- Narrator: All six Animorphs
The Animorphs defeat the Yeerks on Earth, leading to the collapse of the Yeerk Empire.
Tropes:
- Ironic Episode Title: The final book in the series is titled The Beginning.
- Time Skip: The book has two. One is a year after the defeat of the Yeerks, one two years after that.
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The Surrender
- Bury Your Disabled: It's confirmed that every last one of the Auxiliary Animorphs was killed by Visser One.
- Character Witness: Minutes after being knocked out and having Visser One leave his head, Alloran gets to his hooves and backs the Animorphs against the Andalite fleet bearing down on them.
- Duels Decide Everything: Andalites can challenge their superior officers to a duel if they believe the superior is acting against what they stand for, and if they have the support of a Prince. Ax challenges Captain-Prince Asculan to one such duel with the support of Alloran to get him to comply with the promise to give the Yeerks and the Taxxons the ability to morph into a chosen Earth species. The duel doesn't happen because the Andalite Electorate made the decision for Asculan and gives four morphing cubes to the Animorphs for this purpose.
- Due to the Dead: The Andalites find Rachel's ejected body in orbit and wrap it in a white cloth to give to her teammates and family, who has her cremated. Tobias flies off with the urn.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Rachel's last words in the physical plane are one for Tobias.
- Enlightened Self-Interest: Jake initially gives up on trying to keep his deal with Yeerks and Taxxons when the Andalite military refuses to yield on the matter, feeling that he did all he could, and decides it doesn’t matter if these aliens die. Then Marco points out that it is dangerous to yield to the Andalites in a deal, prompting Jake to realize that showing weakness will set a dangerous precedent, leaving Earth under their thumb indefinitely.
- Face Death with Dignity: Rachel in her final moments alive is full of sorrowful love for the other Animorphs, Tobias most of all. She yells at the Ellimist when he takes her aside for a moment as she's dying, but is calmer when he finishes his story and just asks if she and anything she did mattered.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Tom and his Yeerk are killed when Rachel bites his cobra morph in half with her grizzly bear morph. He remains in her mouth until after she demorphs.
- Is This Thing Still On?: The Animorphs prevent the Andalite fleet from killing them all and razing Earth by transmitting their conversation to the Andalite homeworld and addressing the fleet respectfully, acting like they're welcome allies. Andalite civilians wouldn't stand for the fleet committing genocide on them at that point.
- Jerkass Has a Point: When Visser One surrenders and expects the Animorphs to kill him, Jake states they don’t kill prisoners. Visser One points out the hypocrisy of such a claim after the Animorphs previously destroyed a ground-based Yeerk pool, killing thousands, and also flushed the seventeen thousand defenseless Yeerks on the Pool ship into space despite them not posing a threat.
- Killed Offscreen: Jara Hamee, the founder of the free Hork-Bajir, is killed during the battle on the Pool ship without any Animorph there to witness it.
- Legacy Vessel Naming: The Andalite Dome ship that arrives to Earth is called the Elfangor. Ax is awed, calling it the highest honor a warrior could receive.
- Mercy Kill: Jake concludes he has no real way to save Tom, not while the Yeerk in him has the ambition to betray the empire and escape into the depths of space. To prevent Tom from living the rest of his natural lifespan as a slave far away from Earth, and in an attempt to keep his Yeerk's faction from going on to invade someone else, Jake sends Rachel to kill him instead, dooming them both.
- Pet the Dog: After finally regaining his freedom once Visser One leaves his body, Alloran helps the Animorphs surrender the Pool ship to the Andalite fleet and ensure the Andalites don’t wipe out the Earth. He even helps the Animorphs ensure that their deal to give morphing technology to the Yeerks is honored.
- Rank Up: Ax is promoted from aristh directly to Prince by the Andalite Electorate.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Jake really doesn't like to have to leave the fate of Earth up to the Andalite electorate and the Fleet High Council that is the liaison between it and the Fleet itself. But it turns out that the electorate isn't as moved by revenge or covering the shame of Seerow's Kindness as Asculan is, and they agree to the Animorphs' terms.
- Scaled Up: The Yeerk in Tom morphs to a king cobra in an attempt to kill Rachel. He's able to blind her but an angry grizzly bear is a lot of animal and the amount of venom a cobra can inject isn't enough to make her stop.
