Aerith's Secret [3/3] - FFVII Remake Mysteries [2/4] | Game Analysis #24
Aerith is a very important character in this FFVII Remake project and it's widely known that Aerith knows more than she should. But how and why and what does it all mean? Let's find out!
Table of Contents
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 ⟵ you are here
Greetings, fellow Scholars of the Lifestream!
This is a continuation of the video transcript of our multi-part analysis about Aerith’s secrets. If you haven’t read the previous parts yet, please do so now as you’d be missing out on a lot of information otherwise.
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All caught up? Fantastic! Let’s jump into the wormhole and continue our journey.
We’re about to spoil the Moogle out of the original Final Fantasy VII, its compilation entries, and the Remake. You’ve been warned.
Summary
With this huge pile of evidence and explanations in our metaphorical backpack, let’s return to our questions from the beginning and condense everything we talked before into comprehensive and hopefully satisfying answers.
Forbidden knowledge
How does Aerith know so much more than she should?
We already established that she got all this knowledge from her future self which is residing in the Lifestream. However, we’ve heard about 2 other possibilities.
What if the planet itself feeds Remake Aerith this knowledge? Well, this one can be easily debunked. The planet works against Aerith, and any change she attempts, through the Whispers. Providing her with that knowledge and then throwing barriers in her way makes no sense.
What about Minerva? According to the Crisis Core Complete Guide’s Keyword Collection, she seems to merely follow the Lifestream’s—and thus the planet’s—instructions.
“[…] though it seems that the purpose behind her actions is to follow the intentions of the Lifestream”
This can therefore be dismissed as well.
How does Remake Aerith receive this knowledge?
The Lifestream: White chapters from the On The Way To A Smile novel explains that Lifestream Aerith is able to instill memories into other beings. From chapter 8 onward, Aerith seems to know about all events from the original timeline up to and including Red XIII’s sprint through the valley 500 years after the original game. She also receives this additional knowledge from the Mako leak in the intro cinematic,1 but most of it might get taken away again by the Whispers. This is why we don’t hear the Advent Children arrangement of her theme until chapter 8.
How does this additional knowledge manifest?
Aerith knows too much about Cloud and his quirks, notably that he’s a merc and an ex-SOLDIER and that he has no idea how to return to sector 7.
She also masks her knowledge by posing as an in-lore game tutorial of sorts. When they encounter a closed gate in the slums, her verbal directions are beyond obvious.
Aerith: “What do to… That gate just doesn’t want to open, does it. Maybe there’s a way to get over it? For you at least.”
How she leads Cloud and the player through the collapsed expressway with the robot arms also feels like she knows more about them than she should.
She reacts to Cloud mentioning Tifa quite differently and is attached to Tifa more strongly.
She drives the party to go to the pillar ASAP with the argument “but what if Corneo is telling the truth?”
Aerith knows about Marlene, her location, and about Barret being Marlene’s dad.
She also knows that Cloud, Barret, and Tifa can escape the sector 7 pillar and survive an impossible situation.
She accidentally imbues Cloud with knowledge about the future, shows some memories to Marlene, and actively instills knowledge about the Arbiters of Fate and the future into Red XIII’s mind.
All of them react with a wide-eyed expression during the memory transfer.
She has significant knowledge about Sephiroth and Jenova, the real threat to the planet.
Some of those points are even confirmed in the Ultimania: the ex-SOLDIER thing, knowledge about Marlene’s location, and other facts as well as Marlene’s and Red XIII’s expressions. Additionally, the Ultimania provides some specific examples from chapters 8, 10, 12, and 18 which we’ve covered earlier.
Since we’re already talking about this, let’s jump to the next question.
Memory transfer
What does Aerith do to Cloud, Marlene, Red XIII and Sephiroth’s portal?
She transfers memories to them, as detailed before. In Cloud’s case, she did it without intent as she was scared from the Whispers and wanted Cloud to help her get rid of those things. From that point on, Cloud has visions of the future when triggered by a related current event. The Ultimania practically confirms this:
“At the plaza in front of the pillar of the sector 7 slums and the church of the sector 5 slums, Cloud gets a visual hallucination of what seems to be from the future. Was it the effects of meeting Aerith?”
Credit for this translation goes to @istanleyff7 on Twitter.
