The Final Aeon

[Serah]

So, I was having a chat with little Andrew who's currently playing FFX and an interesting conversation sparked up between us. We were talking about how it'd be cool if they would've made like an ingame sphere to see a summoner's Final Aeon fight with Sin. It raised this question. They never specifically state how the summoner dies.

We know that obtaining the Final Aeon will kill the summoner, but here's the questions that arose. As soon as the summoner calls it, does it kill them right off? Does the summoner control the Aeon like it does all it's other Aeons and then die as soon as the Final Aeon finishes off Sin? Or does perhaps the Final Aeon go so berserk it kills the summoner? I've just always wondered if as soon as the summoner calls the Final Aeon, the summoner, for better lack of wording, just drops dead? Discuss.

 

[Onceman]

I made a fan art of the battle between Sin and Braska's Final Aeon on Deviant Art, and wrote a companion story to it also about what happened to Braska. It was a nice enough story, I thought, and went with the "Braska just drops dead" line of thought.

Well, the guy who requested the piece sent me a note with how he saw it, and it made way more sense than my version, so I deleted the story and haven't gone back to it. Here's his take on it:



Its a great story, but doesn't jibe with how I pictured the Final Aeon working. Specifically, Braska's death. Everyone says that "The final Aeon kills the summoner." But that's because the general populace didn't know about Yu Yevon! So what I envisioned was that Jecht becomes a faith, a living stone statue that gets left behind in Zanarkand. Then Braska and Auron travel to the Calm lands and await Sin. Braska sends auron away to a safe distance and summons the Jecht-aeon. They battle Sin, and defeat it. But then, unseen by all, Yu Yevon abandons Sin and takes over Jecht. Then it's Yu Yevon that kills Braska.

The only discrepancy I think would be that the Fayth statues were on Mt. Gagazet, but otherwise the theory is generally sound. So Sin dies only when Yu Yevon leaves its body, moving into another Aeon. For the longest time, I never thought too deeply about the weird Aeon-jumping series of battles at the very end, and since there is no Final Aeon when Yuna fights him, the Sin body is dead, so Yu Yevon is desperately trying to find another Aeon to inhabit. But yeah, I tend to agree that once Sin dies and Yu Yevon takes over the Final Aeon, the first thing he does is kill the Summoner.

 

[.Tifa]

This may sound a little silly but kinda believed that the Final Aeon killed the Summoner because of the stress and pressure the Summoner had during that time...

During the Adventure we always see Yuna praying in the temple for a new Aeon and it always takes alot of strength of out her. She almost faints and feels rather weakened down after gaining a new Aeon after praying and in Bevelle she faints unconscious for real..

Not to mention the Summoner had alot of pressure from the whole Spira to defeat the Final Aeon and make it Zanakand, they had alot of force put upon them too, not stop and turn around but make it through the whole entire journey. Remember Auron saying something that a Summoner has alot put on his shoulders and it can weigh them down..

Reckon that Yuna managed to faint for real instead of loosing balance because Bahamut was a pretty strong and powerful Aeon to call into your body and call into your mind..
A Aeon that is able to defeat Sin a huge blue massive monster would have to be pretty strong and massive and it's probably much more massive than Bahamut or any of the other Aeons put together. Braska's Final Aeon was pretty big and massive and to summon something as big as Braska's Final Aeon would take alot of inner- strength..
And all the stress pressure fears and worries that the Summoner had before the Final Summoning comes together and kills them..

Believe that the Summoner would call the Final Aeon and die soon after while the Final Aeon will attack Sin in a couple of hits overkilling the monster, so the Summoner doesn't see Sin be killed but maybe a small glimpse of the Final Aeon coming in to kill Sin..
So the Final thing they see is the first sign/ moment that is another calm is coming..

:/ Bet it sounds silly..

 

[King Sean]

The final aeon is incredibly hard to summon, so hard in fact, that its power is so much that the summoner cant handle all that power and dies, i believe. The summon defeats sin, of course, but then the summoner dies and then

Spoiler

Yu Yevon makes Sin heal for ten years which is called the Calm, whilst the final aeon becomes sin by Yu Yevon taking the person that became the final aeon and uses them to be the core of the "new" Sin

 

[Lord Avon]

An Aeon is, by definition, the union of a Fayth, in this case, a guardian or lover, and of the summoner. I always assumed that Final means Final, and actually requires the Summoner to put themselves into the summon, physically, hence why there was no real tomb for Braska (or any other high summoner) in the games, and they had a shrine in Besaid Island anyway.

It's also possible that that simply summoning the Final Aeon

Spoiler

turns the summoner into a Fayth. All the Fayth in the games are either Zanarkand 'consorts', or successful summoners.