Ok Deltarune fans of Tumblr I have a THEORY and I want to hear your thoughts.
There's 7 chapters of Deltarune. We know this bc of the chapter select screen and bc Gaster just said we passed the halfway point. Great. Cool. But I think that's not when the story "ends"... per se.
I think the "ending" of the game, or at least the prophecy, is in chapter 5. There's a crazy amount of shit that points to this, and it's SO WEIRD, so I wanna hear your guys's thoughts on this.
Ok from a meta pov, as far as I know, Toby has RARELY, if EVER, mentioned chapters 6 and 7 outside of the game itself. We know that chapters 3, 4 and 5 were originally meant to be released together, and we've heard lots about the development of chapter 5. We now even know that it's gonna be released in 2026 (and I think on Halloween like chp 1 bc I think the festival's a Halloween festival... anyways). Even when Toby talked about selling the game, he never said how many more chapters there would be and has generally been very vague about it. There's a good pre-chp-3/4 video by HalfBreadChaos on this chapter ambiguity which I recommend watching linked here.
Before the release of chapters 3 and 4, the general consensus of the fandom was that we wouldn't encounter the knight until at least chapter 4, and wouldn't fight it until chapter 5 or 6- much less a Titan, which would be saved for chapter 7 or at LEAST chapter 6. But here we are, having fought the Knight in chapter 3 and a whole-ass Titan in chapter 4- ie, the pace is going MUCH faster than the fandom thought it would. What's more is the festival is tomorrow, or chapter 5, largely thought to be the event which would coincide with the Roaring and maybe even the Angel's Heaven. If we assume this is true, all these events would occur way before the fandom thought they would.
However, the biggest piece of evidence that the game will "end" in chapter 5 is all the Easter Eggs which show no sign of continuing beyond that point. The page on the Spamton Sweepstakes which hints at the Weird Route only has references to chapters 1-5, and even though chapters 1 and 3 have no Weird Route, there's still there while 6 and 7 are not. The egg man only lists days up to Sunday (during chp 5) for hints for where we can find him during the chapter 3 egg room. Seam only needs 5 Shadow Crystals. And most interestingly of all, when talking about Lord of the Hammer, Gerson only describes the chapters up to chapter 5 to Susie. He never got to finish that book and dies soon after.
So what would it mean for chapter 5 to be the "end" of the game, but for chapters 6 and 7 to still exist? I think that chapter 5 is where the game is "supposed" to end- where the prophecy says it will, with the Roaring and the Angel's Heaven. I think chapter 5 is the "one ending" Toby Fox talks about in the steam page. But I don't think that it will be how the game itself resolves, and I don't think chapters 6 and 7 will be treated exactly like epilogue either.
Chapter 4 is ripe with the theme of breaking inevitability/predetermination, especially that of the prophecy. Gerson explicitly talks about writing his own version of events, and tries again and again to encourage Susie to do the same. In fact, he even says that the pen was free for the youth to pick up and write, but they never did. I think he's trying to get Susie to realize that she can try again even after the "end" of the story.
So anyways, there's my thoughts, what do you all think? :)
Alternatively I think it's also possible that chapter 5 will end with the Roaring starting, and that chapter 6 will be the "end" I talked about here, with chapter 7 being on trying again/breaking the prophecy- it seems actually that Gerson wrote a sixth chapter: "There was only one more chapter, after that, it all stopped." Regardless, I think chapter 5 will definitely be the last "normal" chapter, and it's still really weird how chapters 6 and 7 have been omitted up to this point.)
(Also! Credit to Shayy for giving me the original inspo for this theory with their theory that the Weird Route was some way to prematurely end the story by chapter 5. It got me thinking that *everything* was pointing to a chp 5 end.... and here we are)