In chapter 18, Aerith casts an even stronger version of her memory transfer spell at the end of the highway. The light encompasses the surroundings, copying it, and then turns the portal’s dark-purple tone to a bright golden light, granting safe passage on Aerith’s terms. Which is why we see the same Midgar image on the other side.
Butterfly effect
How do her different actions influence the story?
First off, Aerith forces the yellow flower onto Cloud, telling him that it’s a symbol of reunion. She sticks the flower into his suspender, blatantly visible for everyone. Including Tifa, who notices it before entering 7th Heaven. This makes sure that Cloud gives the flower to Tifa and not Marlene. Without the option to give the flower to Marlene, she can’t warm up to Cloud anymore. This causes her to get spooked when Cloud gets too close, resulting in Barret flipping the metaphorical table towards him.
Barret doesn’t accept Cloud into the group and therefore doesn’t let him into their hideout. Cloud talking about an invisible enemy might also have contributed to this, which was the result of the Whispers’ appearance caused by Aerith’s different behavior. This then leads to Barret not hiring Cloud for their next mission.
However, this summons the Whispers who force Jessie and implicitly Wedge to stay behind, bringing Cloud back into the team. Wedge thus still has an unused grappling gun from Biggs at his disposal and suffers much less injuries from the fall. This allows him to save a lot of people, mostly thanks to Aerith’s encouragement.
Side note: The existence of the yellow flower in 7th Heaven also increases Marlene’s connection to Aerith when she comes to her rescue.
Back to Wedge. He ultimately survives the plate fall and his remaining cat leads the group into the underground Shinra lab. Wedge’s continued existence then leads to an early attack on President Shinra by Avalanche HQ and ensures safe passage to the helipad for the party. We think that the main Avalanche cell only starts the attack on Shinra HQ and the president at this point because Wedge contacted them beforehand and asked them super duper nicely to rescue Barret’s cell. It’s how he ended up in the Mayor’s office after all.
The next chain reaction starts with Aerith’s loose mouth in the church. She reveals to Reno that Cloud’s a SOLDIER, which leads to an unfriendly exchange and eventually a battle between them, leaving Reno beaten and bruised much earlier. This in turn leads Rude to show up near the train station. He then later waits for Cloud and Aerith, to rough up the former—kind of an eye for an eye—and to bring the latter to Shinra.
Since Reno now has to face 3 adversaries on the pillar platform, Rude helps him out this time. And as he hasn’t properly recovered, Reno’s too beaten up to finish their mission which then forces Rude to do the job instead.
The 3rd batch of changes originates at Aerith’s new conversation with Wedge, which leads to a delay in events. The chopper crash happens before she reaches 7th Heaven, forcing her to take the long route. She picks up Betty, which slows her down even further and she’s then pushed to the ground by another explosion after that.
This circumstance allows Tseng to find her in sector 7 already instead of on the way to her house. This is most likely the reason why Elmyra refuses to let the party interfere in the first place as she’s not present during the sealing of the deal between Tseng and Aerith this time. This in turn forces the Whispers to change plans and let Wedge survive, hence the presence of a 4th Whisper compared to the 3 for Biggs and Jessie. This change leads Cloud and the others into the secret underground lab where they find the human experiments and thus the necessary argument to convince Elmyra to green-light “Operation: Save Aerith”.
The 4th interference in events begins in the Shinra building, where Aerith takes everyone to her former room after Cloud collapses. His call for the reunion might be triggered by the presence of those 2 robed figures who are already in the building, activated by Cloud and puppeteered by Sephiroth himself.
In the original, the party plans to use the elevator to leave the building afterwards, which results in their capture by the Turks. In the Remake, they don’t use those elevators and find refuge in Aerith’s old room instead, which is why they don’t get captured this time. On top of that, they have Mayor Domino covering their tracks as well.
We’re not sure how the following change occurs exactly, but it doesn’t seem like Elmyra has plans to move out of Midgar anytime soon. In the original, Barret advises Elmyra to go somewhere else due to the looming danger. This doesn’t happen in the Remake, which is why they still reside in the sector 5 slums in the ending.
In addition to changing events, it seems that Aerith’s additional knowledge allows the party to travel through certain areas quicker, leading to some early arrivals:
In Evergreen Park, it takes Tifa much longer to appear.
According to the Ultimania, they arrive too early at the sector 7 slums train station as well.
