It’s hard to summarize what an experience you’re in for with Alan Wake 2. The game takes the essence of its 2010 predecessor and runs it through Alan’s reality-altering typewriter to deliver some of the most complex and astounding narrative, survival horror, and music and sound design elements you’ll see in gaming. And once again, the ending is thought-provoking.
Although you’ll see some familiar characters popping up in Bright Falls, Alan Wake 2 is also different in that it’s all now connected to Control, and Alan Wake and Saga Anderson are co-protagonists involved in this extradimensional conflict. There’s tons of story content in between all the Taken combat, all leading to this ending here.
Major story spoilers for the ending of Alan Wake 2 are discussed below.
Does Alan Wake 2 Have Multiple Endings?
Although Alan Wake 2 allows you to alternate between characters Saga Anderson and Alan Wake at your own pace throughout the gameplay, their storylines ultimately converge into one linear path toward the end.
It may seem like you’re involved in a branching narrative, but it all leads to the same shocking and mind-blowing finale, no matter what order you complete the Return and Initiation chapters. Dialogue options likewise don’t play into any multiple endings.
Therefore, only one true ending to Alan Wake 2 exists, as well as an additional post-credits scene. So stick around and speed up those credits.
Remedy announced there will indeed be a New Game Plus mode for Alan Wake 2 called ‘The Final Draft,‘ which is expected to include an alternate ending along with a new Nightmare Mode difficulty and more manuscript pages.
What Chapter Initiates The Ending?
The point of no return in Alan Wake 2 comes in the latter part of Return 6 – Scratch. Once Scratch escapes his cell at Bright Falls Sheriff’s Station and kills Jaakko Koskela, you’ll engage in a brief boss battle outside with the Dark Presence powering FBC containment array generators to banish him.
Afterward, you’ll have to speak with agents Kiran Estevez and Alex Casey in Tim Breaker’s office. Your next objective will be to devise a plan to get Scratch.
This involves going through the dialogue conversations with Casey and Estevez and consulting Saga’s Mind Place for any Case Board and Profiling Desk updates to draw the correct conclusion with all the information and build up the plan.
When you’re ready to reveal your plan to Estevez, you’ll get a prompt to save and a message stating that this is the beginning of the end of the game.
So be sure to find all the collectibles and visit all the areas you can up to this point, especially finding a few hidden plot points like the identity of Mayor Setter.
For the best experience and narrative flow, catch up and complete all of Alan’s Initiation chapters before starting Return 6 to get the smoothest transition into the end of the game.
Otherwise, there will be a cliffhanger mid-Return 7, and you’ll be sent back to the Dark Place to finish Alan’s remaining chapters.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to speak to Ilmo Koskela at the station. He won’t be too far from the agents, remaining in the nearby hallway by his deceased brother.
This conversation will reveal another shocking twist about the origins of the Cult of the Tree, their goals, and that they’re not the evil, twisted group you suspected.
What Happens In The Final Chapters?
Before the discussion of the ending scene can even begin, it’s helpful to understand what happens in the chapters Initiation 9, Return 7, Return 8, and Return 9. The plot twists start coming in one after another, and things take a very interesting and mind-bending turn building up to the final scene.
Initiation 9 – Gone
Initiation 9 marks Alan’s final visit to the Parliament Tower apartment in the Dark Place. To enter it, you first need to complete a small puzzle inside the studio with your Angel Lamp to arrive at the basement and collect Alice’s photos of the light switch and a Bullet of Light to place at the plaza statue outside Parliament Tower.
What you discover at the apartment is one last bittersweet photo exhibit from Alice, revealing that she took her own life. This revelation triggers a live-action sequence where Alan barges through a spiral door into the Writer’s Room and shoots who he believes to be Scratch working on the manuscript of Return…
Only to then realize it’s all been a loop this entire time, and what he’s only accomplished is killing a previous version of himself trying to fix the manuscript. And he also comes to terms with the fact that he’s been the one haunting Alice, not Scratch.
Return 7 – Summoning
Return 7 is called Summoning, and it’s all about putting the plan into action and using the art of live music, quickly put together by the Anderson Brothers, as a ritual to summon Scratch to Cauldron Lake to trap him in a containment cage using special state-of-the-art FBC light beams.
First, Saga will clear hordes of Taken before activating the Clicker and advancing to what feels like the final boss fight in the game against Alan’s possessed form.
This chapter results in three crucial endgame twists:
- Scratch and Alan Wake were one fused entity when they emerged from the Dark Place after the Overlap in Return 2.
- Scratch takes Alex Casey as his new form after an explosion destroys the cage and the light fails to contain the Dark Presence.
- Saga gets thrown into Cauldron Lake by the Scratch-possessed Casey and thereby gets transported to the Dark Place! And Casey now has the Clicker.
Return 8 – Deerfest
Alan, now Scratch-free, equips himself with all the available weapons and his flashlight and drives to Bright Falls in the darkness, arriving at an Overlap. This sends him into a daytime version of Bright Falls, where the Deerfest is in full swing.
