Bethany Plays: Thousand-Year Door Ending: All's Well That Ends Well

The ending starts back up in Rogueport. This is the bittersweet farewell theme they go with.

Mario and Peach have a home to go back to. With the threat of the Magical Map neutralised, there's no more need for us to stick around here, and we have Toads back home who have huge separation anxities from the absence of our presence.

...

Nobody tell them where we were.

...Well... yes. We proved your research wrong and gave you the mother of all primary sources on your follow-up paper.

But I think everything else is your job now.

...Yours and Goombella's. Look like she's found a part-time job and a subject for her Masters'. Whenever she's doing that.

Does this count as college credit?

None of these characters are ever being seen again.

...What do you mean they revealed a remake in the final moments of this blog's writing?

(There's also pictures of them in Super Paper Mario and you can find one of Goombella's notes in Sticker Star. And the trophies/stickers/Spirits in Smash.)

...Did she? I mean, I'm good at teaching that lesson, but cowardice isn't one of Goombella's flaws. OK, she hides behind Mario to get him to fight her battles twice, but she was justified both times.

You're a gold standard none of your successors can compare.

That, on the other hand, makes more sense. And I'm glad to have been helpful in that regard, Koops. That's the most fundamental thing I can have done- most stories boil down to it.

Or, well, understands what his dad has been through. To some extent. He hasn't spent ten years in a dragon's gut, but the lust for adventure, Koops is getting grips on that.

Don't worry, I heard you loud and clear.

Flurrie sounded like she was already ready for the stage, she just got sidetracked for our adventure. Except I have no idea why she felt better for the stage after dealing with an evil crew who work best in the shadows.

In having accompanied us, however, she did wind up coming to grips with ideas she was formerly unfamiliar with, and will be poaching the ideas liberally.

Now all she needs to do is find a scriptwriter who'll adopt her ideas.

Dr. Agon has been calling us Gonzales all game, but at the last minute, finally comes around to the name "Mario". Despite this being a character beat they wanted to keep around, however, the law of large numbers means Dr. Agon has already called us Mario instead of Gonzales. Five times.

Would you believe me if I told you that, as diligent as I was sweeping up screenshots of partner lines before learning there was a textdump, that this is the only one I caught?

The other four are the Yoshi equivalents of these lines. I can understand the two Keelhaul Key ones- they'd be really tedious to see multiple partner lines for, because the last opportunity to change was a long time ago for both. The Riddle Tower one is similar, but I think you would be using Yoshi for Ride. The Glitz Pit one, though... it's his join chapter, we just had a puzzle that required using him, you mean to say this is where something slips through the cracks?

...If this is a sentiment at all shared by the Glitz Pit fandom, we have screwed up that place for good.

Really laying on the fact we're never going to see any of these characters again. 64 and Super don't really have endings with the same sort of "so long, come see us again anytime" atmosphere, although that's largely because 64 is theoretically set in the same Mushroom Kingdom the characters normally live in (so they're not going anywhere) and Super is using its own rules.

At least this relationship was the one that was founded on something. With that said, Vivian is just starved for positive affection and latching on to Mario because he was the only person to treat her with any sort of decency. Mario himself doesn't express any interest in any of the female partners, and Flurrie and Ms. Mowz catch on quicker than Goombella and Vivian. As far as romantic arcs go, there's just no writing Mario with anyone other than Peach. Now, you could get Peach another romantic interest, but I don't think anyone is interested in trying too hard at that. Romantic arcs may just not be something Mario has any need for.

I do wonder who's going to be keeping her company from this point on. Somebody's gotta do it, on account of Vivian having to go live somewhere.

Twenty years staring at a wall was bad enough, he didn't need to keep it up for the rest of his life.

This would be a really easy cameo to stick somewhere. Just have Bobbery on a boat sailing the opposite direction when Mario's using a ship for [insert reason here].

Ms. Mowz can be surgically removed from the ending if you didn't pick her up.

In the context of TTYD itself, she is quite correct: Unlike 64, TTYD does have a postgame, and thus Mario is allowed to come and visit them inside TTYD itself just fine. Now, he'll never visit them again in a later game, but...

Whether that satisfies this remark or not is another question.

Toadsworth, read the room.

There's one more person who's going to get the chance to say goodbye.

Punio and Petuni ran all the way from Boggly Woods. With fresh Mushrooms this time.

It's our in-cruise meal. The ship does not provide one of its own, apparently.

Presumably, this is why they were in such a rush. Couldn't pre-prepare that.

Peach gets one too!

Peach starts a speech of her own, because the ship's not as close as Toadsworth made it sound.

Peach knows we're never coming back, so she's making sure she thanks everyone as efficiently as possible now.

Frankly understands how effectively Peach saved the day with just her opening move, if only because she knew she wasn't allowed a second.

He's still running on his that assumption that the Door would've opened on its own. I am interested in what would've happened if that happened without a suitable vessel prepared for the Shadow Queen. Presumably, this is still bad news for us.

TOADSWORTH! (Mario nods in response.)

The time of departing is now upon us.

Starting to sound like a private ship again. Apparently Peach's cruise ship doesn't go this way.