- Screw You, Elves!: Jake's speech pointedly underlines to the Fleet that it would be a really bad idea to raze Earth, as they'd arrived to do, while also being a graceful speech praising "Andalite brothers" in a way designed to get the Andalite electorate (who are not nearly as genocidal) on the humans' side.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Jake joined the war to free his brother from the Yeerks. He ends the war by sacrificing Rachel to kill Tom.
- Suicide Mission: Rachel was sent by Jake into the Blade ship to kill Tom first, and disable the Blade ship second. He had no exit plan for her, and told her as such. Facing five Controllers in morph is too much for her, so while she successfully kills Tom, she doesn't manage to damage the consoles enough and is killed shortly afterwards by a Controller in polar bear morph, at which point they remove her body and escape.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: The Yeerks in the Blade ship throw Rachel's body out into space, where the Andalite fleet recovers it and brings it back to Earth.
- Time Stands Still: The Ellimist makes his appearance to Rachel this way, as always. She rages at him and demands to know who he is to jerk them around like he has, and he tells her.
- Tonight, Someone Dies: The tag line on the cover of this book gives away that an Animorph will die.It began with six.
It will end with five... - Villains Want Mercy: Like any Yeerk would, the Yeerk in Tom begs Jake to call off Rachel before she kills him.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Visser One is quite sarcastic about Jake insisting on fair treatment of prisoners like himself when he'd just murdered over seventeen thousand helpless Yeerks. Later, Erek calls out Cassie for trying to justify it, before breaking ties with the Animorphs for good.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In the last book with Rachel's POV, she fully believed that she was a Token Evil Teammate, and some of the others had come to believe it as well by now. (Animorphs: The Answer and this book seem to walk it back a little, so just how affected she is is a bit of Depending on the Author.) When the Ellimist takes her aside, he reassures her."Did I ... did I make a difference? My life, and my ... my death ... was I worth it? Did my life really matter?""Yes. You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered."
The Aftermath
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Cassie makes some suggestion of wanting to get back with Jake a year after the end of the war, but he's too filled with self-loathing and refuses to reconnect with her, putting up a wall between them. Two years after that, she has a new boyfriend, a fellow activist named Ronnie.
- Aliens Love Human Food: Just as Ax had thought should happen all through the series, Andalites capable of morph flock to Earth to try human foods with their human morphs. Humans are able to trade pastries in exchange for some advanced technology.
- And I Must Scream: Esplin 9466 is put in a box the size of a hardcover book equipped with ways to let him hear, "see", and speak, plus a miniature Kandrona generator, during the trial. A prison is built in Kansas that will hold him for the rest of his life, but the conditions are not described.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Each of the Animorphs faces this after the war ends.
- Jake saved Tom by killing him, burned almost every bridge with his allies, and sacrificed thousands to end the war. He's revered like his military heroes, and also a shell of a man who just wants his brother and cousin alive again and wishes he could undo the order to kill helpless prisoners.
- Rachel never has to try to adjust to life without the war or find a solution to her conviction that she's the Token Evil Teammate as she's dead of a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Tobias doesn't have to try to choose between hawk and human (and Andalite) because after Rachel's death, with nothing compelling him to talk to anyone, he retreats into the wilderness and lives as a bird.
- Cassie's morals and sanity survive the war and she's able to push herself into new causes that don't involve violence, but she's apart from her friends, who are broadly worse off.
- Marco becomes a rich and famous wisecracking celebrity like he always wanted. He claims he's happy and babbles a great deal about what he's been doing, but there's visible shallowness in his new life and a distinct lack of mention of his parents, whose welfare has been his primary worry through the series.
- Ax is finally out from under Elfangor's shadow, but he doesn't feel like he's done anything to deserve it and hunts trouble rather than settling into the peace that Andalite warriors are supposed to long for.
- Cliffhanger: Ax's final narrated chapter is him on the hunt for the missing Blade ship. He finds an empty spaceship of unknown origin, with a trace of Earth DNA inside. Despite the danger he senses, he goes to investigate...
- Despair Event Horizon: Jake first crossed it back when he was unable to rescue Tom and his parents. He'd managed to pull himself together but was more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist afterwards and made choices in The Answer that haunt and torment him in peacetime. Without the pressure of intense responsibility he collapses into depression, and while eventually he starts to recover he only feels fully alive again when he finds out about Ax.