Their arrival in President Shinra’s office also happens earlier as the president is still alive. Although, this can be attributed to the lack of prison time and following the trail of purple goo right after its creation.
Boundless, terrifying freedom
Why doesn’t Aerith like the real sky?
Aerith: “I miss it, the steel sky.”
It’s a recurring thing for Aerith. She already talked about that in Crisis Core with Zack and near the beginning of chapter 8 after they flee from the church. It’s why she is reluctant to cross the portal in chapter 18 and generally doesn’t look very happy in the ending cinematic.
Furthermore, Nomura-San had the following to say in a Final Fantasy VII Remake Ultimania interview:
Tetsuya Nomura: “For Aerith, the sky symbolizes sadness. The people who were dear to her, such as Zack and her mother Ifalna, had all returned to the sky, and the sky that she sees above her in the slums was covered by Shinra too. The calamity that destroyed the Ancients, Jenova, also fell from the sky. All of these incidents remind Aerith of the sky, which is why she says she hates it.”
However, it looks like this part of her character has been retconned during Crisis Core as she never says anything of the sort in the original game. She was confined to Midgar her whole life, if you discount the short time in Icicle Inn before she got taken with her mother by Hojo.
When the team leaves Midgar in the original game, she talks about leaving Midgar for the first time ever. If Cloud asks “Really? Are you worried?” she replies with “A little…no, maybe a lot. But I have a bodyguard, right?” This is in line with the compilation and the Remake, but without the context of her hating the real sky.
In the original, her worries stem from the huge and unknown world beyond her comfort zone in Midgar. In her original pre-rendered key art, the Highwind and the sky both hold a lot of weight and emotion because of this. The blue never-ending sky, this boundless, terrifying freedom, and the Highwind. On the cargo ship from Junon to Costa Del Sol when Cloud talks to a disguised Aerith, he can promise to take her on a trip with that airship someday. Alas, she passes away long before they even gain access to the Highwind. A real tragedy.
For the Remake, the pre-rendered key arts for Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith and Sephiroth are practically identical to their original counterparts. However, Aerith’s key art has an important part missing: the Highwind. Of course, it’s not relevant for this first installment, but its absence also puts much more emphasis on the blue sky she’s so terrified of.
At first glance, it’s strange that Nomura talks about Zack and Ifalna having returned to the sky. After an organism dies, its spiritual essence returns to the Lifestream, which resides within the planet itself, not the sky. However, when an organism dies, its life energy dissipates into the air. We see this in Advent Children with Kadaj after Cloud defeats Sephiroth and we see this in the Remake when we kill organic enemies and when the ghosts are freed from Eligor’s clutches.
Our interpretation is therefore that life energy dissipates into the air, converges with vapor and the clouds, and is then distributed all over the place as rainfall. Rain is made of water which represents life and is enriched with Lifestream energy in this case. It therefore brings life back to the earth, just like at the very end of the Remake, the only time it rains in the whole game.
Giving up
Why does she think about giving up in the flower garden?
Remember Aerith contemplating giving up as it’s what she does best? There might be a good answer to this strange line: she could be talking about giving up on Zack. She never fixed the flower cart, or had it fixed, and never set out to search for Zack herself. Instead, she wrote 89 letters which never arrived. And then there’s this:
In Aerith’s farewell story from the Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Exhibition presented at the Tokyo’s Mori Arts Center Gallery in February 2018, visitors were able to hear a monologue from Aerith when standing around the recreation of her flower bed in the church.
It’s mostly about Aerith trying to say farewell to Zack and move on, which she only manages to do after Cloud falls through the church’s roof. In one segment prior to that event, she says the following:
Aerith: “That’s it. I give up. I can’t stop thinking about you. Ugh, I can’t stand this!”
Back to Remake, Cloud calls her out for not coming across as a quitter and rightfully so. However, Aerith has an answer for this, too. She calls this day a special one. In addition to knowing about future events, she might also feel like having gone through them herself, which makes the day of meeting Cloud again very important indeed. Cloud is also important to the planet’s future as he’s key in defeating Sephiroth forever. However, Cloud’s heart and mind are still fragile, and Aerith needs to make sure he’s up for the task ahead.
Additionally, she’s grown to really like Cloud throughout the original game and beyond, which is apparent when reading The Maiden Who Travels the Planet2 and the Lifestream: White chapters. This could be another reason for why she makes an extra effort for him, which results in those additional quests, scenes, and events that never happened in the original. Without her additional knowledge, she likely wouldn’t make such an effort for someone she just met and barely knows anything about.
