Did Xehanort get off too lightly?

[Squood!]

It's an asspull, even if you don't consider him a misguided good guy (which seems to be the intent, see Dark Road). Going from "darkness is actually the best" to "I just wanted balance :/" is a huge leap.

"If I become the first to open Kingdom Hearts' door, I can create a Next World in which light and darkness exist in perfect equilibrium."

Xehanort Report 9 from BBS

 

[1millionsquats]

"If I become the first to open Kingdom Hearts' door, I can create a Next World in which light and darkness exist in perfect equilibrium."

You got me. The seed was planted from the start.

I will however stand by my point that his path to attain that power was filled with conspiring with shadowy figures, destroying worlds and willfully inflicting suffering upon others throughout multiple lifetimes, and the end doesn't justify the means. Again, I didn't expect Xehanort to get spit on and kicked while he's down but his demise was very poorly written and unfitting.

 

[Launchpad]

xehanort's cause of death is literally Sora, Donald, and Goofy. He is humiliated enough

 

[Phoenix]

This is going to be one of those subjective things where people aren't going to agree.

I also don't expect Sora to rip his throat off like he's Kratos or whatever. For me personally, the ending is just too nice and neat for someone that has done all the awful stuff Xehanort has.

 

[Deleted member]

Very realistic though. So often our only solace in life when these old cruel terrible men die is just that they aren't around to cause more hurt and pain.

 

[Phoenix]

Very realistic though. So often our only solace in life when these old cruel terrible men die is just that they aren't around to cause more hurt and pain.

I suppose, but I don't particularly follow KH for real life verisimilitude. A good example of another game where a big theme is old men stealing the future from the young is Persona 5. None of the adult men there ascend into heaven upon defeat. They're also not brutally killed. But their endings were satisfying to me.

 

[Launchpad]

I think for my tastes, I'd keep the ending almost exactly the same, but Eraqus and Xehanort wouldn't turn into kids again, they would fade instead of floating up (I prefer a more neutral image), and Xehanort wouldn't say "very well done" when bequeathing the X-Blade, he'd say it more with his eyes than with words.

 

[1millionsquats]

Yeah, I suppose that would have been a more satisfying version that wouldn't require a huge rewrite or change of tone.

 

[Chie]

I think people are confusing "having an understandable character motivation" with "being secretly a good guy". Yes, Xehanort thought he had a logical reason to do the things he was doing, but that's not a moral judgment, it's writing. You don't just do stuff for no reason. The reason Xehanort's a villain isn't because of his alignment with abstract ideas of darkness or light or balance or whatever, it's because he thinks he's inherently more important than everyone else, including his own past selves.

 

[Phoenix]

Well, everybody is the hero of their own story. You can fully empathise with Xehanort's motivation, and still think he's an evil dude.

 

[Chie]

You also don't even have to empathize with them!

I've said it before but there are a few key things that make Xehanort Xehanort. Number one is growing up being told that he's the super chosen one child of destiny who has to save the world. Number two is MoM being like, "the world is FILLED with HYPOCRISY, and you're the ONLY one smart enough to do something about it!!!", which is basically how you radicalize someone into becoming a mass shooter irl. And then number three is the way he sabotages his own past selves, forcing them to have to become the person he is today.

It's an all too real character to me. A sense of entitlement -> getting redpilled by some loser -> denying his own possibilities for growth.

 

[2 quid is good]

Okay but like what if I just wanted him to burst into little black ribbons while gazing longingly at the moon knowing his entire life's just been a waste?

 

[1millionsquats]

I think people are confusing "having an understandable character motivation" with "being secretly a good guy". Yes, Xehanort thought he had a logical reason to do the things he was doing, but that's not a moral judgment, it's writing. You don't just do stuff for no reason. The reason Xehanort's a villain isn't because of his alignment with abstract ideas of darkness or light or balance or whatever, it's because he thinks he's inherently more important than everyone else, including his own past selves.

I get what you mean, but it's not just his evil deeds in a vacuum or a moral standpoint that make me and others think he got off lightly. I can see how me repeatedly listing off all of the bad things he did or talking about the end not justifying the means could give off that impression.

I've said it before but there are a few key things that make Xehanort Xehanort. Number one is growing up being told that he's the super chosen one child of destiny who has to save the world. Number two is MoM being like, "the world is FILLED with HYPOCRISY, and you're the ONLY one smart enough to do something about it!!!"

And while I can agree with that, both of these things are almost only true retroactively since Dark Road and ReMind came a bit later down the line. My feelings towards his demise are based on the context of finishing KH3 in the state it was first released. Most of what we see on-screen during BBS, DDD and base KH3 is Xehanort reveling in what a genius seeker of darkness he is despite all of the lives he's willfully ruined.

The thing of it is how truly delighted he was to do these evil things, which is why his almost heartwarming and peaceful death is offputting. I think what 2 quid is good described above would feel more fitting and tragic personally.

 

[Chie]

What I'm responding to, though, is the idea that the game is trying to present him as a "good guy". I'm saying that everything about Xehanort's motivations presented in all these works is consistent with him being a horrible person.