- Differing Priorities Breakup: In the previous book Jake proposed to Cassie and she said "ask me in a year". After the first timeskip of a year, she talks to him about ethics with Marco and Ax, knowing that having killed those thousands of Yeerks on the Pool Ship he's sickened with himself. Cassie comes up with a justification that actually could fit in to what he was thinking at the time, but he doesn't want to feel better about his choice and rejects it, claiming Marco's right and he did it because he felt pleasure at their deaths. Cassie, who had been leaning closer to him with soft eyes, stops trying to meet Jake's gaze. This is the true end of their relationship.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: As the last of the Taxxons, Arbron becomes a target for poachers. The poachers manage to kill him, and Marco suspects he let them, but they don't get away with it.
- The Fellowship Has Ended: The Animorphs go their separate ways with the war over. Jake sinks into depression and becomes a morph instructor as he starts to recover, Marco indulges in the celebrity life, Cassie becomes an activist for aliens and the environment, Tobias leaves society with Rachel's urn, and Ax returns to the Andalite homeworld as a war hero, then finds he can't adjust to peace and goes on to fight other battles.
- Mental Health Recovery Arc: Jake is in a terrible place during the first timeskip. He's still depressed in the second but is doing much better by comparison - he hangs out with Marco sometimes and sees Cassie in a friendly context every few months, he wrote a book in order to tell people about Rachel and Tobias, he moved into his own place, and he's taken a job that only he can do and which feels useful.
- Only the Leads Get a Downer Ending: The post-war world is brighter and kinder than the last several books would suggest, but without the war the Animorphs have all but fallen apart. The long-enslaved Hork-Bajir are free and living in Yellowstone, the Yeerks and Taxxons have escaped their bodies and live in other forms, there is peace and trade between humans and Andalites. Eva, Alloran, and other hosts get to live free. But Rachel is dead, Jake is mired in depression and self-hatred and only very slowly starts to recover, Tobias lives as a hawk in isolation, Ax has gone Blood Knight and recklessly pursues trouble, and Marco keeps himself busy and claims happiness but jumps to throw it all away for a suicide mission. Cassie calls herself and Marco the "only two survivors" among the Animorphs, but she's the only one who's managed to move on and make a new life - still trying to save the world, but in a less solitary and self-destructive way than by fighting in a guerilla war - and find love.
- Out of Focus: What the Yeerks do, if all of them become nothlits, what morph(s) they became, where they went, what happened to the homeworld Yeerks or the Council of Thirteen, are all unstated. We just know that they chose Shapeshifter Mode Lock over fighting hopelessly and that the Yeerk Empire is no longer a threat as of the second time skip.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: As promised by the Animorphs, all the remaining Yeerks around Earth (except Esplin 9466) trap themselves in some unspecified morph, and all the Taxxons (except Arbron) trap themselves in anaconda morph.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: All the Animorphs apply, but none more than Jake, who feels responsible for all the deaths that happened during the last battle. The dolphin morph's playful optimism breaks through it and gives him the first joy he's felt in a year, but while he's a bit more clearheaded when he demorphs he's still depressed.Jake's narration: That’s how I felt now, pretty much all the time. Dark. Dull. Slow and stupid. Distracted, but not by anything in particular. Just like there was something else I should be thinking about but I couldn’t recall what it was.
- Turned Off by the Jerkass: Jake deliberately invokes this by rejecting Cassie's attempts to make him feel like less of a monster by telling her no, he really just felt high and thrilled to hurt his enemies. This causes her to stop hinting at getting back together, and she finds a fellow activist during the next Time Skip.
- Unreliable Narrator:
- Marco's narration has him list all the celeb-heavy things he's doing with fame and forcefully insist "And maybe you’re expecting me to say it was all an empty experience, that my life wasn’t all that great, but you know what? I was happy". Certainly he's having fun, but there are various indications of discontent and absolutely no mention of his family or any trauma sticking to him aside from a tendency to spy on Jake as a bird. He also talks about what Cassie is doing racing around still trying to save the world with breezy hyperbole, so it's a little difficult to tell exactly what she's up to.
- When Cassie tries to make Jake feel better about flushing a pool-full of helpless Yeerks, she uses some phrasing that's actually rather similar to some of his thoughts at the time. His narration doesn't mention his thoughts or memories at all when he completely rejects the motivation she presents and says Marco was right, he did it because he took sadistic pleasure in the suffering of his enemies. In fact as the reader saw in the last book, he was sickened by the prospect, then felt an ugly surge of rage and gave the order, then was sickened again - closer to Cassie's idea.