Unless we go back to that Farewell story of Aerith’s where she also says:
Aerith: “Sometimes I see someone who has the same eyes. Same as you, I mean. And I wonder, should I ask: Do you know him? Do you know where he is? But I never do.”
Cloud has the same eyes as Zack and she probably can’t wait to ask Cloud about him, but she never does. She does ask Cloud about his war buddies while they’re traversing the collapsed expressway…
Aerith: “Um, did you have any SOLDIER friends? Any war buddies?”
Cloud: “No… not really.”
Aerith: “Oh, ok.”
…and also mentions Zack’s name in Evergreen Park, so she at least tries to sneakily gain some information.
The problem is that she knows about Cloud’s false persona and identity problems, as we see in her resolution scene. Thus, she can’t just ask him outright about Zack willy-nilly without potentially breaking Cloud’s psyche and disrupting the flow of history. Hence her hesitation to say Zack’s name in Evergreen Park.
On the other hand, didn’t she feel and thus know about Zack’s passing? Crisis Core’s ending does heavily suggest this. Though it’s unclear whether he came by to say goodbye like Elmyra’s husband. And since she already knows everything about the original timeline where she eventually met Zack in the Lifestream, he surely would have been able to “tell” her all about those 5 years of absence.
On the other hand, we do have a different answer for why Aerith wants to give up and why the flowers can’t talk yet, and we’ll get to that soon. Even so, the connection to Zack is still important to keep in mind.
Aerith’s role
What is Aerith’s role in this whole Remake project?
A very important one, according to Nojima-San, as we’ve established in the beginning of this analysis. Besides that, we can only speculate and try to establish a good picture according to existing information. Sephiroth tries to rewrite, nay, remake history for another chance at absorbing the Lifestream and using the planet as his vessel to travel the cosmos. Aerith tries to counter his actions by doing the same: rewriting history, but in the planet’s favor. With the abilities Aerith and Sephiroth possess after Advent Children, this is certainly possible.
The Lifestream contains all the memories from the planet’s inception to the present, as we’ve learned in The Maiden Who Travels the Planet. And according to the Lifestream: White chapters, Aerith wants to appear to Cloud in the form he knows her best, which might be the reason why she chooses to do her work through her own past self.
For further understanding, we need to ask additional questions.
How does future Lifestream Aerith even manage to rewrite history? How does it all work?
How are certain events already different without being the result of a direct intervention?
How does Remake-Aerith know about certain things that weren’t even in the original game?
Rewriting History
This last section goes into crazy theory territory, so saddle your Chocobos, strap in, and drink your goddamn TEA!
Not her first rodeo
What if Aerith transfers her memories into the past not just once but multiple times? What if her first and subsequent attempts at changing the past ended in a failure due to excessive and reckless changes and the Whispers had to intervene and reset Aerith’s knowledge along with the fate-endangering event to preserve it?
There are a few instances in the game where Aerith displays knowledge or sentiments which cannot be explained by a single memory transfer to the past from the future in terms of the original timeline. Those instances suddenly make much more sense if Aerith had to go through the story multiple times but still retained the additional experience from each attempt. Let’s check out those instances:
In chapter 9 on the collapsed expressway, Aerith already seems to know that the robot hands still function and will get them across. She also guides Cloud by giving him hints. Those robot hands were never a thing in the original or in Crisis Core besides stage props. Still, Aerith exhibits prior knowledge about them. On the other hand—pun intended—this might just be the result of integrating a puzzle into the story and allow for providing hints organically, so this point might be a nothing-burger.
The next point, however, has more merit.
In Aerith’s discovery quest upon completing all 6 side quests in chapter 8, Aerith considers giving up on trying to get the flowers to talk. This last step seems to be hard to achieve. We already talked about possible implications barring one. What if she refers to having tried to change the timeline so many times without any success and that’s why she should just give up?
There’s also this interesting piece of information about Eligor, chapter 11’s second boss. In the “Special Interview: Digging Deep into the World of FFVII REMAKE! Part 2”, Motomu Toriyama has this to say:
Motomu Toriyama: “After leaving [the Train Graveyard], the Sector 7 plate collapse kills a countless number of citizens, causing a disturbance in the lifestream. The boss monster at the end of this chapter, Eligor, foresees this and works to stop Cloud and friends from reaching the pillar in time.”
