Talk:Endless Summer, Book 3 Choices/@comment-34316807-20180317203524/@comment-34079869-20180317231347

That's an interesting take, I hadn't thought of that. But, if these are supposed to show how great things would have been if they hadn't come to La Huerta or come across the MC, wouldn't that be the opposite of uplifting? It feels like the Embers are supposed to encourage them to move forward rather than think about what might have been.

Maybe, though, the idea is that defeating Rourke and getting the world back means that time goes backward so that everything gets erased for the other Catalysts as though the La Huerta experience never happened, but they retain some subconscious memory of it so that they use the lessons from it for the future. Or perhaps each has a choice of whether to take the future offered by the Ember or accept life as it is. The diamond scene in the last chapter suggests that MC and LI might end up on La Huerta permanently.