“What can I say to you?,” a tired, bearded Kratos asks his younger self, sitting on the iconic throne of the original trilogy. The moment serves as a climax to God of War: Ragnarök‘s roguelite DLC Valhalla. The story is a coda of sorts to Kratos’ past going back to 2005’s God of War.
The man who took revenge against Ares appears to be a different man than the one that the remaining Norse Pantheon is asking to serve now. Years alone don’t separate the men but temperament and perspective. Kratos, however, is less sure of the separation of the younger and the older self. His soliloquy reflects on the hope that his growth will be enough.
Kratos continues, “Should I, this same man, should I […] Place myself in service? In service. Should I…lose everything and everyone…will there still be enough left inside so that I do not become you? I do not know. But I have hope.”
Reflections on growth can be painful and lonely. These meditations force us to sit with our cringe pasts — personal, public, political — and to acknowledge shortcomings and failures. To confront these pasts requires steadfastness, a desire to be better, and a willingness to fail.
Kratos’s reflection invites meditations: while we can’t undo the sins of the past, we can grow from them, be better than those former versions, and learn.
His repetitive “should” lurks on the edge. There’s no guarantee that this growth will move him or us forward. Pieces of those former selves haunt the edges of our current service to be better.
Regardless, we *move sideways with the hope that through reflection, experience, and grace we won’t once again become or echo those painful versions of ourselves.
We move, even if only sideways, in hope.
*My reading of “moving sideways” is inspired by Noah Kahan’s song “Growing Sideways” from the album Stick Season (2022).