The enemy intel provides the following information:
“A ghastly fiend that haunts the train graveyard and feeds on human fear to grow stronger. It is a manifestation of the memories and sorrows that linger in the train graveyard.”
An influx of souls who die in fear would be a banquet of the ages for Eligor. But… how can Eligor foresee an event that hasn’t happened yet?
Eligor might have kept this knowledge about the Plate Fall’s victims from one of Aerith’s previous attempts to rewrite history. Though it’s also possible that he gains this knowledge from Aerith directly upon capturing her and peering into her soul. Why capturing Aerith? Eligor might have sensed her inner fear of being left alone on top of her stronger connection to the planet, which would bring it knowledge about the location of souls to feast upon.
Let’s jump ahead 6 chapters. Remember the elevators in the Drum? Aerith claims that they are safe.
Why would she know this? The Drum wasn’t a thing in the original. At all. This, too, supports the multiple rewrites theory as changes in previous attempts and their reset might have led to bigger changes for subsequent rewrite attempts.
Thinking further, it’s entirely possible that Aerith or even Sephiroth tried to change the past even before the intro cinematic. This would explain differences in the Shinra building’s interior and other fundamental changes which aren’t possible otherwise.
Anyway, it seems like Aerith went through the Drum and Hojo’s experiments at least once before. This would give her line “I really hate that man” more weight, too, as going through this ordeal even once is bad enough, let alone multiple times. Though to be fair, she had several unpleasant confrontations with Hojo in the past already.
Lost in a maze
Now, let’s go back to Aerith’s very important lines in her room in Shinra HQ.
Aerith: “I’m lost in a maze, and… every step is taking me further from the path… Every time the Whispers touch me… I lose something. A part of myself.”
Losing a part of herself every time the Whispers touch her might refer to all those failed attempts at changing history the way she needs to. She speaks of multiple times after all. Her Remake version loses all additional memories with each major intervention by the Whispers to get the original timeline back on track.
It’s entirely possible that the Whispers were about to reset Aerith’s state to her original self here by removing all of her additional memories, but Tifa’s quick reaction prevented it at the last second. Being lost in a maze is then a metaphor for all those failed paths ending in a dead end and only one path is leading to her goal, which is what we experience in this game.
Those multiple attempts at rewriting history might have led many parts of the story to incrementally change with each time compared to the original story. For example, Jessie’s mission, the Wall Market segment, the Eligor side story, the Drum, requiring grappling guns instead of batteries, side quests in general, and additional NPCs like Marle, Chadley, and the Wall Market trio. But take this with a grain of salt as most additions might just be vehicles for a modern presentation of the same story. Some of them don’t contradict the original events in any way and merely expand on it.
On the other hand, certain characters exhibit stronger drives than before, impacting certain events.
Barret mistrusts Cloud more which leads to their hideout being closed off to him.
Cloud displays an increased focus on Tifa when they first meet in chapter 3 as well as in Evergreen Park where he chases after her instead of Aerith. It’s possible that this is caused in part by Aerith priming Cloud by giving him the yellow flower, talking about a reunion, and telling him to give it to his girlfriend.
His protector instinct also has him jumping out of the moving train with a hesitating Tifa in his arms instead of just following her lead as shown in the original.
Speaking of, Tifa shows more guts to try and talk to Cloud about when exactly they’ve met last. She’s more inquisitive in general.
Lastly, Jessie is seriously thirsty for Cloud, even if most of it is just her having fun. Wedge also grows much closer to Cloud over time and appoints him his bro, just like Johnny does.
“Every step that is taking Aerith further from the path” could mean 2 things:
Either she feels that each new attempt at changing the past brings her further from her initial goal…
…or each change during a single attempt increases the difference to the original timeline known to her.
But why does Aerith need to relearn about the Whispers every time while retaining everything else? Each new attempt doesn’t need to start at the beginning. Only before an event she’d like to handle differently, which seems to be after the church in chapter 8. This leaves everything before that intact. The events in the church might even be her second attempt after failing in chapter 2 the first time. This approach sounds a lot like chapter select, doesn’t it? As if we’re manipulating the timeline just as Aerith does, just with different intentions, like collecting missed objects or getting different dresses, quest lines, or resolution scenes.
