Board Thread:Theories/@comment-34796618-20180223214838/@comment-30069705-20180225215250

RuneLai wrote:

While I think that Isayama is leaning towards a less "kill them all" ending, I dislike the suggestion that it is because he's maturing. Maturing as a writer has nothing to do with it.

Stephen King was 33 and had been publishing for 12 years when he wrote "The Mist" and it's an incredibly enduring story. The fact people can name drop it in casual conversation shows its cultural impact and staying power. If AoT similarly has a downer ending and is still talked about almost forty years later I think it will have done well for itself.

Having a downer ending doesn't necessarily turn people off, other than people who don't like downer endings. People who don't care or like downer endings, on the other hand, would still be perfectly fine reading the series. Actually, the author himself even directly stated (or at least insinuated) that "his mindset has matured since then" or something along those lines in one of the interviews if I remember correctly. That's where I'm getting the "maturing" factor from (unless he used a different word for it?).

As for Stephen King, at least all of his individual works, at least to my knowledge, only lasted for like 2 hours or so on the big screen anyways. Plus, a lot of his works apparently have endings like that anyways. Because of that, a downer ending for those isn't exactly that big of a deal or surprise in the long run. With that, it's also easy to understand that "The Mist" is going to be no exception by default, and it's also understandable if much less people will turn away from it in that case. With some big series that lasts over a decade in the overall making, though, an ending done like that without even having any real meaning or point to it wouldn't do as well or get as far in the long run.

If you notice in the actual story itself, since the characters have become so alive, something Isayama likes to do if he's going to kill off a major character is give red flags and a lot of focus to that character, and ultimately make their death have an impact and be well-written and meaningful, much like what he did with Erwin back then and what he seems to be doing with Reiner right now.