Silent Hill 2 Remake completely overshadowed the original game in terms of providing strikingly gorgeous visuals, an immersive atmosphere, heavily detailed visuals of dread, filth, and grime, and a set of absorbing & heart-rending unique endings. These endings satiate the thirst for drama, misery, and closure that the fans of the original Silent Hill 2 must have felt due to its singular ending. We reviewed each ending & ranked them based on being the least to most saddening ones.
Each ending in the Silent Hill 2 remake is like a movie of its own as it makes you rage with sadness, root for the bad guy, and feel a ton of other emotions that you’ve never felt before. Overall, you’re going to have your heart operating at its 100% emotional efficiency while watching these endings.
Silent Hill 2 Remake Endings Ranked on the basis of least to most Sadness inducing
8. Dog ending
James enters a mysterious control room, aims the gun at the operator, and asks him to reveal his identity. The chair turns in James’s direction, and the operator’s identity is revealed; it’s a cute Shiba Inu dog wearing a headset and looking all serious & administrative, like a security & surveillance guy. Forget sad; the dog ending is the funniest ending out of all other endings. There’s a few seconds worth of an intense trance-state-like staring competition between James and the dog – it is a goofy, absurd, and unintentionally funny visual that is joyous enough to dissolve all the grimy & melancholic vibe of the Silent Hill 2 remake.
7. UFO ending
James looks up at the skies after coming out of his house, with pure anticipation and witnesses a bizarre swirl of lights beaming more intensely with each passing second; he covers his face till the lights die down. James sees a lookalike of himself, emerging from what looks like a beam of light coming from a UFO. The lookalike is actually James from the original Silent Hill 2. The original James renders the remake James unconscious with some help from his alien friend and begins to search for his Mary in the remake version of Silent Hill. The entire scenario takes place in a black-and-white visual aesthetic, making everything look a little too dramatic & serious than it actually is.
The original Silent Hill 2 James has a devilishly creepy smile plastered on his face, which makes the UFO ending look more spooky & idiosyncratic than saddening.
6. Rebirth ending
The Rebirth ending shows James rowing a boat, spearing through a dense fog, and on his way to the dreadful but miraculous town of Silent Hill. James can be seen talking about the holy gods of Silent Hill and how they bless their devotees with spiritual power, that could possibly bring back Mary Sunderland to life. James’s action suggests that he’s trying to redeem the evil sin of murder he committed back in the hospital by bringing back Mary to life via magical spells. It’s a good deed that James is doing, but there’s still a hint of arrogance & shamelessness in his demeanor as he’s trying to cover up his evil instead of repenting for it.
You are going to feel both happy & sad while watching the Rebirth ending. The happy part is that James’s heart is in the right place, and the sad part is that he thinks that even the murder of your wife is redeemable. It feels sad because humanity has failed in this ending.
5. Bliss ending
The Bliss ending symbolizes James’s delusion of the fact that everything’s fine and just the way it was before Mary’s untimely demise. In this ending, James can be seen playing an old tape that he recorded of Mary, in which she could be seen praising the serenity & inexplicably divine visuals of Silent Hill and asking James to bring her back there someday again in the future. The lines between reality & imagination seem to have been blurred in the Bliss ending, as James is imagining himself to be talking to the taped footage of Mary, and his pensive & grave look in the tape reveals that it’s all a blur of his imagination.
You cannot help but feel pity over James’s depressed & manic mental state, which is crumbling day by day, so much so that he is ready to replace Mary’s existence with a pre-recorded tape of her as if everything’s hunky-dory and he didn’t commit a crime. Seeing a criminal like James go crazy might or might not evoke sympathy or empathy in you, as he’s not a man of virtue.
4. Stillness ending
In the stillness ending, we can see James sitting in his car and feeling guilty, and suddenly he begins imagining Mary’s spirit telling him, “It’s ok,” and giving him a comforting smile through the car’s rearview mirror. The snobbish arrogance of James spoke to him by taking on the form of Mary and forgiving himself for the heinous crime he committed back at the hospital. James is talking to the imaginary Mary and trying to bring crocodile tears to his eyes to feel the immense burden of guilt artificially that he should be feeling organically.
In the end, you can see James looking at Mary’s letter—it suggests that James has forgiven himself already and is ready to begin his life’s next chapter. How pathetic, evil, greedy, and self-righteous could a man get? The answer is James Sunderland. While watching the stillness ending, you are going to feel more angered than sad about seeing James’s superiority complex and his zero accountability.
3. In the Water ending
In the “In the Water” ending, you can see James is sitting inside his car, and it’s raining outside, he is repenting for the murder of his wife and is finally able to loathe himself and cry for his sins. The raindrops sliding from the windshield are a beautiful metaphor for James’ tears. After talking to himself for a few seconds, James drives off into the lake and commits suicide. This ending shows a completely new and morally responsible side of James that you might be able to forgive finally. James lost his life but gained back his humanity and a newfound love & respect in the hearts of the Silent Hill 2 fans for himself.
The “In the Water” ending genuinely makes you feel sad for the first time for the anti-hero, aka James Sunderland. You can finally see a sliver of heart, innocence, moral fiber, and selfishness in James’s demeanor. Seeing a deceitful sinner being struck by the lightning of justice is a satisfying sight to behold, thanks to this ending.
2. Maria ending
In the Maria ending, you can see James submitting to Maria’s seductively infectious charms and his insatiable lust that only grew with Mary’s death. Maria hands James Mary’s letter and arrogantly smirks, knowing that Mary’s the forgotten trend, and she’s the current trend in James’s life. As James walks towards his car, he can hear Maria coughing and tells her to do something about that cough—it indicates that the vicious loop of dread, misery, and crime has begun in James’s life.
The Maria ending conveys a strong message, i.e., “No matter how hard he tries, there’s going to be a dearth of sex & romance in his life, sanctioned by the untimely deaths of his sexual partners if James doesn’t lead a celibate life of being faithful to Mary’s memories, repenting and grieving till his last breath.” You are going to feel disgusted by James’s lustful behavior but also feel a sense of justice when you see Maria coughing and James being stuck in a wretched time loop.
1. Leave ending
In the “leave” ending, Mary Shepherd Sunderland is lying on the hospital bed, completely depleted of the vital force, vibrancy, and feminine vivaciousness that her husband, James Sunderland, adored her for. Her face is pale, lifeless, and has an almost flaky texture that indicates her rapidly deteriorating health. She is apologizing to James for not being there for her. It’s heartwarming to see how selfless, motherly, and nurturing her demeanor is. Mary is the ultimate matriarchal force shown in Silent Hill 2, which represents all of our mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends who help us without expecting a penny’s worth of something in return.
This ending depicts Mary’s sadness in her last days when she noticed her husband’s declining attraction & love towards her. James’s impatience, unsupportive nature, juvenile & immature heart, and impure love make the ‘leave’ ending, the most saddening one out of all endings from the Silent Hill 2 remake.
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