Deathloop's Ending Explained

Critics loved "Deathloop," the first person shooter from Arkane Studios and Bethesda, but not for the reasons many people might expect. Though critics noted that the game was fun and provided smooth, engaging gameplay, they also praised its story, which twists and turns over one recurring day to a satisfying ending. However, "Deathloop" is admittedly difficult to keep up with, and much of the lore that gamers find throughout the title is hidden in documents and on tape recorders, which can be easy to miss. Because "Deathloop" provides a multitude of different ways to play (stealth, run and gun), it's easy to bypass information entirely, making the plot a little difficult to follow.

The game follows Colt Vaughn, a Visionary working with the AEON program in Blackreef. Blackreef is a time-anomaly, and nine Visionaries are tasked with protecting it. As long as the Loop remains stable, everyone in Blackreef will wake up back at the beginning of the Loop after it ends, even if they died sometime during the sequence. It seems that the Loop used to be longer, but by the time "Deathloop" begins, residents are reliving the same day over and over again, their memories wiped once the Loop restarts. The only people who remember what happened Loop to Loop are Colt and Julianna, his mysterious rival and constant threat. In order to break the Loop and free its inhabitants, Colt must kill every Visionary in a single day, destabilizing the time anomaly and ending the Loop for good.

By the time "Deathloop" concludes, don't worry if you're missing some of the pieces. Here's everything you need to know about the ending of "Deathloop."

Julianna, and her relationship to Colt, is one of the biggest mysteries of "Deathloop." It's unclear in the beginning of the game who Julianna is, how she knows Colt, or why she's fighting so hard to protect the Loop, but by the end of the narrative players know a good deal more about her.

It turns out that Julianna's relationship to Colt is deep: she's his daughter. Colt doesn't remember any of that, of course, and he even speculates that he and Julianna were romantically involved. The two constantly flirt and bicker like an old married couple, and Colt suspects that they dated at some point. Once Colt finds out that he fell in love with a fellow Horizon operative and had Julianna, he admits that finding out the truth makes him feel "weird." Julianna explains that she wants to make Colt uncomfortable.

In addition to Julianna's desire to torture Colt for his past misdeeds, she also has a vested interest in preserving history. As the resident archivist of Blackreef, Julianna wants to preserve the Loop and continue the grand experiment, where Colt wants to break the Loop and, presumably, find more meaning in his life and stop periodically forgetting things.

Some fans think that it would make more sense to play as Julianna in "Deathloop," because Colt should have more motivation to protect the Loop as the head of security. However, it seems that Julianna's real ambitions focus on her relationship with Colt, not her role in the program. Each ending focuses on how Julianna and Colt resolve or destroy their relationship as father and daughter.

Perhaps the most heartwarming ending is still considered bad in the wider world of "Deathloop." Colt can choose to remain in the Loop, but spare Julianna, providing them a chance to mend their relationship. Players that go down this path don't break the Loop, but they do get a chance to rekindle Colt's relationship with his daughter.

If Colt decides to spare both Julianna and himself, the two end up going out for a night of drinks, turning their game-long witty banter into something less antagonistic and more familial. Julianna jokingly tells Colt that if he survives Aleksis' party she'll "bring the beers."

Even though making up with Julianna technically means the player failed the game and kept the Loop intact, it serves to rehabilitate Colt as a character. Colt doesn't know Julianna is his daughter for most of the game, but by making a commitment to stay in the Loop with her, to get to know her, he's trying his best to be a better dad the only way he can. One Redditor claimed that the entire game was about Colt's relationship with Julianna, working towards the two uncovering the past. "It's a whole redemption arc, but for a man who can't be redeemed," they wrote. "Eventually it was easier to forget than to remember the tangled prison of torture he made for himself while trying to be a better person." In other words, Julianna and Colt are stuck in a cycle of remembering and forgetting. It's likely that the ending where Julianna and Colt make up could be the predecessor to another cycle of memory loss and rediscovery, but at the very least they get to be happy for a little while.

Gamers don't get a good answer to what lies outside the Loop at the end of "Deathloop," and the real truth is that it might not matter much. According to Bethesda's description of "Deathloop," each Visionary has a different reason for entering into the Loop in the first place, with more than one wanting to seek eternity in a never ending cycle. However, "the human mind isn't made to withstand eternity." As a result, the Visionaries started forgetting the days, except for Colt and Julianna, who managed to maintain their sanity. All of that forgetting seems to have ill effects on the Visionaries, and most of them are depraved. Aleksis Dorsey eats people every night, dining on human flesh with a group of his followers, while Harriet Morse ritualistically sacrifices an Eternalist each sunny morning. The Visionaries are not okay, and even if there is a world beyond the Loop, they're not fit for it.

"Deathloop" also suggests that there may not be much of a world outside the Loop. Some Redditors noted that when Colt breaks the Loop the sky turns a strange, swirled orange color. It's possible that the world has continued existing outside the Loop, deteriorating rapidly as the Visionaries tried to concoct some version of paradise from inside. If that's the case, there's nothing for Colt and Julianna to return to, making Colt's efforts pointless.

Fans have their own theories about the ending of "Deathloop." One of the most popular connections players made is between the world of "Dishonored" and that of "Deathloop." It makes sense, especially considering that both titles were developed by Arkane Studios, but how do the games relate to each other, really?

One Redditor commented that the games are "all but confirmed" to be connected, and supposed that Slabs in "Deathloop" and powers in "Dishonored" aren't so different. The writer also speculated about other connections between the titles, like the asylum Colt stayed in before returning to the Loop. Another Redditor created an intricate timeline that ties together "Deathloop" and "Dishonored," speculating that the time loop was created when Billie Lurk expelled the Outsider from the Void. One Reddit commenter speculated that the Tyvian army was responsible for Project Horizon, the military-led mission into the Loop that Colt participated in. 

Further strengthening the bond between the two Arkane games is Corvo's pistols, which seem to appear in both "Dishonored" and "Deathloop." Although they could just be an Easter egg for fans of "Dishonored" to find, the pistols that Julianna hands Colt at the end of the game bear a striking resemblance to those used in the pseudo-Victorian setting of Arkane's previous games.

Even more significant, some gamers think the "good" ending of "Deathloop," where Colt breaks the Loop, has a connection with "Prey," another Arkane title. In "Prey," players get a view of Earth that shows the planet engulfed in red coral-like tendrils. Once the Loop is broken, the sky that silhouettes Julianna seems awfully familiar to "Prey" players. In fact, it looks exactly like Earth. It's possible that as the events of "Prey" unfold on the Talos, the Loop continues on Earth.