Baldur's Gate 3 Epilogue Finally Gives A Fan-Favorite Character The Ending They Deserve (2024)

With the fifth major patch for Baldur's Gate 3 adding an all-new epilogue to the game, one particular character has received a new, more positive ending. Several months after release, Baldur's Gate 3 has continued to receive major and minor updates with bug fixes, performance improvements, and quality-of-life features, such as the ability to change a custom character's appearance. As of the changes in Patch 5, however, the game has received what may be its biggest addition yet - an entirely new epilogue, which ties up the loose ends of several major characters' stories while also potentially teasing what might be next for the franchise.

On release, the ending of Baldur's Gate 3 drew disappointment from some players, offering conclusions for some character storylines that could potentially be unsatisfying, and showing almost none of the long-term repercussions of the story. Being one of the game's few legitimate shortcomings, developers at Larian would eventually promise some changes and updates to the game's ending - and, as of the game's fifth major update, the studio has delivered, with a fully-voiced and playable epilogue that greatly expands on the ending of the game, set six months after the final battle and featuring an impressive amount of reactivity toward player choice.

Related: "An Iconic, Engaging Mess Of Brilliant Ideas": Baldur's Gate 3 Review

BG3's New Epilogue Gives Karlach A Happy Ending

As a result of the epilogue introduced by Baldur's Gate 3's fifth major update, one character in particular has received a new, more optimistic ending - the fan-favorite Karlach. Originally, Karlach's endings in BG3 were either tragic or uncertain, with no option for an outright "happy" ending by the end of the initially released game. As of Patch #5, however, certain player choices can lead to a variation of Karlach's epilogue that points towards a truly positive ending for her story, providing an option that many players felt the game was originally missing.

What Happens In Karlach's Good Ending (& How To Get It)

In the initially released version of Baldur's Gate 3, Karlach lacked any truly "happy" endings. A tiefling who was unwittingly sold into the service of the Archdevil Zariel, Karlach's story centered around her escape from Avernus, and her attempts to deal with the effects of the infernal engine implanted in her chest. Originally, Karlach's post-finale endings were varying flavors of tragic or uncertain - she could refuse to go back to Avernus, in which case she would either die due to her engine or have to live on as a mind flayer, or, with the player character's convincing, choose to return, in which case either Wyll, the player character, or both could accompany her.

But, whereas Karlach's initial endings lacked an unequivocally "good" option, the expanded epilogue endings introduced in Patch 5 position her going back to Avernus with a friend or two as the most optimistic ending possible for her. This ending is achievable by, as a character with a high approval rating from Karlach, convincing her to return to Avernus and deciding to go with her after the final battle - to get Wyll to also go along, players complete his quest as well, either having him sign the contract with Mizora, or having him break it but still save his father and then steer him away from staying in Baldur's Gate.

Related: Baldur's Gate 3: How to Unlock Karlach and Wyll's Shared Epilogue

In this version of the epilogue, speaking to Karlach will have her reveal that the characters who went to Avernus have discovered a blueprint that could potentially fix Karlach's engine, allowing her to permanently leave Avernus, and that they're planning to use a forge guarded by Zariel's forces to fix it. Though the engine itself isn't fixed yet during the epilogue, it ends her story on an optimistic note, with her stating that she'll get the chance to permanently return home from Avernus sooner than she thought possible - a goal that her character quest centers around for most of the game.

As one of the more popular party members in Baldur's Gate 3, Karlach's new, happier ending is sure to please players who were fans of her as a character, especially since the inevitability of her death, in the initial release, could feel to some like a bit of a plot hole. As some players have pointed out, by the time of the game's third act, there are seemingly multiple potential solutions to Karlach's engine, including the Gondians, Divine Intervention, and the various methods of resurrection - so, to finally have an ending where Karlach's engine can be definitively fixed might feel to some like it's correcting one of the game's flaws.

Karlach's New Ending Might Undercut The Original

However, while fans of Karlach can be satisfied with the new, happy ending, it might potentially come at the cost of the impact that her other endings could have. Letting her make her own decision, to either willingly turn into a mind flayer or die rather than return to Avernus, can end up feeling like the "wrong" choice with knowledge of her new, more positive ending. Likewise, whereas going with her to Avernus was an ending with an ambiguous, uncertain outcome in the original release, the new epilogue makes it into what might feel like the objectively correct decision to many players.

Karlach, in the game's original story, seemed somewhat intended to be a tragic character, with some of the most emotional scenes in the game devoted to her struggle with her mortality and her desire never to return to Avernus - to the point that, unless the player pushes her in other directions, her choices to either become a mind flayer or die to her engine are of her own accord. While the new epilogue offers a satisfying conclusion to her story, sure to please many fans, it also potentially loses out on some of that uncertainty present in the original Avernus ending, and to some, might undercut the tragedy of her other possible endings.

Several months after release, the fifth major update for Baldur's Gate 3 has introduced a new epilogue, and with it, a definitively happy ending for Karlach. Although this new ending loses out on some of the ambiguity of the original, it also offers a satisfying conclusion for Karlach's character, and greatly rewards the effort that players put into saving her. As one of Baldur's Gate 3's most compelling characters, Karlach's new ending is one that she definitely deserved from the start.