The Ending Of Wolfenstein: Youngblood Explained
Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France, two of the best girls who ever lived killed a whole lot of Nazis. They then invented the perfect way to give people the middle finger in an elevator, and they lived happily ever after. It'd be awful nice if that was how Wolfenstein: Youngblood went down — to be fair, they do kill a lot of Nazis — but things get a wee bit more complex in Youngblood's third act than anybody was really anticipating. And by "a wee bit," we mean, "the foundation of everything these characters know about time, space, and physics might have just cracked, which might not matter if the apocalypse happens first, and that's kinda terrifying."
So, uh, there's a lot to actually unpack there, and we're going to take some time to really suss out what happens there, and what it could all mean for BJ Blaskowicz and his best girls going forward.
J'Accuse: Abby discovers the truth about Juju
In any other game, finding out that the kind, exuberant woman who wants nothing more than for the Blaskowicz twins to mow down all the Nazis is, in fact, a Nazi herself would be a revelation to hang a whole sequel on. But here, it's just the start of the third act. Strap. In.
Either way, once the twins have the Brother Towers under control, the Resistance has access to Lab X, where Old Man Blaskowicz was supposedly headed last time anyone heard from him. But before heading there, Juju invites Abby and the twins to have a drink first. After a few minutes of light-hearted praise, the girls pass out, thanks to the poison in their drinks. Juju then drops the act, revealing herself to be a Nazi spy working with Youngblood's big bad, General Lothar Brandt. Oh, and did we mention her Lurch-y companion Jacques just so happens to BE General Lothar Brandt? But oh ho, there's a third twist.
Just before Lothar slits Soph's throat, we flash back 20 minutes, to Abby decrypting info from the Towers and pulling up what General Lothar actually looks like. Abby quietly alerts the twins to what's up, which brings us back to the present. The twins wake up, chase off the dastardly duo, but not before Abby takes a knife to the eye. Yikes.
Juju's Meddles: The real story of Juju and Lothar
So, once the twins have patched up Abby, and make their way towards Lab X, Abby fills in some of the blanks. Juju's real name is Julie Brandt, a French aristocrat who was one of those gormless weasels who saw the Nazis march into France and actually welcomed her new fascist overlords. Somewhere along the way, she met General Lothar and the two got married.
After BJ helped liberate America and Lothar saw which way the tide was turning, he decided to go out for himself, quietly organizing a coup which would sow the seeds for what would be known as the Fourth Reich. Once Nazi brass in Berlin got wind of his plans, he and his wife went into hiding, ambushing the French Resistance, and through some serious espionage, managed to ingratiate themselves into the Resistance, killing scores of their former colleagues from the motherland while pretending to be the good guys.
The Blaskowiczes save Blazkowicz: BJ arrives for the ending
After killing their way into Lab X, the twins find BJ and have a surprisingly sweet moment of softness and vulnerability with the big guy. But they also find out what BJ was willing to risk his life for: a Da'at Yichud vault brimming with new tech beyond anyone's wildest dreams. BJ has bigger concerns than just playing around with fancy new toys, though. Much bigger.
See, it's established that some years prior to Youngblood, BJ actually got to kill Adolf Hitler. We might have to have a long talk with someone at MachineGames as to why, exactly, we don't get to play the sequence where we kill Hitler, but that's beside the point. The big problem is, Hitler, being the scumbag he is, had a Dead Man's Switch, meaning that upon his death, a doomsday device of some kind was triggered. Thankfully, it's not a nuke or anything that immediately devastating, but seems to be some sort of machine that messes with Earth's climate.
The effects are already starting to manifest, with really freaky severe thunderstorms happening all around the world. And it's only getting worse. That's why BJ went to the vault: to try and find something, anything, that might fix what he sees as a huge mistake.
Wolfenstein Infinite: BJ's vision
But wait, there's more! And this is the thing that might fundamentally veer this entire series off into truly insane territory. Before the twins can drag BJ out of the vault, he reveals one of his other findings. While tinkering around in the vault, BJ manages to find a device capable of peering and, just maybe, opening doors to other dimensions. He doesn't figure out exactly how it works yet, but he does get a fleeting glimpse of the other dimensions. One of which appears to be, well, ours. Specifically, a world where the Nazis didn't win World War II, everybody mostly lives happily ever after, and Jess and Soph have a relatively normal upbringing that maybe doesn't involve high-level lethal combat training.
That, dear friends, is bonkers. Granted, we don't go too far down that rabbit hole here. Jess and Soph remind BJ that, yeah, there might be other dimensions, but a whole lot of people live in the current hellscape, and they've got to take care of business here before worrying about anything else.