Defiers of Destiny
But how and why did this whole convoluted mess even start?
Either Aerith witnessed the end of the world or found the preordained destiny somewhere in the Lifestream. However, there’s never any indication towards the Lifestream containing information from the future. In any case, the end of the world is most likely caused by Jenova’s complete corruption of the Lifestream. The planet contains this corruption, preventing Sephiroth from escaping the planet, and dies as a result but saves the cosmic Lifestream and other planets from sharing its dark fate. Jenova’s cycle of consuming a planet's life energy and then traveling to the next has to be stopped, which is why Aerith needs to stop and eradicate Sephiroth and with him Jenova once and for all.
Unfortunately, Cloud is caught in the middle of this. Sephiroth wants to corrupt him, too, in order to convert him to his ally in his quest.
Sephiroth: “Cloud, lend me your strength. Let us defy destiny… together.”
Conversely, Aerith wants to heal Cloud and bring out his true self and be free from Sephiroth and Jenova, just like the planet. We see this in the original game multiple times already. But Cloud is not the only one who she needs to heal and prepare for saving the planet for good. She needs to heal everyone involved, to prepare them for their battles and prevent their souls from becoming corrupted in the future. She needs as much uncorrupted Lifestream energy on her side as possible.
Starting from chapter 8, she keeps trying to break Cloud’s shell and lift his spirits. With helping him with the mercenary work in sector 5, the high fives in the collapsed expressway which concludes in the coliseum, complimenting him, and implicitly bringing him closer to his childhood friend, who will eventually help him fully heal.
She gives Tifa hope by subtly nudging Cloud towards her, which results in a stronger connection between the two. We see this multiple times across the game. Also compare their resolution scenes. Aerith tells Cloud to not fall in love with her, while he and Tifa share a very important bonding moment, partly made possible by him watching Barret do the same. Aerith also makes sure Tifa can return to her bar once more to come to terms with this tragedy. It’s no coincidence that a somber version of Tifa’s theme is playing during that section. That’s why she showed Cloud that secret passage earlier, to ensure their return to sector 7.
In the same vein, Barret gets to see Wedge alive thanks to their return to 7th Heaven, which lifts his spirits. Furthermore, Aerith’s influence on Marlene allows for a deeper connection between her and her daddy, as we see in Marlene’s ending scene. This connection gives both Barret and Marlene strength for their tasks ahead.
Red XIII is more familiar and connected to the planet than most other sentient life forms, mostly thanks to his heritage and Bugenhagen. Recruiting him as an ally as soon as possible is therefore crucial to Aerith’s quest, which she does by granting him possibly the same knowledge she has. She also needs someone to guide the group in case the inevitable still happens.
Wedge always wanted to make a difference, to have his actions matter. With Aerith’s encouragement to convince the guards to open the gate to sector 6, she grants him that wish. Furthermore, his drive to make a difference will help them in the Shinra building and bolster Barret’s morale as well. Aerith is in general all about making the best with the time we have as seen during her motivational speech to Wedge and her talk with Cloud in her resolution scene.
She keeps telling herself and the others that the future has not been written yet.
Aerith: “The future isn’t… set in stone.” (chapter 10)
Aerith: “The future is always a blank page” (chapter 18)
We have to do our best with the little time we have to reshape our future for a better tomorrow.
Remake the future
With all that being said, we now have a clear understanding about the role of both the Whispers and Aerith. At some point after Advent Children, Aerith decides to insert herself into the planet’s memory and change the past to reset its future and thus potentially save it. This is plausible because she only instills her knowledge into other souls in the Lifestream according to the Lifestream: White chapters and not living beings.
The complete accumulation of knowledge and memories of all prior events and lifeforms has already been committed to the Lifestream. However, the Planet won’t allow any changes to its state. That’s why the Whispers—the cries of the planet—try their hardest to correct or even prevent all changes that would alter the existing flow of memory in the Lifestream. This means that “fate” is merely an accumulation of events, committed to the planet’s memory, which we’re reliving in this first part of the Remake series.
The planet wants to preserve this future that’s already set in stone…
Aerith: “The future isn’t… set in stone.”
