Blood of Zeus Season 3 ENDING Explained & Real Life Mythology

Blood of Zeus just released its third and final season, and as always, we're here to explain its ending and the mythology that inspired it. The show isn't just following the written versions of Greek mythology, however, and seems to be more so inspired by the real-life ancient secret societies that had different versions of these same myths. These secret societies were known across the world as Mystery Schools, and actually date back long before the time of Greece, with these Mystery Schools still existing today with fraternities like Freemasonry, which the show even takes inspiration from. The important thing the Ancient Mystery Schools had in common was that they each had the same basic ceremony for initiation, using different mythological characters. This was the story of a death and a resurrection, and by re-enacting this, the Mystery School believed that they gave their initiate an enhanced sense of intuition, and for the most adept, the gift of prophecy. Death and prophecy are the two key themes of Blood of Zeus, with the show ultimately being about how no person can escape their own death, how each person born comes with their own prophesied end. In the beginning, Blood of Zeus started out as a show about Heron, which the opening titles made clear was an entirely new character, not actually from a real Greek myth. Instead, Heron is designed to feel like some lost mythic hero from ancient Greece, taking place at a time when the Greek legends as we have them recorded have already occurred. With the world being ruled by the supreme god of Olympus, Zeus. By the end of the latest season, however, the show returns to the roots of Greek mythology by having Heron and his brother Seraphim battle against the tyrannical father of Zeus, the titan Kronos, creating a sequel to the original Greek myths that fulfills the original prophecies of the text. So let's talk about how the show got there. Season 1 of Blood of Zeus focused on introducing the story of Heron and his twin brother Seraphim, who act as the characters that the audience proxies into for this mystery play. While Heron and Seraphim are twins born of the same mother, they do have different fathers, with Heron being the son of Zeus and Seraphim being the son of the king. Because of Zeus's affair with the mortal queen, however, both Heron and Seraphim's lives are ruined, with both children being raised as outcasts. Heron had a slightly better life overall, getting to stay with his mother while being rejected by the small village that they lived in. Seraphim, meanwhile, was raised largely in the wild. Their different lives gave them very different characters, with Heron ultimately wanting to do things that he felt brought peace. Seraphim, meanwhile, was focused more so on destruction, at the very least the destruction of the powers that made his life what it was. It's because of this different life that Seraphim ends up eating the flesh of a rotting giant, one of the giants that Zeus and the Olympians had previously defeated, turning Seraphim and his men into a race of demons. Heron, meanwhile, after learning about his divine lineage as the son of Zeus, becomes the target of his wife Hera, who wants revenge for Zeus's affair. This is a common occurrence in Greek myth, with many of its stories being about Zeus impregnating someone else, oftentimes a human, and creating a child that Hera would hate. This is the story of the most commonly known Greek myth in the English-speaking world, Heracles, with Hera driving Heracles insane to the point where he murdered his wife Megara and their sons. With that in mind, it isn't surprising that in Blood of Zeus, Hera wants to get revenge not just by killing Heron, but by killing Zeus himself, and to do this, she tries to revive the other giants that Zeus and the Olympians had defeated. Before this, she recruits Seraphim, who awakens the giants and brings them to Olympus for an epic battle in the finale. Already, the season was marked with these ideas of death and resurrection, with Seraphim being something of an undead figure after eating the flesh of the dead giant, giving the giant itself something of a resurrection. In the finale, Zeus, Heron, and Seraphim will all have different levels of a death and resurrection as well. Zeus dies fighting a giant and saving Hera as he does so, redeeming himself in her eyes and making her realize that he did love her despite the affairs he had. Affairs we would later learn were necessary for the ultimate ending of peace. Because of his death, Zeus wakes up in the Underworld where he is later assigned his own afterlife. This is the fate of Seraphim as well, who dies on Earth not wanting to be ruled over, only to find himself in the Underworld at the mercy of the god Hades. Heron, meanwhile, experiences a more symbolic death and resurrection, with Heron having a pretty close call to death in the final battle against Seraphim. Here, he realized that the only way to kill Seraphim is to