I believe my own theory. There are some really good theories out there that make use of tiny details throughout the Compilation and seem pretty credible.

Nevertheless, here is my own wild theory about the Final Fantasy VII Remake ending – one that would allow the rest of the remake to stay in line with the original game.

There will be unmarked Final Fantasy VII Remake ending spoilers from this point on, as well as major spoilers for the original Final Fantasy VII.

There are three important things to keep in mind as we go into this theory:

1) Kitase claims they are “not drastically changing the story and making it into something completely different than the original.”

2) In a 2016 interview with Game Informer, he said they “know the balance between what can be changed versus what needs to be protected” and wanted to have surprises so fans of the original aren’t just following the story they already know.

3) The Final Fantasy VII Remake Ultimania lists four new mysteries presented in the game, one of which is the purpose of the Whispers. It quotes Red XIII’s explanation, but including it as one of the mysteries suggests there might be more we don’t know.

Now, let’s begin.

My Issues With the Final Fantasy VII Remake Ending

I actually like the idea of the Whispers enforcing the timeline of the original game, but some parts of its execution felt off to me. First off, why is destiny changing at all?

If we assume the timeline has a fixed destiny it’s supposed to follow, those events should occur naturally unless something directly intervenes to change them. Otherwise, the Whispers would not be a new phenomenon; people in this world would have been aware of them before.

Even if Sephiroth is attempting to change the timeline and the Planet deployed the Whispers in response, the Whispers are forced to correct little things that have nothing to do with him. Why did Avalanche not want to take Cloud on their next mission? Why did Cloud almost kill Reno? Why did Wedge survive the plate drop?

These little changes imply things can work out differently without the direct intervention of an outside force (especially since there’s no indication of a butterfly effect that would lead to them), which opposes the idea of a fixed destiny.

I also felt the Whispers’ enforcement of the timeline seemed arbitrary. Whenever they show up, it’s easy to point out what they’re correcting, but what about when they don’t correct events? One scene in particular stood out to me: saving Wedge in the underground Shinra lab.

The Whispers try to ensure Wedge died when the plate dropped, but he survives. One of his cats leads the party to where he’s unconscious in an underground Shinra lab. They’re separated from Wedge, and after fighting their way through the lab, they see hints of Shinra human experimentation, which nearly revives Cloud’s suppressed memories. Before he can remember too much, the Whispers literally shove everyone out of the facility…

…including Wedge. Instead of leaving him underground, the Whispers bring him out with everyone else.

I’ve seen theories that the Whispers needed Wedge alive to help correct a later part of the timeline (making sure the party goes to the roof of the Shinra building), but that seems like a bit of a stretch – mainly because it assumes the Whispers change things in the past to influence future events, in which case why did they try to kill Wedge in the first place?

I propose that the Whispers are not arbiters of fate at all, but rather that their role throughout the game is part of an elaborate deception being played on both audience and characters alike by Final Fantasy VII’s master of illusions: Jenova.

The Greater Role of Jenova in the Final Fantasy VII Remake

Regardless of which ending theory is true, I believe the Final Fantasy VII Remake is building up Jenova as a more central threat.

While the ending has gotten the most attention due to how dramatic its changes are, the remake really begins to diverge from the original earlier than that, after the party encounters Hojo and teams up with Red XIII, with the removal of the trail of blood scene.

In the original, the party is captured and imprisoned. After falling asleep, they wake up to find the cell doors unlocked and a trail of blood leading up to President Shinra’s office, where he’s been killed. In the remake, Cloud has a vision of Jenova and collapses. He then wakes up in Aerith’s old room in the lab, after which they need to escape Hojo’s lab in one of the game’s more extensive dungeon segments. A trail of purple ooze leads to President Shinra’s office, where he’s still alive, only to be killed ahead of the Jenova boss fight.

Why was this part changed so extensively?

The lab section feels as though it exists just to have a long dungeon there, but they could easily have done that with the prison instead. Changing the entire setup for this section puts a much stronger emphasis on Hojo and Shinra’s experiments – and by extension, Jenova.

Then there’s the trail. Many fans think the trail of blood was removed to ensure the game didn’t get an M rating. That’s plausible. Changing it to purple goo, however, shifts the scene’s focus away from Sephiroth (keep in mind that with Sephiroth being so iconic, they felt they couldn’t use the same subtle buildup for him that he had in the original) and onto Jenova as an inhuman entity.

Both of these significant changes place the focus on Jenova, leading into the Jenova Dreamweaver battle.

Red XIII says it’s an illusion, and enemy intel says contact with Jenova Dreamweaver induces hallucinations (note: the name “Dreamweaver” was added for the English localization and isn’t present in other translations or in the leaks, strangely enough).