Fine… set in spirit energy; and thus tries to stop anyone from changing it. This is why they form a dome around Midgar, to prevent the agents of change to proceed in the story. However, Sephiroth cuts a tear into it, creating a passage to a place outside of the timeline and thus also outside of fate, the Lifestream’s memory—also called Singularity. This might be the reason why our party suddenly becomes much more powerful and skilled in battle. The singularity’s timelessness might grant the party their combined prowess from their entire timeline stored within the Lifestream’s memory. Aerith also might have had a hand this.
The Whisper Harbinger’s enemy intel description—which describes the Whispers as a whole—receives a deeper meaning with this hypothesis applied: “The threads of time and space that shape the planet’s fate” therefore stands for the planet’s memory of its history, which it tries to preserve, as mentioned before.
It’s possible that Aerith—and Sephiroth—decide to start changing the past exactly 7 seconds before the end of the world. When the world ends, neither of them would be able to change anything anymore. Remember Sephiroth’s line about the planet and its children:
Sephiroth: “All born are bound to her. Should this world be unmade, so too shall her children.” (Chapter 18)
If the planet dies, all life on it does, too. There’s also this line from the 1st encounter with Sephiroth:
Sephiroth: “Our beloved planet is dying. Slowly. Silently. Painfully.” (chapter 2)
It’s not dying for at least another 500 years, so he must be talking about the slow corruption of the Lifestream without the possibility to achieve his goals, which leads to the planet’s death.
Sephiroth: “Were the planet to die, so many things would be lost. […] That which binds us together would be no more. And I would be loath to live in such a world.”
Here, Sephiroth refers to all the memories—which the Lifestream is made of—that would cease to exist when the planet dies before he can gather it all and travel the cosmos with it. This includes his bond to Cloud which would leave Sephiroth untethered and trapped in the negative Lifestream.
Also remember this line from Sephiroth at the Edge of Creation after Cloud was about to have another vision of the future.
Sephiroth: “Careful now. That which lies ahead… does not yet exist. Our world will become a part of it… one day. But I… will not end.”
Since the Whispers are not able to interfere anymore, the Lifestream’s memory after leaving Midgar has been made obsolete and can now be rewritten. Cloud’s vision therefore depicts an event within that obsolete future while their new future does not yet exist and has yet to be written. In this new future, Sephiroth does not intend to end as he would have in the previous version. Anyway, more on Sephiroth in a future video.
Now remember Red XIII’s explanation about the preordained flow of the planet, from inception to oblivion. From its birth to its demise. Its whole history has therefore already been written. The Japanese version of his line, which says that the planet is about to lose its energy, also fits into our theory that the world of the living is 7 seconds away from death. Remember, time flows differently in the Lifestream, so it’s perfectly possible to go through the whole Midgar segment, which spans roughly 5 days, before those 7 seconds run out on the surface.
Aerith’s explanation about Sephiroth at the end of the highway also makes more sense now:
Aerith: “[…] he’d do everything in his power to protect and preserve it. But this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. There’s no greater threat to the planet than him.”
Sephiroth wants to preserve the planet, but only to use it as his vessel and to keep on living indefinitely by traveling the cosmos, as Jenova did before him. That’s why he’s still a threat. Therefore, both future Aerith and Sephiroth, who still retain their individuality within the Lifestream, need to start changing its memories before the journey’s starting point: Cloud and Aerith’s fateful meeting in sector 8. Aerith and Sephiroth, 2 opposing forces battling for the planet’s fate, with Sephiroth representing Jenova, corruption, and death and Aerith representing the Cetra, healing, and life.
With that in mind, Eligor’s ability to foresee future events, like the Plate Fall, might stem from its ability to read the Lifestream. While searching for souls with negative emotions within it, it might also see future events due to the game taking place within the Lifestream’s memory.
The planet being about to perish in 7 seconds would also explain why the flowers are unable to communicate. They only exist in its memory, like the events in this game, and thus cannot communicate anymore. After successfully remaking history and making the future into a blank slate, flowers bloom on the surface once more and are now able to say what they need to.
Defeating Sephiroth and the Whispers causes the changed past to overwrite reality to the point after leaving Midgar, allowing for a new beginning to take place. In other words, the planet’s future, which already happened, is wiped clean and the present adapts to the changed past, starting with the Whispers exploding into Zack’s face.
How is this possible? Lifeforms dissolve into and Life is created from Lifestream.
Memories can also be altered through Lifestream which itself is an accumulation of memories. That’s all the planet needs to reshape and adapt reality to the changes made to its own memory. Kind of like Cloud’s reality was reshaped through his messed-up memories due to the trauma before he reached Midgar, which makes Zack now living so poignant.