stab his brother through his own body and activating his Zeus-like thunder powers. This leads to Heron looking like he died on the battlefield, but waking up in Olympus, symbolically a revival in heaven. This death and resurrection narrative has parallels to different Greek myths and even different Greek mystery schools, but it has more interesting similarities with that of the original mystery school initiation ceremony dated back to ancient Egypt. Here, the initiate would play the role of Osiris, the founder and king of Egypt, as well as its first god. After being killed by his brother Set, Osiris is revived by his wife Isis, but only long enough to take one breath and impregnate her. This leads to Isis giving birth to their son Horus, who is hidden away to grow up. After becoming an adult, Horus defeats Set and ascends to be the king of Egypt and the god of the land. While this isn't an exact parallel to the first season of Blood of Zeus, you can see how the story of Horus is similar to that of Heron, with both needing to be hidden away to grow to age. Zeus, meanwhile, takes the role of Osiris, the father who actually dies at the end of the season. From here, however, this new story of Heron begins to weave itself into that of the ancient myths of Greece, involving the conflicts between Zeus and his father Cronos, making Heron and Seraphim extensions of the prophecy that the son of Cronos would one day defeat him. The story of Cronos in Blood of Zeus begins in Season 2, where the succession of power is explained by the mother goddess Gaia. Gaia simply translates as Earth, and in Greek mythology, she's the first of the deities to spring into existence, the source from which all living things grow out of. In the show, she is presented as a loving mother who wants peace, but who has to deal with her children and their descendants finding reasons to fight amongst themselves. Gaia's children aren't the Olympians, but the twelve ancient titans, gods of not just great power, but also great size. Gaia has a sense of prophecy, and one day she foresaw that Cronos would be overthrown by his own children. Because of that, Cronos began to eat his offspring, hoping they would never grow big enough to fight against him. This was upsetting to Gaia, who saw it as a horrifying cannibalization of her own grandchildren, just so that Cronos could remain in control. Because of this, Zeus was hidden away to one day grow big enough to fight Cronos, banishing him and the other titans to the worst of hells known as Tartarus. With Zeus establishing himself as the ultimate ruler, Gaia granted him the Eleusinian Stone, an object of total power that would give the god wielding it control over the world. With Zeus dead, it was now time for someone else to inherit the stone, and Gaia, as well as Zeus, both wanted that to be Hera. The problem with Gaia's prophecies is that she doesn't know exactly what is going to occur, just that some things are destined to pass. She was sad for Zeus to die in the conflict with the giants, but she allowed it to happen, knowing that she and Zeus both saw a future where a chosen one would bring about the ultimate peace. However, she isn't sure if this is actually Heron, the way Zeus seems to think, and Gaia explains to him that it could also be Seraphim who achieves this goal, even if seemingly for less noble and more selfish reasons. Now, the Eleusinian Stone was not a real object from Greek myth, and instead is a pretty direct reference to the idea of power that one gets by making it to the highest level of mystery school training. This is obvious in the naming of the stone, which is named after the Eleusinian Mysteries, which themselves were named after the city they were performed in, Eleusis. This was a very mainstream mystery school with a lot of government oversight. A mystery school that, historically, was seen as one of the most open to new members, at least in their first level of initiation. Because of that, we know a lot not just about the ritual, but the inner workings of their organization. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, the initiates would actually be made to run 25 miles before experiencing the Death and Resurrection Ceremony, pushing their body to a state that actually simulates some of the brain processes that occur in a near-death experience. After running 25 miles, the initiate would play the role of Persephone, the daughter of Zeus who is violently kidnapped by Hades and taken to the underworld to be his bride. The initiate would then be rescued by their mother Demeter, whose cries to Zeus send him to have Persephone return to Olympus. This is the key mythological tale explored in Season 2 of Blood of Zeus, though they do change the story quite a bit. In the show, Persephone isn't kidnapped by Hades, but actually loves him and longed to marry him. In the original myth, Hades tricks Persephone into eating the seeds of the pomegranate because to do so would bind her soul to the underworld one month for each seed she ate. In the