- War Crime Subverts Heroism: When one of the Visser's lawyers tries a distraction tactic saying that Jake himself is also guilty, Jake is stricken, as the accusation hits him where it hurts. Earlier in the book he likens himself to Alloran, who will never not be the Butcher of Hork-Bajir. He's still hailed as a hero by humanity.
- Western Terrorists: Several anti-alien factions crop up on Earth, looking to make enemies of the Andalites and Hork-Bajir.Jake's narration: Many of the worst were religious cults convinced that the presence of alien species on Earth was delaying a hoped-for Armageddon. Some were antigovernment paranoids who had convinced themselves that the Andalites were taking over Earth. Others were sort of latter-day racists who simply needed someone to hate and focused on the Hork-Bajir. Then there were the ecology extremists who just hated anything new and technological.
- Wham Line: Ax's First Officer, an Andalite named Menderash, returns to Earth asking for Jake, saying that Ax is missing and presumed a prisoner of the Blade ship.
The Trap
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: When Jake comes to Marco and it becomes clear that he's not there to hang out, Marco plaintively says "You’re about to ruin my life, aren’t you?" and all his determined pleasure in having a luxurious mansion with seven cars, butler and maids, an airheaded but beautiful girlfriend, and a self-starring TV show falls away. Marco says that every word Jake says is another nail in his coffin because he can't imagine not trying to save Ax.
- Eldritch Starship: Menderash describes the unknown alien vessel as mysteriously empty, but alive. No crew to speak of, but fully operational and able to fire on the Intrepid.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: The rescue mission is officially unsanctioned by the human and Andalite governments. As a result, three Animorphs simply go missing one day with no guarantee they'll ever return, while an experimental Yeerk ship is stolen by unidentified terrorists.
- Height Insult: Marco tries hitting on Jeanne, to no avail. She sardonically offers to redirect him to her cousin who apparently likes short men, in a way that suggests that Marco is particularly short.
- Legacy Vessel Naming: When they reach the Yeerk craft, Menderash mentions that Andalite custom requires they name it before anyone comes aboard. Jake notes that human custom calls every vessel a she, even if it's named after a male. Tobias then describes the ship as <beautiful and dangerous and exciting>. And thus, they name it the Rachel.Marco: She would love it. A scary, deadly, cool looking Yeerk ship on a doomed, suicidal, crazy mission that no one can ever know about? She would love it.
- Loophole Abuse: The Andalites' treaty with the Kelbrid prevents any Andalite from entering Kelbrid space, so Menderash becomes a human nothlit in order to cross the border.
- Lured into a Trap: The Earth DNA detected aboard the alien vessel turns out to be a few strands of polar bear fur, with the only likely source being the human-Controller who killed Rachel. Ax realizes this is a trap meant for an Animorph only seconds before the ship comes alive.
- Mauve Shirt: Jeanne and Santorelli, the two of Jake's students who join the rescue mission. They have bit characterizations, and Jake chose them because they have no close family who would miss them if they never come back.
- Putting the Band Back Together: Played with. Jake recruits Marco and Tobias for the rescue mission, but purposely excludes Cassie, who has managed to rebuild her life after the war and is doing meaningful work. She still offers to come, even though she dreads the thought, but she doesn't argue when Jake tells her to stay.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Menderash traps himself in human morph so he can pilot a Yeerk vessel into Kelbrid space, where Andalites aren't allowed.
- The Smurfette Principle: Jeanne is the one woman to go with Jake. Her entire characterization is that she's willing to come and shoots down Marco when the very first thing he does is hit on her.
- Space Cold War: The Andalites have one with an unknown race called the Kelbrid. Kelbrid space borders Andalite space, and both sides have a treaty that prevents either side from entering each other's territory. The Blade ship escapes into Kelbrid space with Ax, requiring the rescue team to all be humans in a Yeerk ship, else the Kelbrid will start a war.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: Marco is found morphing to lobster to retrieve his keys from a shallow pool. His narration makes it clear that he's bored and wants an excuse to have fun with his morphs these days. Then Jake comes to him with news of Ax's capture, and all of Marco's shallow, celebrity life crashes down and he becomes a soldier again.Marco's narration: In a heartbeat it was as if everything around me turned translucent, like it was all fake, a set created with the help of trick lighting. Now, with the sudden change, it was like I could see right through the walls of my very nice house. Right past old Wetherbee and the silver tray with my Coke. The last three years were magically reduced to a daydream. An old reality emerged from beneath the illusion.