But wouldn’t the planet be able to just rewrite reality at any point in time? Not quite. This is like an emergency reaction to prevent a catastrophic paradox. A changed past within the Lifestream that doesn’t coincide with reality anymore is an unacceptable anomaly which has to be resolved. Resetting reality in any other situation would lead to unknown results and most likely cause irreparable damage, making the planet worse off than before.
Now, for this reset to work, the planet uses all Lifestream energy of memories post Midgar, which is now rendered obsolete and paradoxical, to recreate the result of our changes up to defeating the Whispers in the world of the living—on the surface of the planet. However, the energy and memories used for this great reset still exist, which is why we believe that many events will still play out in a similar fashion due to this residual imprint, so to speak.
There’s also still the corrupted part of the Lifestream, which might not even be usable for this reset and would therefore contribute to a similar chain of events, as the forces within aim to largely replicate Sephiroth’s and Jenova’s will and to emerge victorious this time.
To conclude this elaborate analysis, allow me to condense this convoluted mess into a concise explanation.
This first game happens within the Lifestream’s memory.
The souls of Aerith and Sephiroth reside within the Lifestream as separate, unmerged entities and try to change the past by injecting themselves into the memories of the original game’s events in Midgar. In there, both of them attempt to manipulate the events and shape the future to their preference.
This might also explain their newfound abilities, like how Aerith makes her staff magically disappear3 and those weird glitches, like Sephiroth stopping Aerith, Aerith transferring memories, or even some of the Sephiroth apparitions, teleportations, and feathers. Other inconsistencies could also be explained away with this, like the yellow flower disappearing after Tifa receives it, Cloud’s sword shifting in and out of reality and changing positions, the pews vanishing before the battle against Reno in the church and returning again in chapter 14 and many, many more.
Anyway, after defeating the Whispers, the changes are then applied to reality to resolve the paradox which resets the future. A second chance for Aerith, Sephiroth and the planet. This is the reason why Aerith is the utmost important character in the Final Fantasy VII Remake story. She’s the ultimate healer and the key to the planet’s survival, granted through a new and unknown future. A future in which the characters won’t be their original selves anymore because they now are literally changed beings compared to their former memories in the Lifestream:
Aerith: “If we succeed… if we win… we’ll be changing ourselves.” (chapter 18, expressway)
Aerith: “I just want to do everything in my power to help. All of you... And the planet.” (chapter 17, Aerith’s room)
And with that, the third and last part of Aerith’s Secret is concluded.
I hope we succeeded in winning you over to this crazy conclusion of our in-depth analysis about Aerith and her new role in the Final Fantasy VII Remake. We know that this last segment sounds nuts and makes it seem like Vyzz lost all his marbles and sanity. Even the analyst himself isn’t entirely convinced, but it’s still the most plausible scenario to him thus far as other conclusions would clash with other pieces of evidence.
To be fair, many of those conclusions are still rather speculative, even when derived from evidence within the game itself. And while we aim to build on these conclusions in future videos, it’s still possible that new findings and discoveries will refine or even change what we presented here.
Alright, do you have any questions, suggestions, counterpoints, or criticisms? Let your voice be heard in the comments or on our Discord server!
Huge thanks to the whole Final Fantasy VII Remake community whose findings helped with refining our understanding of Aerith and her role in this gigantic Remake project.
Peeps Nibbles (additional ideas)
Scholars of the Lifestream (Discord)
And with that being said, thank you so much for joining us on this incredible journey through the world of Final Fantasy VII. We hope to see you again in the next analysis.
Stay safe and take care!
Kutakuma, signing off.
This has not been officially confirmed anywhere, but it’s a good guess as that’s where she starts to behave differently compared to the original game.
This short story was written by Benny Matsuno for the official FFVII Ultimania Omega guidebook. While it was never officially released outside of Japan, fans have taken it upon themselves to translate it into English, like thelifestream.net and the Shinra Archeology Department. While its canonicity is debatable, Aerith’s sentiments about Cloud are similar to the ones described in the Lifestream White chapters in the novel On the Way to a Smile which is considered canon.
This detail is now unfortunately irrelevant as Yuffie lets her shuriken disappear into nothingness in Episode INTERmission, too, and she certainly has no special memory powers.