And away we go, in that direction.

The best.

The boat scene uses this theme.

...We may need to discuss your optimism. There's "seeing the bright side of life", and then there's "we are not allowing you unattended again." Then again, that seems to be out of our hands.

That's what we're scared for? Yes, it is scary, but that was the part you've had lots of practice with. I would've thought the demonic possession would've caused some novel issues to worry about.

Peach gets to say her goodbyes, overall, to good ol' TEC. They may be gone, but their impact on the narrative lives on.

Besides, they'd never get to say goodbye on a pier anyway.

I can only hope you have faith in that. It's Mario's only job since the Department of Travel took over his plumbing job.

That's not a problem. The problem is everybody else is making that really difficult. Please stop blaming yourself for it.

That is Mario nodding. Maybe we should've pushed him off the pier.

On the way out, the sun rises over the city of Rogueport.

...

I'll take your word for it. That yellow colour does not look like water does when it looks beautiful at dawn. Possibly a limitation of the console/artstyle, but considering what else Peach has said that is positive about Rogueport, it may also genuinely not be apt.

(With that said, there is a unique theme for the sunrise, which implies they wanted it to make an impact.)

Mario: "Right. Little bro, it's time for you to listen to my long and rambling story."

This is not helping Luigi's second banana complex.

Mario nods. I'm going to take that as a hint there has been a satisfactorily long timeskip we've skimmed past.

...Well, I guess that would be nice to know. Hasn't been long for us, but...

We got an email! People in the Mushroom Kingdom don't use our email.

Goombella is going to tell us about what the partners have been up to, now that they've had time to find lives outside us.

Starting, of course, with herself.

To paraphrase a great inventor, the answer alone is not the journey. Why did things turn out the way they did and not some other way?

There'll be more than enough information to plumb in the legend of the Shadow Queen, the Thousand Year Door and Ancient Rogueport for the remaining time in Goombella's archaeology degree and the first ten or twenty years of her career, if not setting her up for life. ~~Why do you think I did a blog of this game to begin with?~~

(While this part of the cutscene is playing, Goombella is walking to the bookshelves, back to Frankly, having a discussion, and then back.)

Beldam may have started the whole story as an excuse to crowdsource means to gather the Crystal Stars and open the Door, but there is treasure back there!

So, what does Frankly believe is the Legendary Treasure behind the Thousand-Year Door?

...Well, that's an excuse to get us back to Rogueport.

Goombella went 'round the world to gather various bits of evidence for some theory or other, so she is well-placed to tell us everyone's life stories.

Starting with Koops. Look how happy he is.

He's a little hungry for adventure still, but that manifests in "run for political office and do good in the world", not "rush off on some daredevil scheme for glory and archaeology." An overall healthier approach to life, if not necessarily a safer one.

And Koops has apparently grown into it.

...OK, Koopie Koo may or may not be at least some of the political power behind the office. Between them, they have a better mayor than the one that's currently in office.

A BATTLE!? The credits are rolling, I'm done!

Oh.

...Where did you get a Mario?

They did this joke in 64, too, but it's absolutely a fair fit for Flurrie, and she did find that scriptwriter after all. What's more impressive is that you, the player, can also find the responsible scriptwriter in Rogueport. I did, and we'll meet him later.

Doopliss is using his ability to shapeshift for "good", although I do have to ask what rights Mario has to his image being used in a play. Surely Mario should have been informed about this before they went ahead and did it?

He can take it. Not sure what his conditions are, if they differ from the ones Mario dealt with, but Ground Pound and Gulp serve him well. Also Mini-Egg, for anything that doesn't die handily to one of those two.

Rawk Hawk doesn't know what's coming to him.

Well, that'll help tide over the Gonzales fans. A lot of them liked Dr. Agon, especially those Toads, and while losing out on Mario and Goombella still sucks, but it's better than nothing.

...I'm not going to say Mario wins that 100%. It also depends on how many Badges both sides are allowed.

Hey, the only reason you might possibly get an advantage over him is you have Multibonk.

And now we get to the part of the email that bothers me immensely. Why the hell are we letting Beldam off the hook for what she did to Vivian? Remember, all of that abuse was intentional. She knew Vivian wasn't responsible for any of the mistakes: That clowning was plausible deniability to let Mario win (or, well, to let Grodus lose).

By the way, did you notice the ending doesn't show Luigi coming with Mario and Peach on the boat home? Yes, he didn't ride with Mario to get to Rogueport, but it's funny how this "family comes first" moral doesn't apply to Mario.

The game seems to think that is enough. Oopsy-woopsy, Beldam did a fucky-wucky. She won't do it again, she guarantees it. Says the life form who is surely going to outlive Goombella.

Yeah, you don't get to redeem Beldam. You just don't. She made her bed.

Marilyn, you might be able to get away with, although it'd be very borderline if you just went with an off-hand mention in the ending like this.

Beldam is not an NPC you can find in the postgame. It's possible you could earlier in development, but it is no longer the case. You can bet I would be detonating Bobbery in her face multiple times if I was allowed.

