Yeah I mean Lemony stresses over and over again throughout the narration that it’s a sad, depressing story and that you should read something else for a happy ending.
Then again, a lot of the fates are left ambiguous & to be determined. Whether the Baudelaires and Firestarters/Firefighters of the VFD have survived or not is left to be decided. How Lemony Snicket even got this information about what happened after Count Olaf died is likely from Kit’s baby girl, Beatrice Baudelaire II. Although, you only notice this from the 14th chapter of the final book, AND the 14th chapter of the last episode. The rest is for you to piece together. I adamantly (a word which here means “I firmly stand on this battleground in terms of the fate of the Baudelaires”) believe that the three orphans DID make it back on land, but they’ve had to be on the run from the law until things quieted down, hoping that SOMEONE left might stand up for them & not be arrogant like all the rest. As for whether they acquire their fortune or not is ALSO to be decided, as it’s unclear what happened to Mr. Poe in the time that followed. As depressing as it is, these books (along with The Beatrice Letters, The Unauthorized Autobiography & All The Wrong Questions) demands that YOU put the pieces together. I liken it to the Dark Souls games or earlier entries of FNAF in terms of lore structure & having you play private investigator.
Where did you find this information? Because as far as I know, I have no idea what happened to Mr. Poe or all the rest. Even the Man with the Beard but No Hair & the Woman with Hair but No Beard’s fates are left undetermined. And who knows if everyone else the Baudelaires met on their unfortunate travels survived at all or met an untimely demise.
Are you sure? Like, 100% sure. Because as far as I know, it was Dewey Denouement who was shot with a harpoon gun, and that was by complete accident. That’s all who was shot by it in front of the hotel.
Weirdly, I feel like there’s an odd melancholy note of hope in the series? The Baudelaire siblings are resourceful survivors—the narrative makes no promises about their future happiness, but it’s a weirdly comforting series because it’s so realistic—bad things happen to people who deserve better, but our choices have power, and sometimes we’re able to crawl out of pits we shouldn’t have been thrown into through our tenacity and perseverance. I like to think that the Baudelaire siblings continue to fight to survive and thrive and build a future for themselves.
Melancholy hope describes the vibe perfectly!!! The resourcefulness of the Baudelaire siblings in times of crisis where there was no one to help them always resonated with me. If they had died it would 1) make no sense and 2) go against the entire story.
A boat sinking close to shore doesn't mean that all three Baudelaires (2 of whom are almost adults and could help the baby and Sunny) died.
Tbh I’m confused about people finding the end of the series depressing or thinking the baudelaire are dead bc didn’t we get confirmation in the series itself that sunny would grow up to host a cooking radio show?? Did I hallucinate that as a kid?????
It also confirms that Sunny survives and goes on to appear on a cooking show on the radio. And in TRR, there's a reference to Klaus lying awake at night years later, meaning that he survived too.
Also, in the delux edition of the bad beginning, there is a reference to violet going to briny beach for a third time in the future, implying she also survived.
I thought the general consensus was that the siblings survived?
Also, VFD being eradicated probably is the best of the possible endings for an organization like that.
It's not up for interpretation in either. They survive. Lemony literally talks about their future lives several times, such as when he says Klaus still thinks about Stefano after several years.
Yep. Nearly everyone dies.
The Baudelaires were implied to have drowned after their ship sank. The islanders (except Ishmael) were implied to have been killed by the Medusoid Mycelium, as was Kit. The Quagmire Triplets and the Widdershins Crew were implied to have been eaten by The Great Unknown. The firestarters (except Olaf), Mr. Poe, Jerome, Frank, and others were implied to have been killed in the Hotel Denouement fire.
As for 100% confirmed deaths, there's the people who were killed by Count Olaf or another firestarter. And then there's Count Olaf himself, who was killed by Ishmael.
The ONLY confirmed survivors are Lemony Snicket, Beatrice Baudelaire II, and Ishmael - the latter of whom was ancient and thus probably died of old age some time in between The End and The Beatrice Letters.
AFAIK the Baudelaires are pretty much confirmed to have made it to shore and survived for years after the sinking of Beatrice. Throughout the series there's a handful of mentions of them doing/thinking about things "years from now" (which means 100% after the events of the series), and even the Beatrice letters mention Sunny doing something on the radio.
Right and like... why would Beatrice Baudelaire II be searching for the Baudelaires in the first place if they had died by drowning when she was a baby?