Jenova’s ability to cause hallucinations is important to keep in mind as we continue with this theory, but now let’s talk about the Whispers themselves.

Appearance of the Whispers

The Whispers appear as cloaked spirits without bodies or limbs. On its own, this means nothing. However, one pre-release theory about them always stood out to me. According to the Final Fantasy wiki, an early version of the original Final Fantasy VII’s script had the Sephiroth clones as “not people, but, rather, parts of Jenova floating in the air covered by their cloaks.”

The Sephiroth clones appear in the remake as well, but a floating piece of Jenova covered by a black cloak would probably look a lot like a Whisper.

That’s not the only aspect of their appearance I want to focus on, however. Two primary colors are associated with the Whispers: gray and purple.

Most Whispers appear gray, trailing gray smoke. Where else is gray smoke used? In connection with Sephiroth. Throughout the game, there are several shots of a black feather from Sephiroth’s wing falling to the ground, where it vanishes into gray smoke. Gray smoke also appears when President Shinra is stabbed – most players took this to be censorship again, using smoke in place of blood, but why reframe that whole scene to have the party present when he dies? A bloodless corpse would have been less noticeable than watching him get stabbed right in front of you.

The second primary color associated with the Whispers is purple. The Enigmatic Spectres have a purple tinge that sets them apart from the other Whispers, and Whisper Harbinger has a purple core. A purple aura is also associated with Sephiroth in the remake, most notably when he appears ahead of the final battle. Keen-eyed fans have also noticed that when Aerith flees the alley in the new intro, a faint purple light is visible while a hint of One-Winged Angel plays.

And of course, the color purple is associated with Jenova due to both her design in general and, once again, the purple ooze that replaced that trail of blood.

A popular theory is that the Enigmatic Spectres are Whispers corrupted by Sephiroth’s power and that Whisper Harbinger was attempting to contain him. Nevertheless, I find it interesting that the two colors seen most often in connection with the Whispers are also associated with Sephiroth and Jenova.

I’d like to say one more thing about Whisper Harbinger before we move on. Harbinger is described in-game as an amalgamation of many Whispers. The ability of Whispers to combine into a larger form does bring to mind Hojo’s Reunion Theory, that separated Jenova cells will always attempt to reunite, but the name strikes me as even more interesting. Why?

Because in Advent Children, Vincent refers to Jenova as “Heaven’s Dark Harbinger.”

Now, I don’t know if the same word is used in the Japanese script in both of these scenes or not. It could be a coincidence, like how Remake’s Jenova boss is only referred to as “Dreamweaver” in the English script. If it is the same, though, that’s just one more connection between the Whispers and Jenova.

Sephiroth and the Whispers

But what really gets me is that near the end of the game, the party begins to conflate defeating the Whispers with stopping Sephiroth. We enter the portal to fight the Whispers because Aerith says Sephiroth needs to be stopped.

If Sephiroth is truly going against the will of the Whispers by trying to change destiny, defeating them is exactly what he wants. Yet entering the portal to fight the Whispers and change destiny is what the party decides to do to stop him. Either the party has been manipulated into defeating the Whispers for Sephiroth, or there is reason to believe the two are connected.

(Whisper Harbinger seems pretty intent on killing the party, too. Preserving destiny is no longer a focus.)

Then there are the three unique Whispers you face to overcome Harbinger: Whisper Rubrum, Whisper Croceo, and Whisper Viridi. Described in-game as future entities attempting to protect their timeline, the Ultimania strongly supports the belief that they are the Remnants of Sephiroth from Advent Children, which again directly ties him to the Whispers.

Finally, by the very end, it appears Sephiroth shows the ability to use the Whispers’ powers, meaning either he’s taken control of them or he always had that power.

Visions and Hallucinations

Throughout the game, Cloud is plagued by hallucinations and flashbacks. Most are clearly the result of his suppressed memories due to his trauma and Hojo’s experiments on him, but others appear to be glimpses of the future. Then, in the final chapter, the Whispers surround the party and we see a flashback of Zack.

The framing of this scene suggests that both Cloud and Aerith see it. If that’s the case, then it’s not another one of Cloud’s flashbacks, but was induced by the Whispers. Up until this point, the Whispers attempted to stop Cloud from regaining his memories… so why show him Zack now?

On the other side of the portal, fighting the Whispers also causes the party to see visions of the original game’s ending, presented as a bad fate they want to avoid.

