Helping a young Bayonetta escape the fairie-infested Avalon Forest is a tough task in Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, but it isn’t the end of the story. Bayonetta Origins has many secrets hiding within its gorgeous storybook pages, from numerous wisps to collect and hidden areas to discover. The biggest secret of all is that the game has a hidden true ending that is easy to miss if you don’t know what you are looking for. Here is how to get the secret ending of Bayonetta Origins and what it means for the series at large.

Despite all the collectible journals, wisps, and upgrade materials scattered throughout Avalon Forest, a path to the secret ending of Bayonetta Origins will not be found in the entirety of the game’s 13 chapters. That is because you can’t even begin to get close to the game’s true ending until you finish the main story of Cereza and Cheshire. This will take you about 15 hours.

Once you complete the main game you will unlock several new features such as the ability to dress up Cereza and Cheshire in different outfits. You also unlock a new chapter of the game that follows the witch Jeanne, who briefly appears at the beginning and end of Bayonetta Origins. This solo adventure is aptly titled “Jeanne’s Tale” and expands upon story elements in the main game.

Playing as Jeanne gives players a more powerful version of Cereza’s Witch Pulse skill called Thorn Bind as well as a new costume for Cheshire. Completing ‘Jeanne’s Tale’ takes roughly an hour. The final boss of her adventure is a creature called the Affirmer of Phenomena. Defeating the Affirmer of Phenomena will lead to the true ending of Bayonetta Origins.

Spoilers follow for the true ending of Bayonetta Origins

While the majority of Bayonetta Origins does not have overt references to the main Bayonetta Trilogy, the Affirmer of Phenomena is directly related to the end of Bayonetta 3. The Affirmer of Phenomena is none other than Singularity, the artificial human behind the main conflict of a. He comments to Jeanne that he barely survived his last encounter with Arch-Eve (Bayonetta) and somehow got sent here.

Singularity shows Jeanne a vision of her demise at his hands during the events of Bayonetta 3. He says that if Jeanne steps aside and lets Cereza be murdered then he will spare Jeanne’s life. Jeanne, of course, refuses and fights against singularity to save Cereza, but the combined power of Jeanne and Cheshire is not enough. Jeanne realizes that the only person who has the power to defeat singularity is Cereza, so she screams at her frozen body to wake up. Cereza eventually wakes and helps Jeanne and Cheshire defeat Singularity. Before disappearing, he gives the usual villain monologue about coming back and how they will both regret this.

After parting ways with Cereza, Jeanne promises to become the strongest witch she can to defeat Singularity in the future, prevent her own untimely end, and stay by Cereza’s side.

The importance of this ending is how directly it ties Bayonetta Origins back into the main narrative of the larger Bayonetta franchise. It tells us that Singularity is not gone forever and that Bayonetta 4 will most likely have to deal with this lingering loose thread. In addition, it suggests that Bayonetta Origins is yet another part of the multiverse (that also happened in the past).

Jeanne has been set on a unique path thanks to this encounter with Singularity, and she knows more than Cereza does about what the future holds. It could be possible that this version of Jeanne could appear in future Bayonetta titles. Like any multiverse, it opens up numerous possibilities that could be seen in Bayonetta 4, but only time will tell.