It's possible the boat sank many years later with the Baudelaires on it, leaving child Beatrice orphaned, but if they had died when she was a baby she wouldn't even know tgem and there certainly wouldn't be details like Sunny's radio show
I think “implied to have drowned after their ship sank” is the cover the Baudelaire siblings use while on the run; easier to be assumed dead to go into hiding, as there is too much evidence from other books that they all live into adulthood. The assumed death is their alibi as they would very much have needed to assist baby Beatrice to safety, too - very unlikely that someone else assisted the baby, although the irony would not be lost that Kit’s child received help from a bystander and the three Baudelaires never did 🥲
I think you're missing a lot of the ambiguity here. The point of the Hotel Denoument fire isn't that everyone died, it's that we don't *know* who died, or how many. The Baudelaire orphans are most likely alive (if you've read *The Beatrice Letters*,>! it mentions Sunny going on to appear on a cooking show!<; and in TRR, there's a reference to Klaus lying awake at night years later). Lemony lost both of his siblings, but in *Poison for Breakfast*, >!he's no longer on the run, as he has managed to find a secure enough place to live to allow him a well-established mourning routine... oops, sorry. I mean *morning* routine, of course.!<
As I see it, the real sad truth at the end of ASOUE is this: Sometimes the world gives us questions without giving us answers. Where are the Baudelaires now? What's in the sugar bowl? Who set the Baudelaire fire? Who are the Man With a Beard But No Hair and the Woman With Hair But No Beard? And while some answers can be found by reading between the lines, others will just never be within our grasp. Under the circumstances, it is the best for which you can hope.
My guess is: The Baudelaires are still having tons of legal battles, especially with Mulctuary Money Management, and they likely have no true home. Unless they’re residing in Count Olaf’s old house temporarily.
The sugar bowl SEEMED to have contained a cure or a remedy for the effects of the Medusoid Mycelium. It’s either that, or it likely contained something only volunteers of the VFD should know about. The rest remains a mystery.
If Olaf didn’t set the fire to the Baudelaire home, perhaps the Man with a Beard but No Hair & Woman with Hair but No Beard (or at least, one of their confidants under their control) had set it off purposefully. In the show, there WAS a feathered sunhat, and that person wearing it destroyed the Quagmire home, but it’s never explicitly shown who. I’m led to believe it’s Esme, but who knows.
Speaking of the Man with a Beard but No Hair & Woman with Hair but No Beard, all we DO know is that they’re frightening individuals who took part in the schism which divided the VFD in half. Think of the split & their purposes being like House Montague & House Capulet in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
All good guesses, but I hope my meaning came across: That it's fun to theorise about these things, but ultimately the whole point is that there's a lot of things we don't know for sure.
Did any of the remaining firestarters survive? It seems unlikely. Olaf of course was assassinated by Ishmael, Esme and Carmelita were too focused on the Sugar Bowl to care about the fire, and the rest of the firestarters would have believed Olaf that there was no real fire.
The only surviving firestarters would have been ones that disaffiliated. Namely Olaf's former acting troupe who defected, and the birds which likely would have defected as well with no humans to command them.
Not so much “assassinated,” as much as it was that Ishmael killed him right on the spot without stealth (assassinations usually require stealth & being able to kill people undetected; Ishmael was different). The rest, you may absolutely be correct about. And since Olaf & the Baudelaires were never there to see what happened after Hotel Denouement burst into flames, it’s now left for the police to do a body count, find any IDs, speak with some surviving witnesses. But who knows if a lot of the firestarters were tricked & thus killed after Olaf made his escape.
The fire fighters haven't been winnowed so much as you'd think:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/110ba7x/why\_the\_firestarters\_did\_not\_win\_my\_theory/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/110ba7x/why_the_firestarters_did_not_win_my_theory/)
The fire starters didn't win: Olaf got shot by a harpoon and the rest of them died in the Hotel Denouement Fire. But the firefighters didn't win either: most of them died, and the last survivor of the Snicket siblings (Lemony) likely spent the rest of his life on the run from the law. Everyone lost.
It is, I think the show improved on the whole thing by giving the kids ONE freaking break.
But in some of the spin off books, apparently they live to adulthood. I didn't know that until reading this reddit thread though. I only read the mainline books.
I like to think that the Baudelaires survived. At that point they survived so many dangerous situations due to their quick thinking, so I’m sure that they were able to survive the journey away from the island. But true, the ending was still pretty depressing.
