"Rosa...no! ROSA! ROSAAAAAAAA!"
As a Moments page, all spoilers will be unmarked!
- At the beginning of the game, Bayonetta summons Gomorrah, but he unexpectedly breaks free from Bayonetta's hair and turns against her. As he tries to attack Bayonetta, Jeanne jumps in front and takes the hit instead, only to have her soul be knocked out of her body, and dragged away to Inferno as she tries to get to it again.No! This isn't how things end!
- Bayonetta holding Jeanne's lifeless body in her arms after defeating Gomorrah. When we first met the two in game, they were just wrapping up some Christmas shopping and acting for all intents and purposes like another day in the life. Not so much now.
- The "Did You Miss Me?" trailer is 100% unadulterated edge-of-your-seat epicness...up until the very end, in which we see Jeanne's soul floating in Inferno, accompanied by Bayonetta telling her that she will come rescue her.Jeanne, I'm on my way. Just behave yourself for a bit longer...
- Bayonetta shaking Loki after saving the two of them from drowning. She looks genuinely distraught at losing her "little one". Then Loki starts giggling like crazy, pissing her off.
- We go back in time and see Bayo's mother Rosa ... only for us to watch her death, accompanied with an obviously remorseful Bayonetta, who has now watched her mother die twice. In a heart-wrenching callback, just as she's about to leave to her time, Bayonetta whispers "Mummy" in the same tone and intonation as Cereza, her younger self from the first game.
- Even worse, remember what little Cereza said to Luka in the first game? "When I grow up, I want to be a witch too so that I can protect mummy.". In other words, she failed.
- It's the events of this game that makes Balder much more sympathetic than the first game, as we find out the reason he went through with his plan to remake the Trinity of Realities is because he wanted Rosa back... but also only because he was Brainwashed and Crazy on account of Loptr's soul within him.
- The last (well, last in so far as the setting's weird time is run) moment between Bayonetta and Balder, just as he trapped Loptr inside himself and was sucked by the time portal back to his era. It's clear that, seeing who her father truly was, Cereza has grown to genuinely love him, and finally acknowledges him as her parent... just as he makes her promise to be the one to kill him if he goes rogue.Bayonetta: Balder!
Balder: Cereza... just one time, call me... daddy.
Bayonetta: (near tears) Daddy...
Balder: Thank you... Cereza... my dear, sweet child... (gets dragged into the portal)
Bayonetta: (genuinely distraught) DADDY!! - Even more depressing when you consider the fact that no matter how much she was warming up to him, Bayonetta had to be thinking about the fact that this man would become the monster she defeated. And then at the very end, she sees that he was only evil because he sacrificed his own soul for the sake of humanity. In other words, the father that she never knew until recently – who she didn't let herself love until the very end – was worth loving the whole time, but she wasted her only chance.
- It gets even worse: remember how silent Balder was when he first saw Bayonetta in Chapter 4? Given that he's also masked, we don't get a good idea of what he's thinking, but since he reveals at the end of the game that he knew who Bayonetta was (but never how long he'd known), it's not unlikely that he was struggling to process his own daughter trying to defend her mother's killer from him. And flashy summoning aside, it's made abundantly clear in his third and final fight that Balder was holding back in his first two, suggesting that he was dealing with his own conflicting emotions before eventually making the choice to kill his dear, sweet child to prevent her from getting in the way of avenging Rosa. He would have succeeded, too, if Loki hadn't awoken to his powers in time, and this just shows how unhinged and desperate Balder had become after his repeated failures.
- One last thing: Before Loptr summons him to manipulate him into gunning for Loki, he is in the midst of grieving for Rosa while Fortitudo mocks in the distance, then he just gets sucked into the future thus cutting short his mourning. Then when Loki transports him and Bayonetta to the past, he may have thought, "This is the day she would have died! I must save her!", to the point that when he crosses Bayonetta again, he opts to try save Rosa first instead of picking a fight. And then he arrives late, seeing Rosa die again. Ouch.
- Even worse is when you hear his last words and the implications within them. "Just this one time, please call me daddy". To wit, he was exiled from his clan and likely never got to see Cereza save when she was a daughter. He never even got a chance to see or even care for Cereza when she was growing up. Even worse is that the only moments he got to spend with her was trying to get her out of his way, in his last moments of lucidity and finally while possessed by Loptr's malice.
- The last (well, last in so far as the setting's weird time is run) moment between Bayonetta and Balder, just as he trapped Loptr inside himself and was sucked by the time portal back to his era. It's clear that, seeing who her father truly was, Cereza has grown to genuinely love him, and finally acknowledges him as her parent... just as he makes her promise to be the one to kill him if he goes rogue.
- Just at the end of the mini-chapter at the beginning, while Luka is explaining the Eyes of the World, it cuts to the present day, where Father Balder is seen next to the remains of the body of Jubileus, apparently having survived the final battle. As he starts getting up, a strange blue light (apparently the Right Eye) starts emerging from his body, only for him to force it back in with willpower alone. At which point he collapses to the ground, and whispers his last words. "My dear, sweet child... At last, you have fulfilled your promise to me... Fear not, for I am always watching over you..." With these words, he fades away in a golden light, having passed on. At the beginning of the game, this scene would make no sense. The reason for it existing becomes apparent at the end of the game. As mentioned above, carrying Loptr's soul within him corrupted who he was, explaining his behaviour in the first game. The thing trying to come out of Balder? It was Loptr's soul. He also made Bayonetta promise to kill him when he went rogue, which, by stopping Jubileus, she wound up doing. Then it becomes clear: Balder was coming to his senses and thanking Bayonetta for upholding her end of the bargain. At which point he dies happily, taking Loptr down with him.
- After traveling into Inferno and beating the demoness Alraune to reclaim Jeanne's soul, it honestly looks like Bayonetta was just a few moments too late as Jeanne's Umbra Witch watch has no effect on her soul. You can hear the increase of desperation in Bayonetta's voice as she first teases, then orders, then finally pleads with Jeanne to wake up. When she finally does the relief on Bayonetta's face is quite tangible, and then Bayonetta goes right back to teasing, asking Jeanne sarcastically if she needed a wake-up kiss, and claiming that Jeanne had never been much of a morning person.
- This marks one of the few times that Bayonetta lets her confident persona slip and we see just how desperate she is to have Jeanne back and how broken she is in the brief moment she thinks she was too late to save her.
- The whole moment of Bayo trying to wake Jeanne has some unmistakable parallels with Balder's final moments with Roza later in the story too with Bayo in Balder's shoes, trying desperately to hold onto the person she loves most against all hope. Thankfully, things don't end in another tragedy this time around.
