Throughout the game, especially in the second biome, you'll see spires that look an awful lot like spinal columns, representing her mother's injury. An obvious one is that the ship is also named Helios, and whenever you leave the crash site to go on another run, it says 'Helios Abandoned', just like how Selene leaves her son in the car. There are aspects of the game that reflect on all of this in clever ways. It seems that she saves her own life but fails to rescue her son, leaving him in the sunken car. The car swerves into the lake, and we see Selene swimming up to the surface of the water. Representing her mother, the creature points to the stars, and from a first person perspective, it appears that Selene becomes the astronaut herself, stood on the bridge. Here, Selene sees a skeletal, though seemingly pregnant, creature in a wheelchair, which reaches for her before she knocks it down. Using the car key you receive, you get back to Abyssal Scar, defeat Ophion again, and unlock the submerged vehicle, which triggers the final cutscene.
Selene also comments "We were both broken," talking about their accident.
This sequence reinforces the bad relationship between Selene and Theia. In Act 3 of the game, you gather all six Sunface Fragments in order to enter the House for the final time. We see Selene remove her belt and reach for Helios, but she appears to be dragged away by tentacles before she can help him. The car spins out of control, smashing over the side of the bridge and into the water - the same location from the first crash. Along the bridge, she sees the astronaut - a figure that's haunted her throughout the game - and swerves to avoid them.
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He asks, "Do you see the white shadow?", seemingly referring to the full moon. Selene seems distracted and absent as she drives, and her son, Helios, is in the back. In this cutscene, we see Selene driving through country roads at night, Blue Öyster Cult's (Don't Fear) The Reaper playing on the stereo. After defeating Ophion at the end of Act 2, you'll see the game's first ending. A focus on her career, sometimes even leaving her son home alone.įast forward through the game, and it seems the idea of cycles and recurring events goes deeper than the title's rogue-like loop. Just as Theia was distant from Selene, Selene struggles with her son Helios - she's repeating the same steps. She becomes very much like Theia, and that extends to her relationship with her child. Selene grew up to resent her mother, but was equally obsessed with space. Selene got through the accident unscathed, but it seems her mother became very cold towards her, even blaming her for the crash and for her dreams being dashed. In a House sequence, it's pretty clearly spelled out that Theia suffered major spinal injuries from the crash, leaving her wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life, and thus unable to fulfil her dreams of becoming an astronaut. She crashed off the side of a bridge and into the lake below, with a young Selene in the back. The mother, named Theia, had aspirations to go into space, but a car accident changed her life for the worse. Selene and her mother had a very distant, possibly abusive, relationship. Through the game's audio logs, Xenoglyphs, and sequences inside the House, we can pick up on a few key details. However, we subscribe to the idea that most of the game's events are a construct Selene has made for herself. So, how do we explain Returnal's story and ending? It's a tough one, as it's mostly left wide open for players to draw their own conclusions.
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