With the final issue of Dark Souls‘ current series, will we see Fira and Aldritch reach their final goal? Will more die before the curse is lifted? Let’s see if there truly is an end in the Souls world.
Dark Souls #4 (Titan Comics)
Yeah, that’s going to probably need some salve.
Last issue we saw our undead and slowly dying protagonists obtain the last of the relics they need to resurrect Andolas, the dragon who can cure the world. Small wrinkle: when resurrected, they then have to kill him to keep the flame that sustains the warmth and health of the world burning.
Kill a dragon. Yeah ok, that sounds like a good way to spend a Saturday.
Yet, right before our heroes reach their long sought goal, a slight wrinkle in their plans appears:
She’s starting to lose it…
Jarus, a fellow knight in Fira’s order, is found fighting giants, and apparently searching to find Fira before she can finish her quest. With her spotty memory and the advice of Aldritch, she thinks she knows her own motivations, but Jarus’s appearance lends doubt, and opens her memory to some previously locked places:
Is It Good?
Finally uncovering Fira’s past is the real pay off for this issue. Non-spoiler alert: it’s absolutely not a fun and rosy past that she’s buried in her slowly decaying mind. The problem this raises is that the climactic battle we’ve been waiting for seems slightly overshadowed, and the unreliable narrator is fully unveiled.
The key thing about Dark Souls is that melancholy, hopelessness, and loss run through all aspects of it. There’s never going to be a happy ending for anyone, but there are degrees of melancholy that one can survive.
I think issue #4 does an excellent job wrapping up the series, showing us readers how to choose between impossible and terrible, and giving us that sad and yet understandable ending we were all expecting.
I want to see more in this world, but not of these characters. Their story has been told, let them stroll or crawl into the sunset, and be remembered, but not revisited.
Overall this was still solid–just a bit uneven, but a good wrap up of the series.
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