Epilogue Letter

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    "I write this letter to you now: I know it must've brought him unexpected joy to have an opponent like you at the end of that meaningless war. ...At least that's what I want to believe. Only you, the pilot who shot him down, can confirm this. And so, I write to you..."
    —The narrator to the player, Ace Combat 04 Shattered Skies[1]

    Simply put, a series ends with the narration of a letter, usually written by or for one of the main characters. This letter will usually serve as a kind of Where Are They Now? Epilogue, explain what the long term consequences of the events of the story are, and possibly explain things that were happening concurrently with the main plot, but occurred offscreen. In visual media, the letter will usually be narrated by the character who wrote the letter via voice-over.

    Any Epistolary Novel will of course end this way, as the whole story is told through letters.

    As an Ending Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

    Examples of Epilogue Letter include:

    Anime and Manga

    • The epilogue in the anime adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist is a letter exchange between Winry and Sheska.
    • My-HiME ends with Mai reading a letter from Takumi and Akira
    • From the When They Cry franchise: "By the time you have read this, I will probably be dead. Although there may or may not be a body. You who have read this, please find the truth. That is my only wish."
    • The final Sound Stage of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS uses the framing device of Fate composing an email to Subaru to describe events after the end of the season.
    • Subverted in Gundam Wing. Relena gets a letter from Heero, reads it, but then gets his attention and tears it in half, saying "Next time tell me in person", book-ending his ripping up her birthday party invite in the first episode. The anime never reveals what it said, but the novelization of the series and the Radio Drama/manga Blind Target offer suggestions: In the novel it's a goodbye letter, saying he's going to Mars to help with the Terraforming project, which was the originally scripted ending for the anime; in Blind Target it's simply "Happy Birthday".
    • At the end of Fushigi Yuugi, Miaka discovers a letter in her drawer from Tamahome. The letter was actually written when Keisuke asked Tamahome to return to the other world, and the latter complies as long as he can write a letter. Miaka only got to read it after everything went back to normal, but given that everyone did go back to the other world after the battle with Nakago, it still fits.
    • The epilogue in the manga of Chrono Crusade uses a modified version: a video-taped message from Azmaria to Satella, anticipating the day when Satella would be unfrozen from crystal. It's used as a framing device for a flashback that covers what happened to most of the characters in the months leading up to Rosette's death, then jumps back to the "present" to show what happens to Satella and the others still living at that point.
    • The end of the Hatamoto family arc of Detective Conan involves the woman getting married sending a letter to Conan, Ran and Ran's father about the aftermath of the murders.
    • The Zatch Bell manga ends with this.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has narration of a letter Marina wrote to Setsuna, hoping that he finds happiness at the end of his battles, which is set over his final duel with the Big Bad Ribbons Almark.

    Comic Books

    Film

    • Jane Campion's Holy Smoke ends with a narrating letter from the deprogrammer to the patient with whom he had a highly improper fling.
    • 8mm trips at the last second by ending with an Anvilicious letter from the snuff film victim's mother.
    • The ending of Taxi Driver had Travis reading a letter from Iris' father. Certain viewers however, insist that the letter was in Travis' own handwriting.
    • Righteous Kill starts and ends with a letter.
    • Instinct.
    • Deliberately subverted in Red Dragon.
    • Porco Rosso ends with a letter from Fio written long after the events of the film relating what has happened to the characters over the intervening years.

    Literature

    • The Scar ends with the content of Bellis' letter which she has been writing throughout the book.
    • Dracula ends this way, but it is a Scrapbook Story.
    • Shardik ends with a letter by an entirely new character coming upon the scene after the action is all over.
    • And Then There Were None ends with one of these revealing the true identity and nature of the killer and just how exactly the killer managed to pull it off.
    • Hourglass Door ends with Abby reading a letter from Dante( after he has pulled off a heroic sacrifice) where he tells her she made the right choice, and that he loves her.
    • Dragon Slippers ends with Luka giving Creel a letter, containing a clue that Shardas may still be alive. they run out the door together.
    • Gerald's Game by Stephen King ends with Jessie writing a letter to a friend about her hospital stay.
      • Rage and Carrie by the same author also end with letters.
    • The Final Problem features a short note Sherlock Holmes writes to Watson prior to his final battle with Moriarty.
    • The final book in Vilhelm Moberg's Emigrants suite ends with one of Karl Oskar's neighbours writing to his relatives in Sweden to tell them that Karl Oskar has passed away. The last book is aptly titled The Last Letter Home.
    • A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge ends with a desperate message begging for any response after a cataclysmic surge of the slowzone ends up cutting a substantial portion of the beyond and the transcend off from access to the Known Net, disrupting communications throughout the galaxy.
    • Every Redwall book ends like this.

    Video Games

    • The Where Are They Now? Epilogue of Final Fantasy IX is described in a letter from an unspecified sender, presumed to be Vivi. He has presumably died in the meantime, but he's 100% absent one way or another.
    • Final Fantasy XII ends with Penelo narrating a letter to Larsa.
    • Final Fantasy V ends with a letter by one of the surviving cast members (Krile by default), depending on which party members were KOed at the end of the final battle.
    • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door ends with Goombella e-mailing Mario to tell him what everyone's been doing since Mario last saw them.
    • StarCraft: Brood War ends with Gerard Dugalle sending an email to his wife, describing his inability to tame the Zerg or conquer the UED, and confessing that he was responsible for the death of his best friend Alexei Stukov.
    • The Good Ending of Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories has Hanako writing back to her family after leaving for greener pastures in another Netherworld.
    • Penumbra: Black Plague exhibits a rather obvious example of this, with the ending being when Phillip e-mails an unknown friend asking him to destroy all of the Tuurngait parasites.
    • The normal endings of Silent Hill 2 (Leave, Maria, and In Water) end with Mary's real letter to James.
    • Ace Combat 04 Shattered Skies has this as its entire Framing Device, a set of letters written to the player charicter Mobius One by a man who was a kid at the time of the war. He is writing to you to reassure you that Yellow 13 did not begrudge you killing him by shooting him down over Farbanti, as well as to tell you his story so that you know his understanding of the man you killed, and whose love interest you killed before that, is accurate. He concludes in a heart-breaking manner, basically stating, "Yellow 13 died happy." You never learn Yellow 13's and the narrator's names either.
    • In Princess Maker 2, when you've successfully raised your daughter until she's eighteen and leaves the house, the game ends with the player character recieving a letter from her a few years later in which she nostalgically looks back at the time when you raised her as a child. Her thoughts on it depend on how you've raised her, which makes for some decent replay value.

    Web Original

    • The ending of Red Vs Blue: Reconstruction finishes with a final letter to the Chairman of the Oversight Committee from the Director of Project Freelancer signed, Leonard Church
      • Of course, every episode of Reconstruction, including the finale, starts with a message either from the Director to the Chairman or vice versa.
    1. ↑ An odd example, as all the backstory of the game is told through this letter in bits and pieces as the player progresses, and this piece happens to be shown in the final cutscene.
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