Does Shadow die?

[Onion Knight]

I haven't finished the game, so I'm wondering to anyone who beat the game, was Shadow actually seen in the tower at the moment it went down? Could it be speculated that he lived? He's one of my favorite characters, so I just wanted to know.

[rshadowkirby]

the thing about shadow is

when your getting off the floating continent and theres a time limit you HAVE to reach the airship but NOT go in it instead you have to pick the option of waiting

in the last 5 seconds shadow will come and everyone will board the airship and flee

if you dont do this then yes shadow is dead and you cant recruit him in the world of ruin (and youll see relm where shadow is supposed to be or something)

[BrilliantCataclysm]

Shadow actually die from what I know. In fact before the tower collapse he say something that hint this, at least to me. Also like rshadowkirby he can die on the Floating Continent if you don't wait for him to join with the rest of the party.

[rshadowkirby]

OH my bad

i thought he meant for recruiting purposes

yea at the end of the game im pretty sure shadow dies (as like an act of repentance for his past or something)

[POS Industries]

Maybe, maybe not. In the original SNES translation, he states "Baram! I'm going to stop running! I'm going to begin all over again..." while in the GBA version the line is "Baram... It looks like I can finally stop running... Come and find me, all right?" Now, the GBA line is a more direct translation than the SNES one, but I feel that the key line in both is about him deciding to stop running, about finally overcoming his fear of his past catching up with him.

With that in mind, I prefer to interpret it as the death of the Shadow persona more than the death of the man behind the mask. For years he'd been wearing this disguise to hide from his past, burying his own emotions as he fled from the guilt over his crimes and what he allowed to happen to Baram, ironically doing far more horrible things as Shadow than he ever did as Clyde Arrowny.

So at the same time, he could never truly reconcile both of his identities. Just as he couldn't face the responsibilities he'd abandoned as Clyde, he couldn't just pull off the mask and let the atrocities he'd committed as Shadow become part of the actual human being under the ninja suit. He certainly couldn't bear to let Relm know what truly became of her father.

Thus, in facing his past as Clyde head on, so too did Shadow have to die to allow Clyde to begin again. That is, assuming he could survive the ride down a crumbling skyscraper, but at that point he'd already survived an airship getting blown apart in the sky and all its contents being scattered to the winds a year prior, so I wouldn't put it past him.

It's worth noting that, if you don't wait for him on the Floating Continent, it's not known specifically how Shadow dies, and since the rubble from the continent was mostly reused as materials for Kefka's Tower, there's any number of things involved in that process that could have killed him, like the psychotic clown in the middle of it that just ascended to godhood and isn't all that happy that Shadow decided to jump in and start pushing his statues around.

[UltimaFox]

I completely agree with you, POS. I only have played the GBA version, and even with the more direct translation, it seems more of a transition back to a more virtuous former self, as opposed to what he was at the begining of the game.

[Onion Knight]

That's what I thought. Thanks for this small discussion.