What happens in the Alan Wake 2 ending can be quite confusing, due to Saga and Alan's separated, dimension-hopping stories. While they finally begin to converge, things quickly go awry, leading to same late-game dimension-hopping and a conclusion that makes you wonder what exactly happened to Saga, Alan Wake, Casey, Alice Wake, the Clicker, Scratch, and the Dark Place in Alan Wake 2. With the extended The Final Draft ending, an extra layer is added to all that too making it a lot to take in. Below, I've tried to shed some light on the Alan Wake 2 ending, including the new Final Draft ending.
Obviously massive spoilers if you've not seen the ending yourself. You have been warned.
How does Alan Wake 2 end?
After coming up with a new plan in Alan Wake 2 and realizing that the Alan Wake in the real world is actually Scratch/the Dark Presence, Saga sets out to fix reality and rescue Alan Wake from the Dark Place. She performs a ritual using the Clicker, with the help of Tor, Odin, Casey, and Estevez, though it all fails and apparently nothing happens.
Meanwhile, Alan, still trapped in the Dark Place, discovers that Alice committed suicide after being repeatedly haunted by Scratch. Assuming he remains trapped in the Dark Place due to Scratch rewriting his drafts, Alan shoots a different Alan in his Writer's Room, only to realise that this is all part of a loop – Alan writes a draft to escape, a different Alan rewrites it only to be killed by the first Alan, who then gets possessed by the Dark Presence to become Scratch. This reveals that Alan and Scratch are actually the same person and that he was the one haunting Alice and not an evil doppelganger.
Back in Bright Falls, Alan as Scratch attacks the ritual site, forcing Saga to exorcize the Dark Presence from him, though this leads to Casey getting possessed instead. Evil Casey then steals the Clicker, pushes Saga into Cauldron Lake and the Dark Place, and escapes to enact its plan on Bright Falls with the completed Return manuscript.
Alan then comes up with a plan to get the manuscript and rewrite its ending, putting all this to rest. He drives back to Bright Falls, grabs the manuscript, and runs to the Writer's Room in the nursing home attic to rewrite the ending. Simultaneously, Saga receives help from Alice Wake in the Dark Place and gets the Clicker and a Bullet of Light from a shoebox. She then discusses the necessary ending for Return with Alan (there must be balance, so the heroes must pay a heavy price) and escapes back to the real world.
Ending up in the Writer's Room with Alan, Saga uses the Clicker with the new Return manuscript. This banishes the Dark Presence from Casey, causing it to possess Alan again. Saga then shoots Alan with the Bullet of Light, killing him and the Dark Presence. She then calls Logan, but the cutscene ends while the phone is still ringing.
In a mid-credit scene, another video from Alice Wake plays, in which she reveals that she did not kill herself and instead jumped into Cauldron Lake to re-enter the Dark Place. Misleading Alan was crucial to helping him see the spiral and not the loop. However, the spiral keeps going unless you complete the Final Draft ending.
What happens in the Alan Wake 2 Final Draft ending?
The "true" ending for Alan Wake 2 comes at the end of an Alan Wake 2 new game plus run, known as The Final Draft. Everything is the same as above until Saga calls Logan on her phone:
In the Final Draft, Logan answers the phone, seemingly completely normal. Despite having been shot in the head by Saga, Alan Wake wakes up with the bullet now glowing in his head again. "The ending worked. Scratch is gone", he says. Alice Wake then appears only to Alan, and says, "at last", to which he replies, "thank you, my love". Alan then delivers one final monologue and closes out the game calling himself "the master of many worlds".
So, what does all that mean? Firstly, Logan answering the phone proves that Alan's rewritten Return ending worked, fixing reality. Return's original plot, which involved Saga and Logan moving to Watery and Logan drowning, was prevented from becoming real – all seems well for Saga.
As for Alan Wake, thanks to Saga's Bullet of Light and their plan, he is back in the real world and free of the Dark Presence's possession and the Dark Place itself. He also seems pretty confident that he's some inter-dimensional master by the sounds of things, which will no doubt be come up in a future game. However, it's not clear what's going on with Alice Wake. Alan now knows she did not in fact commit suicide and is still in the Dark Place, so perhaps her fate is something that'll be explored in DLC.
The phrase "it's a spiral, not a loop" and lots of spiral symbolism pop up a lot in Alan Wake 2 (and even in other Remedy games as seen in these Alan Wake 2 easter eggs) and it's meant to encapsulate Alan's attempts to escape the Dark Place through writing and rewriting new ways out. His repeated failures make him feel like he's stuck in a loop, but he was just working his way down a spiral and, thanks to Saga's help, this Final Draft ending is the end of that spiral.
What's next for Alan Wake 2?
The Final Draft ending wraps up Alan Wake 2 surprisingly nicely, which means you have to wonder where the story goes from here. One thing that will no doubt come up again is this idea that the rewritten Return ending had to stick to the conventions of the horror genre – if there are heroes, they must suffer greatly to ensure balance. Things seem on the up for both Alan and Saga, so it seems that this cost is yet to become clear.
Additionally, Alan Wake 2 will be getting two DLC expansions that further develop Remedy's connected universe of games, starting with Night Springs. This DLC focuses on the titular Twilight Zone-equivalent TV show, though very little has been revealed about this, and a release date or window has not been announced. Beyond that, we also know that Control 2 is in the works, having spent most of 2023 in a proof-of-concept stage, according to Remedy CEO Tero Virtala. With Alan now set up as the "master of many worlds", could he take on a significant role at the FBC alongside Jesse?
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