Is this conclusive evidence that in the end, they all (SPOILERS)

[Splintercell100]

SPOILERS

[spoiler]die?[/spoiler]

After rereading #54, one thing that struck me was Cassie and Jake's final meeting in the series. It was when Jake caught up to Cassie when she was climbing a mountain with Ron. They talk and Jake informs her of the situation with Ax and tells her that she shouldn't come. Jake tells her goodbye and that he will see her when he gets back. But after Jake morphs and flies away, Cassie, in her final line in the series, says, "I knew I had said goodbye to Jake forever".

Was KA Applegate hinting at the fact that Jake and the others don't survive their encounter with the One? I mean ramming the bladeship did seem like a desperate measure. Normally, their chances of survival would be extremely minimal but throughout the series the Animorphs have always overcome the odds so in my first read of #54, I imagined them somehow surviving again. But since K.A. Applegate included that line earlier in the book, something tells me that Jake, Tobias, Marco, and the other people on that yeerk ship don't survive. This also means that Ax isn't rescued/he is dead.

Sad to think really. That only leaves one Animorph alive: Cassie.

This is also another reason why I think that other than rereleasing the older books, Scholastic won't release a new Animorphs series that picks up from #54.

[Visser 007]

Well, theoretically, Cassie could have died and not Jake, and it'd still be "goodbye forever." Maybe she had a premonition of her own death. After Jake left, perhaps Cassie tripped while coming down the mountain and fell off a cliff.

So it's not "conclusive evidence" like the title says, Applegate probably just wanted to leave it open-ended to some extent.

But from an in-series perspective, yes, I think that Jake and Co. died, or were absorbed or whatever. Regardless of what the One is, it's obviously far beyond multiple full crews of Yeerk and Andalite warriors. Realistically speaking the Animorphs had no chance.

[anijen21]

about as conclusive as the "no one ever saw David again" or whatever in #22, amirite?

[Alex Oiknine]

I don't know... I think she knew she would never get to be with Jake at that point, maybe even that he wouldn't be coming home to Earth when he left. That wasn't "I'm messed up right now" that was "This won't work, and I can't be what you need me to be."

But knowing she'd said goodbye to Jake doesn't mean he or anyone else escaped surviving.

[Kotetsu1442]

I would side toward it being inconclusive. There isn't enough description to show that she was somehow able to actually know the future or that any sense of premonition she had was necessarily accurate. From the limited, first person perspective that Animorphs has been told, several times the characters have said "I knew we were dead" then they made it out alive, it is just that the narration is unreliable in the sense of necessarily accurate meaning behind concepts like "to know." It may be that she was correct when she felt that 'she knew' or perhaps she was incorrect, but her perspective at that time with regards to the conflict Jake and the others were approaching is too limited to conclusively resolve the cliffhanger.

On the other hand, this certainly doesn't remove anyone's right to draw their own personal conclusions about the series and believe that this supports their feelings on it. It's just that the author was deliberately ambiguous in order to allow readers to reach their own conclusions; and even the accuracy of Cassie's 'knowing' something she can't actually 'know' is subject to this ambiguity.

[Tim Bruening]

Well, theoretically, Cassie could have died and not Jake, and it'd still be "goodbye forever." Maybe she had a premonition of her own death. After Jake left, perhaps Cassie tripped while coming down the mountain and fell off a cliff.

If Cassie fell off a cliff, wouldn't she just morph into a bird?