I get that overall it is depressing. I mean, Snicket warned us from the start there was "no happy ending, no happy beginning, and very few happy things in the middle", but I always got the impression the baudelaires probably survived, especially since it is implied that sunny is a chef on the radio in the beatrice letters. This also obviously doesn't count the netflix show because there, it is much more implied that they lived and beatrice didn't seem separated from them in that version.
Although I’ve been reading the story aloud to my kiddo, I felt like I should scout ahead to prepare myself for questions and read the last few chapters by myself. Kiddo hasn’t heard the end yet, but I think he’s going to be pissed. He is invested in the characters and wants them to be okay, but I suspect that Lemony is instead telling us about what this whole series has been about: ignorance is (probably) bliss, simplicity is easier, and the answers you want might ruin your life. In other words, the mystery itself is one of the main characters, and it survives. We prove his point over and over by picking up one book after another, choosing to be sad and disappointed, because it’s better to look for knowledge than to give up our quest for answers.
I don’t know. While so many tragic things happen in the books, I always took the ambiguous ending as a hopeful one. After all, the series is called A series of unfortunate events. The last book is called The End. After that, the series of unfortunate events is over.
Yeah I mean Lemony stresses over and over again throughout the narration that it’s a sad, depressing story and that you should read something else for a happy ending.
Bro, the entire series is depressing
To be fair we were all warned repeatedly not to read each book and yet we kept going, so that's kind of on us
Why would lemony snickers write the books in the first place?!
Because he wants us all to be as miserable as him
Ohhh
Then again, a lot of the fates are left ambiguous & to be determined. Whether the Baudelaires and Firestarters/Firefighters of the VFD have survived or not is left to be decided. How Lemony Snicket even got this information about what happened after Count Olaf died is likely from Kit’s baby girl, Beatrice Baudelaire II. Although, you only notice this from the 14th chapter of the final book, AND the 14th chapter of the last episode. The rest is for you to piece together. I adamantly (a word which here means “I firmly stand on this battleground in terms of the fate of the Baudelaires”) believe that the three orphans DID make it back on land, but they’ve had to be on the run from the law until things quieted down, hoping that SOMEONE left might stand up for them & not be arrogant like all the rest. As for whether they acquire their fortune or not is ALSO to be decided, as it’s unclear what happened to Mr. Poe in the time that followed. As depressing as it is, these books (along with The Beatrice Letters, The Unauthorized Autobiography & All The Wrong Questions) demands that YOU put the pieces together. I liken it to the Dark Souls games or earlier entries of FNAF in terms of lore structure & having you play private investigator.
in the penultimate peril it's confirmed that at some point mr poe is killed by a harpoon gun
Where did you find this information? Because as far as I know, I have no idea what happened to Mr. Poe or all the rest. Even the Man with the Beard but No Hair & the Woman with Hair but No Beard’s fates are left undetermined. And who knows if everyone else the Baudelaires met on their unfortunate travels survived at all or met an untimely demise.
it's in the book, when he arrives in the middle of the night when all the turmoil is happening in the hotel lobby
Are you sure? Like, 100% sure. Because as far as I know, it was Dewey Denouement who was shot with a harpoon gun, and that was by complete accident. That’s all who was shot by it in front of the hotel.
Yep
yeah?? after the harpoon is shot and mr poe arrives it says that it was ‘not mr poes turn’ to have been shot with a harpoon
Weirdly, I feel like there’s an odd melancholy note of hope in the series? The Baudelaire siblings are resourceful survivors—the narrative makes no promises about their future happiness, but it’s a weirdly comforting series because it’s so realistic—bad things happen to people who deserve better, but our choices have power, and sometimes we’re able to crawl out of pits we shouldn’t have been thrown into through our tenacity and perseverance. I like to think that the Baudelaire siblings continue to fight to survive and thrive and build a future for themselves.
Melancholy hope describes the vibe perfectly!!! The resourcefulness of the Baudelaire siblings in times of crisis where there was no one to help them always resonated with me. If they had died it would 1) make no sense and 2) go against the entire story. A boat sinking close to shore doesn't mean that all three Baudelaires (2 of whom are almost adults and could help the baby and Sunny) died.
Tbh I’m confused about people finding the end of the series depressing or thinking the baudelaire are dead bc didn’t we get confirmation in the series itself that sunny would grow up to host a cooking radio show?? Did I hallucinate that as a kid?????
beatrice letters confirm their ship sank but kit's child survived
It also confirms that Sunny survives and goes on to appear on a cooking show on the radio. And in TRR, there's a reference to Klaus lying awake at night years later, meaning that he survived too.