Anyway, the main point of this is that although the Whispers are supposed to simply enforce the timeline, they spend the end of the game showing the characters visions, even though those visions fuel their belief that they need to fight back. Jenova is firmly established in the original as creating illusions, Jenova Dreamweaver is directly stated to cause hallucinations, and – getting back to the altered trail of blood scene yet again – the whole party came into direct contact with Jenova matter leading up to the ending.

Aerith and the Whispers

A big problem with the concept of the Whispers as an extension of Jenova/Sephiroth, of course, is that they’re explained to us as “arbiters of fate” by Aerith and Red XIII (who got his knowledge of them from Aerith). How could Aerith be so wrong about what the Whispers are?

First, let’s keep in mind that Aerith does not understand the Whispers at the start of the game. In fact, when Cloud first meets her, she appears both confused and frightened by them.

(Also note that they disappear right before Cloud has a hallucination of Sephiroth, who tells him he’s “too weak to save anyone.”)

It’s widely assumed that as a Cetra, Aerith can at least see the Whispers at this point, and people she touches or who directly attempt to interfere with destiny are able to see them as well. However, watch her face after she grabs Cloud’s hand at 2:07. She stares around at the Whispers as though this is the first time she’s able to see them, whereas earlier she’d been batting blindly at them to keep them away.

This would support the hypothesis a few fans have presented about why Rufus can see the Whispers, that touching Cloud makes it possible. In Chapter 17, Tifa also appears to share his vision of Sephiroth only after touching him.

But that’s tentative. For now, we need to focus on Aerith.

Regardless of whether or not Aerith has knowledge of the original game, she does not understand the Whispers at this point in time.

Even when Red XIII and Aerith explain the Whispers late in the game, there are some strange things going on. Although the Whispers surround her, they do nothing to prevent her from speaking. She also says, “I’m lost in a maze, and… every step is taking me further from the path… Every time the Whispers touch me… I lose something. A part of myself.”

If the Whispers are a force of the Planet, would she experience them in such a negative way?

What if this isn’t a comment on the Whispers taking away free will by trying to force Aerith onto destiny’s path at all, but rather a hint that their touch is influencing her, making her believe what they want her to believe about them?

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Jenova employed deception. According to Ifalna in the original Final Fantasy VII, Jenova “looked like… our dead mothers… and our dead brothers. Showing us specters of the past.” It appeared as a friendly force and tricked the Cetra before infecting them.

From the original Cetra to Shinra and Sephiroth himself, people throughout Final Fantasy VII’s history mistake Jenova for being something it is not.

Maybe we’ll look back on this scene and realize Barret wasn’t too far off to call the Whispers a “Shinra science experiment.”

But why? If Jenova is engaged in an elaborate deception to make the party believe they have overcome destiny itself, what is the point? What does Jenova and/or Sephiroth stand to gain from such a trick?

The Goal

In the original Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth frequently attempts to play mind games with Cloud while also using his influence over him to compel him to hand over the Black Materia. This culminates in the scenes at the Northern Crater, where Sephiroth shows Cloud a number of visions of the past, challenging his false memories and claiming he’s merely a Jenova experiment constructed by Hojo and formed from Tifa’s memories of Cloud.

Sephiroth’s mind games mirror the tricks the writers use on the players due to Cloud’s nature as an unreliable narrator. As Cloud’s false memories fracture, so does the player’s understanding of what they thought was going on.

Could this sort of trick work again on an audience that already knows the truth about Cloud?

Let’s assume the Whispers are Jenova. Let’s assume the visions are sent by Jenova/Sephiroth as part of their deception. Let’s assume everything the Whispers do is part of a massive trick to make the party and players both believe defeating the Whispers means destiny can be changed.

The scene that most stirred up the fanbase was the scene of Zack’s survival. Yet he can’t be alive in this timeline, because Cloud has the Buster Sword. The way that scene is shot, to me, suggests more that it is a vision of what could have happened if the Whispers weren’t around back then.

Why show us that Zack could have survived? Why show Cloud glimpses of Aerith’s fate? Why make us believe that fate can be changed?

“You are too weak to save anyone,” Sephiroth taunted Cloud at the start of the game, and by tricking both Cloud and the players into believing things can work out differently – that he could have saved Zack, that Aerith can be saved – he’s setting up yet another mind game that will result in Cloud’s breakdown when he sees he’s not able to save anyone after all.

I’ll leave you with one last thing to think about. The scene of Zack’s apparent survival is directly preceded by Hojo laughing as he sees that Jenova is free.

Like I said at the start, I’m not wholly convinced of my own theory anymore because of how detailed some of the other theories are. Nevertheless, this sort of trickery is the one path I see that would fulfill Kitase’s promise that the Final Fantasy VII Remake isn’t deviating hugely from the original story, while holding true to the original’s tone and style.

What do you think?