 

[1millionsquats]

I don't know, the way he speaks of darkness in his final moments, of it being a plague and how the weak are the ones who spread all the darkness made it seem like he despised it, despite being depicted as someone who chose to walk this path unremorseful. I find that a bit contradictory. Not Xehanort the character, but the writing of such character. Even if he is a fool and those sentences are meant to reflect that, we only ever see him express these ideas on-screen at that moment so that's one of the reasons one might feel bothered.

If anything, I think the fact that this discussion exists at all points to issues in his characterization, at least at that moment.

 

[Chie]

I don't know, the way he speaks of darkness in his final moments, of it being a plague and how the weak are the ones who spread all the darkness made it seem like he despised the darkness, despite being depicted as someone who chose to walk this path unremorseful. I find that a bit contradictory.

"Darkness" is just a thing in the story, though. Xehanort describing it in contradictory terms says nothing about his morality and the way he treats people, nor does it suggest any sort of remorse for his actions. The only thing it really means is how Xehanort conceptualizes the abstract magic of this fictional setting, which is poorly understood by pretty much the entire cast of the series.

 

[2 quid is good]

What I'm responding to, though, is the idea that the game is trying to present him as a "good guy". I'm saying that everything about Xehanort's motivations presented in all these works is consistent with him being a horrible person.

Old Man Xehanort IS a terrible person who personally screwed over everyone including his younger self, I'm not trying to give some grace to people here but I think what people mean when they say KH3's ending portrayed him as a "good guy" is that the ending he got didn't seem particularly in line with the way his story had been presented up til then.

Like up til then, every villain gets a comeuppance, and they get endings that don't vindicate them at all. I am again - NOT saying that KH3 vindicated Xehanort, it was obviously not meant to come across as that, but when you compare his death to literally every single other villains death, it's a little undeniable that it's a bit.... neat....

Like, it feels a bit icky that he gets to have a relatively civil moment with Sora, and that he gets to regress to a time when he was an innocent and get beamed up. Sure - that ending is not satisfactory to Xehanort the character - but its also not very satisfactory to some of the audience themselves.

Nobody's saying go Mortal Kombat on him, and that's really silly when these arguments are portrayed like that, like I'm sure Nobody is truly thinking that's what we want. But what I am saying, and maybe others too, is that lesser villains in the same series have had vastly different endings in terms of tone, and KH3 sort of broke the mold for what we expected of the most heinous villain.

I don't think all that fluff was necessary tbh, it was almost like giving Xehanort a chance to come to peace with his ending. I think he should have got to be panicky and try to come to the realisation that this was it - his final failure where there's no coming back.

We NEVER got the chance to see Xehanort actually be on the ropes for real, this guy always had a contingency, he always found a way. I think it personally would be more impactful for him to die still trying and then finally realising at the very end that there was no way out for him anymore. The unflappable villain who's been pulling strings for a decade finally runs out of gambits. Idk, maybe you guys will say its out of character but I think that would certainly hit ME more.

 

[Chie]

Like up til then, every villain gets a comeuppance, and they get endings that don't vindicate them at all. I am again - NOT saying that KH3 vindicated Xehanort, it was obviously not meant to come across as that, but when you compare his death to literally every single other villains death, it's a little undeniable that it's a bit.... neat....

On the contrary, I think that's what the previous 3 hours of KH3 had also largely been. The boss battles stop mid-battle so we can stand around with the villain and say goodbye to them. Sometimes this works alright, but other times we have stuff like Riku telling Ansem he's going to miss him, which is MUCH more inexcusably egregious I think. See also Marluxia/Luxord/Larxene not having a reason to be here and thus not really feeling like villains, or Vexen of all people becoming an actual good guy because there was nothing else to do with him. In general the direction here can be very anemic and awkward, and I think that's what throws people off more than anything.

Like, Xehanort never even turns into a giant monster. If the game called Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't the place to have an extremely Final Fantasy surreal endboss transformation, then when is...?

 

[2 quid is good]

On the contrary, I think that's what the previous 3 hours of KH3 had also largely been. The boss battles stop mid-battle so we can stand around with the villain and say goodbye to them. Sometimes this works alright, but other times we have stuff like Riku telling Ansem he's going to miss him, which is MUCH more inexcusably egregious I think. See also Marluxia/Luxord/Larxene not having a reason to be here and thus not really feeling like villains, or Vexen of all people becoming an actual good guy because there was nothing else to do with him. In general the direction here can be very anemic and awkward, and I think that's what throws people off more than anything.

I completely agree, i should have clarified and said up til KH3 itself. I think the only one of these cutscenes that held up were Xemnas' and Luxord's. I think it was a serious miss to not have Sora find out what happened at Castle Oblivion. But yeah, I think again, a lot of people could have overlooked that if the final battle had the sort of pay off they were looking for, but it was just a culmination of all the issues that the previous villain endings had.

Like, Xehanort never even turns into a giant monster. If the game called Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't the place to have an extremely Final Fantasy surreal endboss transformation, then when is...?

Bro facts, facts