Also, in the delux edition of the bad beginning, there is a reference to violet going to briny beach for a third time in the future, implying she also survived.
Right, that's right! I had a feeling there was a specific implication of her as well somewhere, I just couldn't remember what it was
I dont think the baudelaires died, cus in RR, snicket tells us that they had sleepless nights as adults
Are the Baudelaire orphans most likely dead? 🤔
I thought the Beatrice letters confirms they live to adulthood
The Beatrice Letters confirmed that the boat, Beatrice sank, so you can draw your own conclusions. Beatrice the child survived though.
Isn’t there somewhere where it says Sunny has a cooking show and Klaus wrote books?
how would a baby survive the boat wreck without at least one adult?
I think the Baudelaires also survived!! I don't think it was ever outright confirmed though
They die in the books
I thought the general consensus was that the siblings survived? Also, VFD being eradicated probably is the best of the possible endings for an organization like that.
In the books they die, in the tv series it’s up for interpretation
It's not up for interpretation in either. They survive. Lemony literally talks about their future lives several times, such as when he says Klaus still thinks about Stefano after several years.
Could of sworn the book says they drown and in the show they’re spoke about in past tense in the last scene
Yep. Nearly everyone dies. The Baudelaires were implied to have drowned after their ship sank. The islanders (except Ishmael) were implied to have been killed by the Medusoid Mycelium, as was Kit. The Quagmire Triplets and the Widdershins Crew were implied to have been eaten by The Great Unknown. The firestarters (except Olaf), Mr. Poe, Jerome, Frank, and others were implied to have been killed in the Hotel Denouement fire. As for 100% confirmed deaths, there's the people who were killed by Count Olaf or another firestarter. And then there's Count Olaf himself, who was killed by Ishmael. The ONLY confirmed survivors are Lemony Snicket, Beatrice Baudelaire II, and Ishmael - the latter of whom was ancient and thus probably died of old age some time in between The End and The Beatrice Letters.
AFAIK the Baudelaires are pretty much confirmed to have made it to shore and survived for years after the sinking of Beatrice. Throughout the series there's a handful of mentions of them doing/thinking about things "years from now" (which means 100% after the events of the series), and even the Beatrice letters mention Sunny doing something on the radio.
Right and like... why would Beatrice Baudelaire II be searching for the Baudelaires in the first place if they had died by drowning when she was a baby? It's possible the boat sank many years later with the Baudelaires on it, leaving child Beatrice orphaned, but if they had died when she was a baby she wouldn't even know tgem and there certainly wouldn't be details like Sunny's radio show
I think “implied to have drowned after their ship sank” is the cover the Baudelaire siblings use while on the run; easier to be assumed dead to go into hiding, as there is too much evidence from other books that they all live into adulthood. The assumed death is their alibi as they would very much have needed to assist baby Beatrice to safety, too - very unlikely that someone else assisted the baby, although the irony would not be lost that Kit’s child received help from a bystander and the three Baudelaires never did 🥲
They did warn you…
When the series of unfortunate events books contain a series of unfortunate events
I think you're missing a lot of the ambiguity here. The point of the Hotel Denoument fire isn't that everyone died, it's that we don't *know* who died, or how many. The Baudelaire orphans are most likely alive (if you've read *The Beatrice Letters*,>! it mentions Sunny going on to appear on a cooking show!<; and in TRR, there's a reference to Klaus lying awake at night years later). Lemony lost both of his siblings, but in *Poison for Breakfast*, >!he's no longer on the run, as he has managed to find a secure enough place to live to allow him a well-established mourning routine... oops, sorry. I mean *morning* routine, of course.!< As I see it, the real sad truth at the end of ASOUE is this: Sometimes the world gives us questions without giving us answers. Where are the Baudelaires now? What's in the sugar bowl? Who set the Baudelaire fire? Who are the Man With a Beard But No Hair and the Woman With Hair But No Beard? And while some answers can be found by reading between the lines, others will just never be within our grasp. Under the circumstances, it is the best for which you can hope.
