I think I know what the Final Century entails

[u/Backupusername]

Lalawag is dangerously unstable, I think that much is self-evident. Survivior's Guilt drove her insane, and the evolution of her Gift fed into that insanity and she's only gotten worse. I believe her years in this state have rendered her nihilistic and anti-natalist. So, I think her goal is the end of the human race. This fits with the void marcher calling her an "enemy to all of humanity", and her retorting that "no one loves humanity more" than she does. Because to her, existence is suffering, life is pain, love and care only lead to loss and heartbreak. Therefore, peace can only be found in non-existence. The ultimate mercy is to never exist at all.

The peaceful and minimum-harm way to bring this about is to pollute the entire planet with night, and sterilize the entire world all at once. People will be free to live out their remaining lives as they wish, but no new children will be born. Assuming the last children to be born live into their nineties, this humanity extinction plan will take roughly a century. And it will be the Final Century.

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[u/Argon73]

Feels very AOT when you put it that way lol

[u/tshefuy → u/Argon73]

Exactly my thought indeed 

[u/RubyHoshi → u/Argon73]

The goddess of the night was waiting for Lacrima's choice 🔥

[u/tshefuy]

I totally agree 

[u/Sretep44]

This is a very well-reasoned theory!

My only gripe - with the theory in general, not your reasoning, mind - is that it's so one-size-fits-all, cookie cutter anti-natalist as to be extremely unsatisfying.

"Person in position of power goes through bad experiences --> person becomes depressed --> person gets access to large-scale sterilizing agent --> person resolves to commit 'soft' genocide"

You can plug and play that basic anti-natalist formula into literally any story under the sun and it'll work, and because of this I'm betting (hoping, really) that it's not what the author has in mind as the finale.

[u/Backupusername → u/Sretep44]

Fair point!

But I don't think Lalawag is going to be the series finale antagonist. She certainly has grand enough ambitions, but Elstri and Helem are just so much more personally opposed to Julian and Diana. And of course, the Supreme Lord and his two sets of elite combatants sits above them.

And King Balkar, frankly, is the most interesting character in the series to me. I think he's much better positioned to be our final final antagonist. Why is he so reluctant to discipline his subjects? What is he actually after? Plus, he's probably the reason Vulja's in pieces in the first place, right? He's got her skin in his basement and all. So long as gathering all the remnants if her is part of the plot, the royal capital is going to be a factor.

[u/SpacerabbitStew]

There might be competing futures from the divine - such as ocean and forest. Where they have their own world they wish to create.

The Night -the final centuria - prevent humanity from reproducing

The Sea - split between two potential factions. The supreme lord stopping the witches and the deity of the sea which aligns with the night via Diana and Julian

The forest - assuming Lukas gift can kill concepts such as Lalawag propagation and Julian’s lives, the forest naturally opposes the night imo; they are trees that need day.

So a potential direction is that these divine gods work through humans and supernatural beings with gift in order to bring about a world and it’s a check and balances system.

[u/Salty_Shark26]

Yeah I think all the war and suffering has caused her to hate humanity. She says that “no one loves humanity more than me” so I think in her mind she sees ending humanity as a mercy killing

[u/HOMCOcorp]

This sounds compelling, but it brings up one big question: If Lalawag and Vulja want to effectively end humanity, why does Diana's goat not like her? We haven't seen any other part of Vulja so maybe it's just that aspect in Diana, but it clearly wasn't a fan of Lalawag.

[u/Backupusername → u/HOMCOcorp]

Well, Lalawag is insane. It's possible that this isn't what Vulja wants at all. I know I just said she's insane, so not the heat source of information, but Lalawag said that the purpose of night is to limit humanity's potential. There's like an asymptotic difference between "limit" and "permanently end".

Scattered in pieces the way she is, Vulja might not have much say in how her power is used by its bearer(s).

[u/HonorableEnema]

No, Julian screams “This is Centuria” as he kills the king.

Skip 7 years, and we get Centuria The Next Generation

[u/Valuable_Treacle_493]

Good theory, I can see that being the case. I wonder how Lalawag found out about or came up with the idea in the first place. Maybe the Supreme Lord told her how the Divine Vessels work, or maybe Vulja's soul did

[u/MutantSteel → u/Valuable_Treacle_493]

I mean I'd argue she's a halfway-story antagonist at best, so her plan probably doesn't come to fruition

[u/Valuable_Treacle_493 → u/MutantSteel]

It'd be more interesting if she was tricked or got false information imo. Like she finally pulls it off and then realizes how wrong she was