Speaking of Bobbery, he's joined Cortez's crew, now that Cortez is no longer needed to serve as our ferry. Tying him to the ferry system does allow Bobbery to have had access to him to ask to join after we were done, at least.

Now, Goombella has bumped into him more than the first departure, but it was a chance encounter. Bobbery's voyages are as long as one would expect.

And Bobbery wouldn't have it any other way.

Sure, them too. Pa-Patch was... a character.

Once again, Ms. Mowz is removed entirely if you didn't grab her. The epilogue scene is the first explicit depiction of the fact that she is the manager of the Lovely Howz of Badges, the one who mysteriously disappeared while Chapters 1-3 were in progress and then forever after 4.

Goombella doesn't think much of the revelation. I'm sure you figured that one out, right?

Possibly Attack FX P or Lucky Start. The postgame adds no Badges at all, whether you could already have found a copy or not, to the Lovely Howz.

Goombella also seems to have come to an understanding with Ms. Mowz, and is far, far less derogatory about her. Character development? For some reason, I doubt it was written as such.

Ms. Mowz spins on the spot to transform into her ninja form, before jumping away across the rooftops. Why can't you do that, Jumpman?

Like Beldam, you cannot find the X-Nauts yourself, no matter where you look. As such, their survival is limited exclusively to the ending email.

I wanted to write this off as non-canon purely because I did not like it, but since Goombella says she only heard it by rumour (and Pennington is in the corner as the likely purveyor of this rumour), there may actually be basis for this beyond how ridiculous an idea this is. Nothing indicates the possibility we should take this anything less than true, but it's worth commenting on.

Like Beldam, the game expects the player to look at this and agree to let the X-Nauts off the hook. Like Beldam, I don't see this ending how the game wants it to. I have no idea why TTYD, the game with the villains that took themselves most seriously, also feels so desperate to make its villains come off as redeemable in the final moments. Mario & Luigi has a villain who survives one game to appear as a purely helpful NPC in the sequel, and he made it clear he wasn't redeemed before becoming the ultimate villain in the third game. All its other villains (including the aforementioned recurring guy) were allowed to die for good.

With that said, while Beldam's change of heart was implied to be because the Shadow Queen is dead and she has no real wincon anymore, the X-Nauts' change of heart is much more understandable: Grodus has been brought down by several pegs. I like to imagine that Grodus is still exactly as evil and cunning as ever, but since he cannot do anything of his own free will, Crump and the minions just carry him around while they indulge in their own activities. And, since they no longer owe Grodus anything, they are free to be as harmless as they ever were while trying to carry out Grodus's orders. Grodus hates every second of it.

...No. No. Bad game!

You only knew them in their final moments, you don't get to say TEC is anyone's "favourite calculator". Yes, since access to the X-Naut Fortress is mandatory to collect three Star Pieces and the Feeling Fine Badges, it is restored to working order for no particular reason- even canonically, no one seems entirely sure, although they point at Peach being responsible. They at least had the dignity to only do it postgame, but they canonised TEC's miracle survival by putting it in Goombella's email instead of leaving them to appear only in the postgame (or still having them be shut down in the restored Fortress).

Peach doesn't come back to Rogueport in the postgame, so only Mario is able to drop in.

The Mushroom Kingdom's technology is still not at the point where Mario understands USB cables.

You may want to have considered deleting the last two paragraphs from your email. The game would've thanked you for not including them in the main story.

It was a great game.

...Remember when I said Flurrie and Ms. Mowz got over their crushes on Mario as they got to know him more and realised he was 100% taken by Peach?

Goombella was carrying a torch all the way to the end too. You know you're allowed to have female party members that aren't crushing on Mario, right? Even Bombette only got as far as Ms. Mowz did, with Bow, Watt and Sushie having no such development. Yes, OK, Watt and Sushie are not age-appropriate and I'm sure you could argue the same is true for Bow, but still.

Mario promptly deleted the email. No, seriously, that email isn't in the Mailbox SP's listings if you boot up the postgame, despite all the emails from Peach, X and Grubba being properly stored.

I dunno, Vivian's life sounds like hell and Grodus's almost definitely is.

Now who could be knocking at our door?

Ah, right, Peach and Toadsworth.

...Huh, Toadsworth is the one who says this part. This sounds like Peach's tone of excitement when stuff like this happens, complete with the apology for intruding on the Mario Bros.' space. Toadsworth doesn't usually acknowledge that sort of boundary.

I like to imagine Peach had a hand in the map's construction to use as a basis for this conjecture, rather than taking the chances on getting another ancient demon threatening to destroy the world. Look, two in a row is astronomically unlikely, but...

...Well. That is certainly an ending. Peach doesn't even wait for a response before it's off on another hare-brained treasure hunt. This does not seem to correspond to any currently known Mario game, RPG or otherwise, and I assume it involved no peril and possibly ended with Peach herself being the treasure.

Mario is left standing in place in his "pointing at self in surprise" pose while this jingle plays. If this was a sitcom, there would be a laugh track some point around now.

Rolling credits.

Like Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario 64 before it, there is a parade led by Luigi. It has been significantly downplayed as a shadow puppet parade of every character walking around in a loop while traditional credits images appear.