The Ending
Hellblade: Ending Explained, What Happened
As Hela sits there with the skull, she’s no longer in Helheim. And it appears as if she is crying — not something you’d expect since at one point Senua was convinced that Hela was her father in some form. At least it seemed that way. As the final cutscene continues, Hela walks to the edge of the platform she’s on and lets the skull fall to never be seen again. As the camera pans away from the skull and back to Hela, we see Senua sitting there, beaten down, but far from defeated.
It turns out that Hela was Senua deep down inside and that makes a lot of sense. Hela rules Hel in Norse mythology, and that’s the world that Senua’s psychosis created so it only makes sense that she would be its ruler, knowingly or not. While it was the loss of Dillion and her father’s abuse that drove Senua to this state in Hellblade, it was ultimately her who created this hell for herself. Her grief and the fact that she blamed herself for everything that transpired in her life caused her to turn inward and lock herself down. The voices she hears, a maddening part of her psychosis, pull her thoughts back and forth leaving her confused which made matters even worse.
But, thanks to Dillion’s lessons from when he was alive, and that you hear repeated through Hellblade’s story, Senua slowly came to realize that she had to triumph over herself, that only she could escape the dark twisted world of her mind. During the fight with Hela and the discarding of the skull, Senua finds acceptance. Yes Dillion is gone, and yes her father is a large source of her pain, but she realizes that she must be strong and move on. She relied heavily on Dillion before he passed, but that’s no way to live. One must be strong alone as well and Hellblade’s story taught her that even though it was a nightmare to get through.
While the voices in her mind left before the fight with Hela, they have returned at the end. Psychosis isn’t something so trivial that it can be miraculously cured, that’s just unrealistic. However, it shows that Senua has found new strength that she will use going forward. Before it ends, Senua asks us, the players, to follow her on her new adventure. One that we pray is free from the demons she fought so valiantly to overcome.