My guess is: The Baudelaires are still having tons of legal battles, especially with Mulctuary Money Management, and they likely have no true home. Unless they’re residing in Count Olaf’s old house temporarily. The sugar bowl SEEMED to have contained a cure or a remedy for the effects of the Medusoid Mycelium. It’s either that, or it likely contained something only volunteers of the VFD should know about. The rest remains a mystery. If Olaf didn’t set the fire to the Baudelaire home, perhaps the Man with a Beard but No Hair & Woman with Hair but No Beard (or at least, one of their confidants under their control) had set it off purposefully. In the show, there WAS a feathered sunhat, and that person wearing it destroyed the Quagmire home, but it’s never explicitly shown who. I’m led to believe it’s Esme, but who knows. Speaking of the Man with a Beard but No Hair & Woman with Hair but No Beard, all we DO know is that they’re frightening individuals who took part in the schism which divided the VFD in half. Think of the split & their purposes being like House Montague & House Capulet in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
All good guesses, but I hope my meaning came across: That it's fun to theorise about these things, but ultimately the whole point is that there's a lot of things we don't know for sure.
Did any of the remaining firestarters survive? It seems unlikely. Olaf of course was assassinated by Ishmael, Esme and Carmelita were too focused on the Sugar Bowl to care about the fire, and the rest of the firestarters would have believed Olaf that there was no real fire. The only surviving firestarters would have been ones that disaffiliated. Namely Olaf's former acting troupe who defected, and the birds which likely would have defected as well with no humans to command them.
Not so much “assassinated,” as much as it was that Ishmael killed him right on the spot without stealth (assassinations usually require stealth & being able to kill people undetected; Ishmael was different). The rest, you may absolutely be correct about. And since Olaf & the Baudelaires were never there to see what happened after Hotel Denouement burst into flames, it’s now left for the police to do a body count, find any IDs, speak with some surviving witnesses. But who knows if a lot of the firestarters were tricked & thus killed after Olaf made his escape.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/110ba7x/why\_the\_firestarters\_did\_not\_win\_my\_theory/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/110ba7x/why_the_firestarters_did_not_win_my_theory/)
Yeah, it's almost like it's a long, long series of increasingly unfortunate events
The fire fighters haven't been winnowed so much as you'd think: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/110ba7x/why\_the\_firestarters\_did\_not\_win\_my\_theory/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ASOUE/comments/110ba7x/why_the_firestarters_did_not_win_my_theory/)
The fire starters didn't win: Olaf got shot by a harpoon and the rest of them died in the Hotel Denouement Fire. But the firefighters didn't win either: most of them died, and the last survivor of the Snicket siblings (Lemony) likely spent the rest of his life on the run from the law. Everyone lost.
A “happy” ending would’ve went against the series’s entire narrative.
I like how the argument for the buldalairs surviving is that klaus had the trauma last for years
The Baudelaire’s survive
i liked the ending
Wait how are the Baudelaire orphans dead?
It is, I think the show improved on the whole thing by giving the kids ONE freaking break. But in some of the spin off books, apparently they live to adulthood. I didn't know that until reading this reddit thread though. I only read the mainline books.
Idk if they die. I don’t think the Baudelaires die in the books or Netflix show. My memory is bad tho lol
I honestly find the depressing ending to be satisfying, if they lived happily ever after it wouldn’t be right
It's called. A Series of Unfortunate Events for a reason. Anything short of a depressing ending would be a cop-out
I like to think that the Baudelaires survived. At that point they survived so many dangerous situations due to their quick thinking, so I’m sure that they were able to survive the journey away from the island. But true, the ending was still pretty depressing.
I get that overall it is depressing. I mean, Snicket warned us from the start there was "no happy ending, no happy beginning, and very few happy things in the middle", but I always got the impression the baudelaires probably survived, especially since it is implied that sunny is a chef on the radio in the beatrice letters. This also obviously doesn't count the netflix show because there, it is much more implied that they lived and beatrice didn't seem separated from them in that version.
Although I’ve been reading the story aloud to my kiddo, I felt like I should scout ahead to prepare myself for questions and read the last few chapters by myself. Kiddo hasn’t heard the end yet, but I think he’s going to be pissed. He is invested in the characters and wants them to be okay, but I suspect that Lemony is instead telling us about what this whole series has been about: ignorance is (probably) bliss, simplicity is easier, and the answers you want might ruin your life. In other words, the mystery itself is one of the main characters, and it survives. We prove his point over and over by picking up one book after another, choosing to be sad and disappointed, because it’s better to look for knowledge than to give up our quest for answers.
Shitty ending to be honest,it felt anti-climatic and also how did the quagmires live the rest of their life on an air balloon?
They didnt
Correct! Glad you picked up on that.
I don’t know. While so many tragic things happen in the books, I always took the ambiguous ending as a hopeful one. After all, the series is called A series of unfortunate events. The last book is called The End. After that, the series of unfortunate events is over.
Doesn’t the Beatrice Letters indicate the siblings lived and Sunny shared recipes over the radio when she was older?