what do you think about the ending of cry for blood?
i don't think that's helena saying she doesn't believe in god anymore, she also throws her huntress gear in the water and that doesn't mean she quits
other things i found interesting
"this was never about huntress"
after the rooftop confrontation with nightwing and batman, helena fell into the water and vic rescued her. in the ending, she throws her things into the water and doesn't rescue it. the beginning of the comic is straight up a panel of her cousin's dead body. what do you think about the motif of water here? almost symbolising... reincarnation or new chapters of lives, almost. not to mention, her burning the house in the purple flashback scene
"Never about the Huntress"
"Men make their own history, ... but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."
I think the reason Helena throws her costume is not to renounce being the Huntress but instead to emphasise that this is all about Helena. The whole story, its characters have been preoccupied with the Huntress' willingness to kill, while Helena narrates a story about her, which "started in Sicily", before the Huntress and even before her birth. The other vigilantes think "killing" is this moral dilemma and question of methods, but Helena gradually tells us why and how "blood cries for blood"; why Helena kills. Put simply, the answer is so she can survive, when backed up against the wall. She chooses not to hide behind a mask when she faces that truth, and she accepts that it damns her in a religious sense.
"The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
The significance of drowning in the harbour is that it plays on an old "Sicilian message" popularised by The Godfather. Mobsters were said to disposed of their victims' corpses in the harbour and "sleeping with the fishes" became a euphemism for being murdered by the mafia.
The book opens with Claudio Panessa's corpse in the harbour, foreshadowing that it was not Huntress but instead a mobster who murdered him. This is emphasised by Helena's narration; "They all think they know me. None of them knows a damn thing."
The book also ends with Helena's discarded cross sinking into the harbour, with bubbles rising from the cross as if it's actually drowning. I don't think the cross represents Helena's faith in God but instead her virtue or sanctity, from a religious point of view. The Huntress has killed before, but this is the first time Helena has, although indirectly. It could also represent religious virtue generally. The page tells us that it is this virtue and sanctity which the mafia has defiled. "Damn you," Vic tells Helena and she answers, "Happened long ago, Vic." The mafia had put her on a path of damnation a long time ago. This is her accepting that these are cards that she's been dealt and she's doing what she can to survive and do good.
"It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past... must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content."
Cry for Blood is not a story about a killer who learns that killing is bad, although Question, Batman and Nightwing are adamant on treating Helena that way. It's a story of who Helena Bertinelli is, and her arc involves her reckoning with the history that made her in order to turn the page.
Essentially, history will repeat itself over and over unless we learn from and reckon with it. And that's what Helena does. She realises that she can't go on as she did if she wants to survive so she reflects critically about her story and those which came before it to find a way out. She uses the mafia's avarice, superstition and preoccupation with tradition against them. She lets Cassamento drop his guard by feeding his power trip, she uses Huntress' reputation to intimidate Mario into fleeing Gotham and she plays on an old Sicilian tradition to get Tomasso arrested and Cassamento killed. And NOW it's enough. She's no longer in survival mode; it would take a lot for her to kill again. She can now start anew.
It's a bittersweet and very lonely ending, but Helena won and her prize is a new beginning. How she chooses to live it is left beautifully ambiguous.