- Underestimating Badassery: Menderash is sure that six humans, five of which are morph-capable, won't be able to get past the two Andalites guarding the ship. He's disgruntled when Tobias uses his Andalite morph to distract them and Marco knocks them out with his gorilla morph.
- Unknown Character: The Kelbrid are so reclusive that no living Andalite knows what one looks like.
- Wham Line: Cassie's final line, after Jake asks her to tell him where Tobias is, forebodes the end of the book.Cassie's narration: I knew I had said good-bye to Jake forever.
The Ending
- And the Adventure Continues: For those who believe the Rachel's crew survive, which one author allows is certainly possible, this is a dark one of those, as Jake and his team would once again be fighting against bad odds.
- The Assimilator: The One can only be described as some sort of Energy Being that assimilates those it deems worthy. It does this to Ax, then expresses the intent to do this to Jake as well.
- Body Horror: The One adds a mouth to Ax's face so it can smile mockingly at the Animorphs.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The rescue team finds themselves facing the Blade ship, now an Eldritch Starship possessed by The One and outgunning them several times over. Letting the Blade ship get away again is not an option, because the Yeerks promise to use their new god's power to reign over the universe. The last line in the book is Jake giving Menderash a simple command:Jake: Full emergency power to the engines. Ram the Blade ship.
- Dark Messiah: Efflit 1318 commands the Blade ship but says he serves at the pleasure of The One Who Is Many, The One Who Is All, who is the seeds of a new empire that will outshine the old. Marco notes that the fanatical insanity is disturbing to see on the face of a Yeerk slave.
- Eldritch Abomination: The One is described by Marco as "every corruption, every evil, and such power that it seemed impossible it could be present in just the narrow confines of the onrushing Blade ship". It can assimilate organic and robotic beings, modify their bodies at a whim, hijack spaceships with its presence, read minds, and it becomes the Yeerks's new god.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: For a minute after encountering the Blade ship, it looks like a standard Animorph mission: Pretend to be Controllers and gain access to a secure location and take the Yeerks down from the inside. And then...
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: Kelbrid space is startlingly devoid of any intelligent life. Even the Kelbrid themselves seem to be missing. The first contact the rescue team gets in months is when the Blade ship finds them.
- Left Hanging: The story ends with no resolution for the remaining Yeerks and The One, or if the heroes will even survive.
- Light Is Not Good: When Efflit puts the One on screen, not just the screen but the whole front of the bridge glows with a searing, brilliant light that the One appears out of.
- Religion of Evil: It's hard to imagine the devotion to the One is anything else. The captain of the Blade Ship clearly regards it as a god.
- The Remnant: While talking to the Blade ship, Jake has Santorelli be the apparent captain (since there's no way any Controllers wouldn't recognize him) and tell Efflit 1318 that there's no more Yeerk Empire, that he and his crew stole their ship and have been following rumors of the Blade ship for three years.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The rescue team spends six months searching Kelbrid space for any trace of the Blade ship. Marco notes that scouring a three-dimensional curved plane means dealing with a whole lot of nothing.
- Shout-Out: Santorelli, who is unrecognizable to any Yeerks, is to greet any alien ship they encounter as the Captain of the Enterprise.
- Sole Survivor: With Rachel, James, and the Auxiliaries confirmed dead, David dead either at Rachel's hand or of old age as a rat, Ax assimilated, and the final fates of Jake, Marco, and Tobias unknown but looking grim, Cassie is officially the last of the Animorphs.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Just before Jake gives the order to ram the Blade ship, Marco sees him smile and realizes that this is Rachel's smile, that expression she wore in reckless anticipation of something terrible.
- Transformation Horror: Even though he's used to morphing and how ugly it can get, because the One gives off such a strong and visceral sense of evil seeing it assume Ax's face and then split it open with a wide smile full of red-lined teeth disturbs Marco.
- Uncertain Doom: In an AMA, when a commenter drew parallels between this ending and Elfangor ramming a Yeerk ship near the end of Animorphs: The Andalite Chronicles and surviving the experience, Michael Grant was quite pleased that they noticed. One author leans towards impact killing the crew of the Rachel and eliminating the One at the same time, the other's inclined to believe that they survived and their struggle continued, but regardless, over twenty years later there are no new entries.