All the citizens are wearing deer masks, and everyone is celebrating the success of Alan’s new novel, Return, even speaking about the narrative in a meta way. When he picks up a personal copy of Return to figure out the ending to try and rewrite it, the Dark Presence ends the facade of the parade and sends everyone in Bright Falls out to get Alan.
This leads to one final climactic chase sequence by the Dark Presence of the Scratch-possessed Casey in the Valhalla Nursing Home Wellness Center, ending with Alan being rescued by none other than Rose, who lets him into the safe haven of the nursing home.
Ahti then welcomes Alan to enter the gray spiral door to Room 306 (precisely the one Saga was barred from earlier in Return 5), which turns out to be the Writer’s Room where Alan has been working on Return the entire time. From there, the game transitions to Saga’s perspective in the Dark Place.
Return 9 – Come Home
In another twist, Saga isn’t immediately in the Dark Place. She’s instead become trapped inside her Mind Place, the Dark Presence manifesting inside it and pitting her against her own evil double dubbed “Other Saga,” which is overwhelming her profiling abilities and making her believe she’s a terrible mother, partner, and detective.
After Saga fights off the darkness with her flashlight inside the Mind Place to unveil evidence that can return the Case Board to its usual healthy crime-solving state, she is free to exit and proceed to the familiar New York streets of the Dark Place.
Here, she receives instructions from a payphone caller to go to Parliament Tower Plaza and retrieve the items Alan was asked to store in the shoebox at the statue.
This is undoubtedly Alice Wake’s voice speaking to Saga, hinting she’s still there to help things along.
Sheriff Tim Breaker will also give Saga one final manuscript piece that will allow her to get to where she needs to go using a unique route that Mr. Door can travel through.
From that point, there’s a lot of communication between Alan and Saga about what the ending to Return needs to be, all done through profiling Alan in the Mind Place.
Finally, Saga takes the items in the shoebox (the Clicker light switch and the Bullet of Light), crosses into the Overlap, and arrives at Alan’s side in the Writer’s Room. This brings us to the final scene in the game before the credits.
The Ending Scene, Explained
Alan is ready with the ending to the story he and Saga both agreed on, noting that a hero has to die, and just in time before the Scratch form of Casey enters the room.
Alan wrote it so that he gets the hero’s sacrifice by Scratch leaving Casey’s body to re-enter Alan’s and finishing it once and for all with Saga’s help.
The rewritten ending activates as soon as Saga presses the light switch. When Scratch is back in Alan, Saga loads her pistol and fires the Bullet of Light straight into Alan’s head, with the Dark Presence of Scratch seen floating out behind Alan.
The glow soon leaves the bullet hole, Alan lies dead in the chair, and Casey remarks if it’s finally over.
Logan’s Fate
The big question that remains: Is it done? Is reality back as it should be? The ultimate test for it is to see if Saga’s daughter, Logan, is alive.
Remember, Saga’s primary motivation throughout the story is ensuring her daughter stays alive when the rewritten reality brought on by Return is making everyone believe she’d died.
Saga immediately dials Logan on her phone but to no avail. Logan doesn’t answer, and the line continues ringing into the credits.
While Logan could still be alive and maybe too preoccupied with an activity to answer or is just not by her phone, it’s impossible to know whether Saga and Alan’s new ending remedied things. It’s all left up in the air in one gutting cliffhanger ending to Alan Wake 2’s narrative.
Post-Credits Scene, Explained
The post-credits scene offers a surprise twist with Alice Wake. In one final recorded video message for her husband, Alice reveals that she’s alive.
She led Alan astray about her death to ensure he’d be led on the correct path to escaping the Dark Place. Furthermore, she states that she’s been traveling to the Dark Place on her own accord to help Alan (in a way confirming that she was the one talking to Saga through the payphone).
She also speaks about the haunting, revealing all her memories of the 2010 Cauldron Lake AWE returned after a visit with an organization. It’s implied to be none other than the Federal Bureau of Control and most likely inside their New York HQ, the Oldest House. It’s also evident in her emails with Barry, who confirms they were in contact with the FBC.
Alice thinks it’s time for all the destruction to end. Alan has been endlessly trying to destroy Scratch, has already destroyed multiple versions of himself in the loop, and has had Saga kill him to get to where he is now. She believes in a new strategy, what she calls “Ascension.”
This prompts Alan to wake up in the Writer’s Room chair alive. And, to end things on an even more perplexing and unresolved note, his final line is, “It’s not a loop — it’s a spiral.”
The spiral symbols on the doors perhaps allude to this moment.
Like the word ‘parautilitarian’ from Control, ascension sounds like a concept that could be best explained by Dr. Casper Darling. However, the spiral being Alan’s new course correct makes sense, since before, he was in an infinite loop of destruction, and a spiral symbol winds out in a path that can be ascended.
Once again, it seems like what Alice is doing is working, as she’s just helped Alan realize something crucial that will hopefully become clearer to us as we continue his journey. It also tells us that there’s more to come in the fight to restore the balance of reality.