South of Midnightopens with player-character Hazel packing her things in the middle of a major storm. Hazel is soon joined by her mother, Lacey, who asks her to check on the neighbors. While Hazel is doing just that, her home is swept away in a flood, with her mother trapped inside.Hazel chases after her motherbut falls into the water and loses sight of her as she’s swept downstream.
The rest ofSouth of Midnight’s runtime is spent trying to track down Hazel’s mother, a journey that takes players from one dreamlike biome to the next, and one that puts them face to face with a bevy of larger-than-life creatures inspired by American Deep South folklore. At around the 10-12-hour mark, players should reach the finale ofSouth of Midnight’s emotive journey.
The Ending of South of Midnight’s Story Explained
Finding Hazel’s Mother
After an arduous journey that saw Hazel uncover her innate magical Weaving abilities and battle a series of traumatized monsters, she finally discovers that her mother has been taken byKooshma, King of Dreams and Nightmares, who has an insatiable hunger that can only be kept at bay by feasting on the most emotionally-charged dreams.
To get her mother back, Hazel tracks down Roux, Kooshma’s right-hand man. Upon finding him, Roux presents Hazel with a deal. If he takes Hazel to her mother, she needs to do him a favor. She reluctantly accepts and is transported back to the start of her journey, before she gained her Weaving powers.
Upon seeing her mother get swept away by the flood again, Hazel realizes that she wasn’t actually transported back in time, but instead placed inside an elaborate projection. Upon breaking Roux’s projection, the trickster agrees to actually take Hazel to her mother.
Defeating The King of Dreams and Nightmares
Hazel is teleported to the heart ofKooshma’s realm, where her mother is stuck reliving the painful moment where she thought her daughter had died while trying to rescue her. Hazel manages to break her mother free from the cycle, which catches the attention of the ethereal Kooshma. Hazel manages to drain Kooshma’s energy by destroying his Haints, finally freeing her mother for good.
While Lacey is sent back to Earth, Hazel is teleported once more, this time to Roux’s abode. Before he allows Hazel to reunite with her mother, he cashes in his favor, which is to give her grandmother Bunny a magical hairbrush that will transport her to Kooshma’s realm.
Roux reveals that Bunny is a False Stitcher, someone who wasn’t chosen naturally to bea Weaver, and who instead gained magical abilities by killing creatures and experimenting on them. Bunny has spent decades trying to bring back her daughter Cherie, who drowned accidentally when she was a young child.
Tying Up Loose Ends
After returning to the real-world and briefly embracing her mother, Hazel sets off for one final confrontation with a monster. She walks into Bunny’s mansion and sees that another one of her plans to resurrect Cherie has failed, which she blames on Hazel. After exclaiming that the dead can’t be brought back, Hazel places the hairbrush on a nearby chair and turns to leave.
The hairbrush is revealed to have been Cherie’s when she was a child, and as Bunny’s emotions begin to overwhelm her, Roux appears in the doorway behind her. Roux says he can take Bunny to be with her daughter, and though it won’t be real, it’ll feel like it is. Bunny agrees, and the two disappear into a shadowy portal.
The mansion suddenly begins to collapse, and Hazel manages to escape just as its final beam falls to the ground. Lacey pulls up in a car and dashes to her daughter’s side. Hazel says she has a lot to tell her, Lacey says she has the time to hear it, and the two embrace.
South of Midnight’s post-credits sceneshows Hazel sitting atop one of the Benjy Tree’s branches, finishing her retelling of the game’s story to Crouton and Catfish. She then says that she’s off to meet Lacey and Laurent for dinner, and she glides out of frame.
