5 Years Later, Metroid Dread’s Perfect Ending Is Still One of Nintendo’s Best
Five years after its 2021 release, Metroid Dread remains memorable for its tense design and, especially, its ending. The article argues that the finale matters because it turns Samus Aran’s struggle with Metroid DNA into a frightening personal crisis: she becomes the species she once helped drive to extinction.
Sent to Planet ZDR to recover missing EMMI robots, Samus is attacked by Chozo warrior Raven Beak and left without her power-ups. The robots pursue her because they are trying to extract the Metroid DNA in her blood, which was implanted to save her life in Metroid Fusion. In the final battle, that DNA takes control and transforms her into a monstrous Metroid-like form; the article reads the change as a curse and a culmination of the game’s themes of bodily autonomy and fear of becoming what one opposes.
In short
- Metroid Dread’s ending makes Samus’s transformation its central horror.
- The Metroid DNA that saved her life also puts her in danger.
- The finale turns her power into a source of fear.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The ending gives Samus’s long-running connection to Metroid DNA a personal and unsettling payoff: the power that saved her life also threatens to take control of her. Read as a story about bodily autonomy and fear of becoming what one opposes, her transformation makes the victory feel costly and deepens the series’ history.
The case against
The transformation can also be read as a dramatic plot device that resolves the final confrontation, rather than a fully explored crisis of identity or autonomy. Its suddenness may leave the theme more suggestive than developed, so the ending’s impact can depend on how much meaning players bring from earlier games.
Explained simply
Metroid Dread is a 2021 action-adventure game in Nintendo’s Metroid series, starring bounty hunter Samus Aran. On Planet ZDR, she searches for missing EMMI robots, but the hostile Chozo warrior Raven Beak strips her of her equipment and the robots hunt her through the planet.
The pursuit is tied to Samus’s past: after a near-fatal encounter in Metroid Fusion, Metroid DNA was implanted in her to save her life. That gives her abilities linked to the Metroids, creatures she had previously helped wipe out, and makes Dread’s story partly about her struggle to control what has become part of her.