The twins vs Lothar: The ending kicks into high gear
At the top floor of Lab X, Lothar has put his coup into full swing and ordered his loyal soldiers to turn on Berlin, while he himself takes out his former superior officer. Just before some really distressing foreplay happens, the twins make their way upstairs with a devastating new toy to play with. The twins give BJ the last letter from Set Roth, which is basically an instruction manual on how to give the power suits the ability to channel dimensional energy. In plain English: the twins can stop bullets and fire them back at their enemies, Titanfall-style. It's pretty damn sweet, and hopefully, it's a permanent upgrade that carries into the games going forward.
Juju stands in front of the elevator door to try and take on the twins, which turns out to be a hilarious bad call. Lothar, on the other hand, uses a brand spanking new super-enhanced power suit to rocket around and take on the twins, but he too fails pretty spectacularly.
Actually parents just do understand: The family reunion
All in all, it's a pretty hollow victory, given the storm is getting so much worse. Yet it doesn't stop the twins from dreaming of what could be in the other worlds. Eventually, Grace and Anya show up in a helicopter, with an Abby who is clearly so very grounded when she gets home, to assess the damage. BJ, having cleared the entire vault of Nazis, heads up to the roof.
After hearing the full story from the kids, Grace makes the call to get word out to all of the allies of the Resistance to prepare for what's coming. That by itself seems to hint we might be doing quite a bit of globe-trotting next time out, but we'll see. Either way, the families share a very sweet togetherness moment, and fade to black. A bit abrupt, but considering New Colossus ended on BJ proposing to Anya after beheading a Nazi on live television, this is about as happy an ending as these games get, folks. Just run with it.
Bless this mess: Cleaning up Paris after the ending
The more immediate set up for the future occurs just after, with Abby and the twins looking over a demolished Paris, getting battered by the coming storm. She tasks the twins with gathering as many resources as humanly possible to prepare for the future. Without a doubt, this'll end up being the DLC hook, with additional missions, some new fancy weaponry, and hopefully plenty of chances for the twins to try out their sweet new god powers.
The big question is how the weather's going to play into things. Far as Youngblood goes, it's kind of a big ask for the weather get too crazy, especially since that's undoubtedly going to be one of the big technical gimmicks for whatever a proper Wolfenstein 3 turns into. But it's still going to make for a particularly moody time going forward compared to the largely bright and sunlit Youngblood. Still, expect some hard times for the twins for the foreseeable future.
Stormfront: The next step for the Wolfenstein franchise
So, it's time to ask: where are we at as far as Wolfenstein 3? Well, yes, we've got the doomsday device as a ticking clock, which might potentially make the planet uninhabitable. It's not hard to envision this going down much like Gears 4's weather mechanics, and the sooner we can see a Nazi commander ripped apart in a tornado, the better. But it's not our only option. There's the dimension hopping, which could be just as a simple as making a portal into our world or any number of awesome and/or horrifying alternatives. You just know one of those portals leads to the Fallout universe, and Bethesda should allow this only inasmuch as we get to see Jess and Soph lose their minds playing with a Pip-Boy.
The bigger conflict is the fact that there's now two factions of Nazis to deal with: your average vanilla Nazi from Berlin, and these, well, neo-Nazis from the Fourth Reich. Berlin was on the decline when Youngblood started. Will they be all but wiped out when we get to the next game?
But the most important question is, again, can we please kill Hitler? Please? We'll be your best friends, MachineGames.
Sister sister: What happens to Soph and Jess after the ending?
There are also questions about the twins going forward. Youngblood seems to have been more about the setup for Wolfenstein 3 than a full fledged game. Which is fine: the price was right. But what's in their future? Will the sisters be fighting right alongside their badass parents next time around, or will they get their own game again? Honestly, either way is pretty wonderful. Jess and Soph as characters are the best part of Youngblood. But the co-op gimmick may shoot that idea in the foot, unless we get to pick and choose from the group we see huddled together at the game for a co-op experience. That too has its merits: Grace Walker deserved to be a playable character from the second she appears in New Colossus
, as does Abby if she's going full Nick Fury in the next game.
The end of the world as we know it: Where could it all lead the Wolfenstein series?
Finally, it's a good time to consider the ending. Not for Youngblood, but for the series. Because it's in sight; they're running out of road before alternate history catches up to modern day. But compared to previous games, there's a real sense that however the next game ends, the world has to either be well-and-truly saved, or well-and-truly screwed. Either the doomsday device gets to complete its programming and the Earth is laid to waste, or it's stopped, and the world gets to enjoy the fruits of the Da'at Yichud's labors in a shiny Nazi-free future. Alternately, everyone could just get out of dodge and wind up in one of trillions of alternate realities, which are also hopefully Nazi-free.
The most realistic scenario, given the series' history, is all of the above. We joked before, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that we wind up in a Fallout situation of waiting for the world to calm down in a vault somewhere, living happily ever after, surrounded by Da'at Yichud tech.
More than anything, it's looking closer to being the legitimate end of the road for BJ Blaskowicz, who's still spry but definitely getting up in years. If one thing is certain, it's that old Terror Billy's days are coming to an end one way or another when Wolfenstein comes back to us.