The Biggest Unanswered Questions In The Medium
After a short delay, The Medium is now out on Xbox Series X|S and PC. It's long been hyped as one of the first must-have titles on the latest console generation, and so far the reviews are mostly positive.
The Medium has been described as a modern-day Silent Hill. It tells a gripping, atmospheric story about a woman with the ability to communicate with the dead, and allows the player to switch back and forth between the physical and spirit worlds.
Beware of spoilers ahead for The Medium.
The Medium follows Marianne, a medium with a mysterious past. Marianne gets a call to investigate the abandoned Niwa Hotel, where a massacre once took place. Along the way, she discovers a long-lost sister, Lily, who has similar powers and is also at the center of the Niwa Hotel tragedy.
The Medium is quite a mysterious title, and Marianne never fully uncovers all the answers she's looking for. Here are the biggest unanswered questions in the game.
What is Marianne's final decision in The Medium?
Early on, Marianne meets the spirit of a girl called Sadness, who is actually her long-lost sister and fellow medium, Lily. Marianne learns that their father's best friend, Richard, abused Lily as a child. Lily's trauma manifested as a demonic creature called the Maw, which perpetuated the Niwa Hotel massacre years ago. As the Maw chases Marianne in the present, Marianne learns that it wants to consume a medium like her to become strong enough to finally escape the spirit world.
The Medium begins with Marianne having a nightmare about a man chasing and killing a little girl. She believes this is what happened to her sister, before she learns that Lily still lives. When she meets Lily, her sister reveals that the nightmare was a vision of what Lily wished would happen. Lily is horrified by the Maw and wants someone to kill her to end the Maw's threat for good.
In the game's penultimate cutscene, Lily begs Marianne to kill her and end the Maw. Instead, Marianne realizes that she could take her own life instead, depriving the Maw of her power and saving her sister. The screen goes black and a gunshot rings out, but it's never clear which choice she made.
What happens to Thomas in The Medium?
Marianne and Lily's father, Thomas, is an enigmatic figure in the game — and much about him is still a mystery. First, it's not confirmed whether Thomas actually is alive. At the beginning of the game, Thomas calls Marianne and tells her to investigate the Niwa Hotel to set the story in motion. While characters in The Medium have both physical and spiritual selves, the game later makes it clear that Thomas's spiritual self has been trapped in the spirit world for some time, so the living version of Thomas would have to have been the one who called Marianne.
Still, Marianne never meets her father in person during the game, just the spirit version of him. As for Spirit Thomas, it's not clear what happens to him, either. At the end of the game, after Marianne's final cutscene, Spirit Thomas is seen picking up a pocket watch. This would imply that his spirit is not at rest. Still, that doesn't confirm one way or another whether Marianne shot Lily or herself. Even if Marianne did end Lily's threat, it's unlikely that Thomas's sins would allow him true peace.
What about Marianne and Lily's mother?
While The Medium explores a large portion of Thomas's backstory, it hardly mentions Marianne and Lily's mother. She does appear in some of the game's clues, including family photos in Thomas's home, and the game implies that she died during childbirth. But beyond that, her identity, and experiences and the impact she had on raising Lily is a mystery.
Their mother's story is a big missing piece of the puzzle. A lengthy cutscene reveals that Thomas's medium powers manifested when he was a boy, and after World War II, the KGB kidnapped him and experimented on him. Thomas escaped and lived on the run, but he also tried to have a family. It's never explained whether Thomas ever told his wife about his tragic past. It's also never explained whether she knew her daughters inherited the medium powers from their father. Most likely, Thomas either didn't know he could pass on his powers, or he kept this from his wife.
Thomas's decision has terrible consequences, for both the guests of the Niwa Hotel who were massacred and for his own family. Lily and Marianne's mother seems to have suffered more than most, but the game gives her hardly any screen time.