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Persona 5’s original ending was a great send-off for the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. After a 100+ hour game, the ending needed to be perfect and properly close out the stories of all the characters we had come to love. While the original ending was great, the additional Royal content added more stories to close out an even better ending.
There is a bit of a process to achieve the true final ending and the bonus content within it. For those who maxed the right Confidants, Atlus made sure to provide a proper reward. While some of the endings may seem straightforward, there is a good bit of symbolism that makes it all the better.
Sending Off The Phantom Thieves
At the beginning of the third semester, Joker is shown the ideal realities of all of his closest friends. When they eventually break free and rebel from that reality, they lose what was given to them by Maruki. During the first half of the credits, the Phantom Thieves are shown one by one making steps back toward those dreams. Here, they have accepted that it will be difficult to get to where they want to be in life, but that doesn’t stop them from working toward it.
Instead of showing the happy end results like in the third semester, these scenes show the earlier parts the fake reality didn’t have. They were all working toward their goals, struggling a bit to do so, but with a smile on their face. This highlights the importance of the message of Maruki’s reality; getting to where you want to be in life may be a struggle, but the journey to get there will make it all worth it.
Sumire’s New Path
Sumire was put front and center of the last palace, having the most traumatic day of her life played before her all over again. The main story and her Confidant revolves around her accepting herself as Sumire and honoring Kasumi in her own way.
After running into Joker, she now seems Confidant and no longer struggles with the doubt of being inferior to her sister. She tells Joker to keep his head up as she is now able to keep hers up, being who she truly is.
Maruki’s New Goal
While Maruki is a professional scientist and therapist, the final cutscene shows him as just a simple cab driver. While this as a professional may seem like a major step down from his previous jobs, it’s more symbolic of his new outlook on the world and goal to help people.
Maruki’s alternate reality stole people’s free will and pushed them down the path of life he deemed best for them. Now, Maruki has come full circle, and by being a cab driver, he only helps people go where they want to go. He also doesn’t charge Joker, as his new goal is to help people on their way through life without having his own goals.
Akechi Survived
In the base game of Persona 5, Akechi doesn’t survive Shido’s palace, and in Royal, it’s indirectly stated he’s only there as a fulfillment of Joker’s ideal reality. That being said, Maruki never specifically said if Akechi was real or not, he left it up to Joker and Akechi to talk about. While there are gaps in his memory, this could have been a result of a different fulfillment of Maruki’s reality in just releasing him from prison.
While the reflection of the sun makes Joker look away and cover Akechi’s face, only one person in the game dresses exactly like the figure being arrested at the train station. The jacket is Akechi’s school uniform, but being arrested and wearing the black glove. Only the left side and hand of the figure are shown with the black glove, as the unseen right glove is the one given to Joker in Akechi’s Confidant line.
The final battle showed the metaverse falling apart and personas not being able to be summoned anymore. While the metaverse was disappearing, it would eventually reform as distorted desires will slowly creep back into society and human hearts. This scene shows the remaining metaverse and leaves the door open for it to fully reform one day again.
This scene is also symbolic of Joker’s journey as he is finally ready to return home. This game’s central theme is about the masks we wear in front of others to hide who we truly are. As the Phantom Thieves have both of these forms, they did wear a mask in some instances and hid their identities. In this last scene, Joker is no longer divided between the mask he wears and who he truly is. He has accepted every aspect of himself and no longer needs to wear a mask.
