Mortal Kombat 1 officially came out to the general public yesterday, and if you dived into the story mode, you were in from a pretty fun romp that got really serious in almost an instant and went from one of the lowest stakes MK stories to one of the highest stakes one. We’ll talk about how the story celebrates 30 years of Mortal Kombat while feeling fresh in another article, but here we want to talk about the ending and third act twist, which unless you’re a die hard MK and sci-fi fan, might have confused you a little. Which is fine because until a little further research it confused us too. But enough of the chit-chat , let’s discuss what this new entry means for the MK universe , upcoming DLC , the next game, and beyond. Also, this is your warning for spoilers if you haven’t played MK1 or seen how it’s story mode unfolds. You have been warned.

Ending – Both MK11: Aftermath endings are cannon (along with a bunch of arcade mode endings too)

If you only played the main part of Mortal Kombat 11’s story, the setting of MK1’s story was probably pretty easy for you to understand : Liu Kang is the new Fire God protector of earth, he used MK11 villain Kronika’s hourglass to remake a new universe and for the most part he seemingly made a brighter, more peaceful one compared to the typical darkness and bloodshed MK is associated with. However the big third act twist would likely have confused you then, as the villain of the story is revealed not to be Kronika or this new universe’s/timeline’s Shang Tsung, but instead a titan-level Shang Tsung from an alternate universe where he controls the hourglass and everything in that timeline. If you managed to play MK11’s Aftermath expansion , you would understand how this happened, as Aftermath has not one canonical ending but two; one were Fire God Liu Kang manages to stop Shang Tsung from gaining the power of the hourglass, going on to create this new universe, and another where Shang Tsung beats Liu Kang, creating the warped future where he reigns supreme.

This is essentially part of MK’s shift from being a fantasy and mysticism fighting game into having more sci-fi elements including it’s own implementation of time-travel and the multiverse( don’t roll your eyes, it doesn’t suck unlike in Marvel and DC’s case), and it’s for the most part allowed the game to play with new concepts and characters such as bringing back dead characters or having alternate versions of one character in the same story, which we see a lot of in the third act of the game. It also confirms a lot of the other endings from the arcade mode of MK11 to be canon as well, even if they don’t quite play out the same way. At the very least we can assume Kitana, Raiden and Kung Lao’s to be canon as these characters essentially have alternate, Titan versions of themselves, who are versions with the power of the hourglass and in charge of a whole universe as well. It’s these Titan versions who then bring reinforcements for Liu Kang in the final battle against Shang Tsung’s army, made up of people from his universe and other alternate universes where the bad guys won , such as one with a Titan Quan Chi even. This is why the battle is filled with multiple variations of the same character, both evil and good, coming from different timelines and universes.

Either way, Fire God Liu Kang and his forces manage to defeat Titan Shang Tsung’s army, and he seemingly does away with Shang Tsung and Quan Chi , returning his realm and hopefully the assisting ones to a time of peace. Based on the character you choose, you will also encounter some specific character moments based on the fights you encounter and cutscenes as well, e.g. Titan Kitana comes to aid you in a cutscene if you are using Mileena in the final chapter. But essentially the main ending stays the same. Liu Kang and his Earthrealm win, the good guys relax at Madam Bo’s restaurant (who might be a new version of Bo Rai Cho) and it all seems happy for a while.

What about those character fusions?

You may have also noticed specific character variants that are essentially a combination of two characters’ move sets e.g. Johnny Cage and Shao Kahn combined into “Johnnie Kahner”, and it seems that these are variants that somehow gained the powers of another character or are just more results of Shang Tsung further meddling with his own timeline to make his warriors the strongest. Which leads to an even more interesting revelation in the post-ending scene.

What about that post-ending/After credits scene

Well, it turns out things probably won’t be peaceful for long, as we see fused, seemingly evil versions of Kenshi,  Sub-Zero and most importantly, Titan Havik (fused with classic character Drahmin), surveying the aftermath of the final battle , and seemingly aiming to start more battles like it, with Havik likely feeding off the chaos such battles across timelines creates. We of course can’t be sure about how this works yet, but what we can be sure of is NetherRealm Studios will likely dive into this story soon, especially as more DLC characters and packs are known to be coming soon.

And that’s about everything we can deduce from MK1’s ending. If you have any questions or other things you picked up hit us up in the comment section or on our socials.

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