show, it's actually Persephone who eats these herself to guarantee that she will be able to see her husband when her mother sends to have her return to Olympus. This doesn't just keep her in the life of Hades, who she loves, but also the children she had with Hades who were trapped in the underworld with him. While she does fight with her mother in Blood of Zeus, she also shows love for her as well and does seem to want to be in her life as well as Hades. What Persephone and Hades really want in the show is to escape the underworld as a whole, bringing their children with them and living in the sun with the other gods. The only way to do this, however, would be for Hades to get his hands on the Eleusinian Stone and its great power. This makes Season 2 a pretty direct parallel to the Eleusinian Mysteries, with the show wanting us to focus on the Mystery School version of the story instead of the written myth because of the inclusion of the Eleusinian Stone. Now with Seraphim being the potential other chosen one who could establish peace, it's Seraphim that Hades uses to try and get the stone for himself. But to receive the stone, both Harren and Seraphim have to enter a place called the Hidden Realm, a protective temple that Gaia once used to hide Zeus and bring him to full age. A myth that is very similar to the one we discussed earlier of the Egyptian god Horus, being hidden away specifically in a temple that is modeled after the Mystery Schools. Since Zeus took the throne, the temple is used by Gaia to house the three trials that Harren and Seraphim had to face to prove that they were worthy of being a divine ruler. The idea of trials or challenges is very common in Mystery Schools, even beyond the 25 miles that the initiates had to run in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Other Mystery Schools were also known for having tests of intelligence as well as deadly traps that they had to escape in order to save their own lives while getting initiated. To cement the idea that these three trials in this temple are meant to mirror a Mystery School initiation, the final trial is even referred to as the Mystery of Forgiveness. It's interesting to note that the Eleusinian Mysteries and most traditional Mystery Schools from the time only had two levels of initiation, not three. With three degrees being a common number used more so in modern-day Mystery Schools like Freemasonry. And as you can imagine, the Season 2 finale leaned heavily into these Masonic ideas here. Season 1 already ended with the death and resurrection symbolism, but Season 2 and 3 each continue that pattern with Harren dying at the end of Season 2 and being brought back from the dead at the beginning of Season 3, all for him to die again in the big battle against Kronos in the series finale. This makes for a total of three deaths or three initiations, each season being one level of initiation or degrees as they are called in Freemasonry. The temple itself has some references to Freemasonry, including a decorative O and A symbol that can be seen over its design. This isn't an official symbol of Freemasonry, but rather something a lot of people, even non-Freemasons, tend to use in order to reference the organization. This is due to the O and the A being made with the same tools that are used to make up the logo of the Freemasons. The Masonic logo looks like a six-pointed star, but it's actually two triangular-shaped tools being laid over each other. The first of these is the compass, which is used to make the perfect circle, such as we see with that O and A. Next comes the square, which is used to make the perfect sides of the A. This reference actually appears in a lot of media, particularly shows created by Freemasonry enthusiasts like Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt has produced shows like Outer Range, where we can see the O and A symbolism right there in the logo. What's really interesting is that the opening monologue of the show also refers directly to Kronos. Brad Pitt also produced a show literally just called The OA, which deals largely with these mystery themes as well, with the premise of the again so that she can be revived and have her near-death experiences reported. Definitely go look up my hour-and-a-half-long breakdown of this show if you're curious about it as well. What really stood out as interesting to me is that the design of the temple that Gaia made here is actually five-sided, which strongly correlates to the design of the altar used by female masons in particular, the Order of the Eastern Star. The Order of the Eastern Star has five degrees instead of three, with the first one having the initiate play the role of a daughter, before the fifth and final degree has the woman ascending to the role of mother. It makes sense then that this would be the space of Gaia, the mother goddess and the mother of the entire esoteric system in the world of Blood of Zeus, a symbol of the highest place you can ascend to in the female masonic system, who herself seems to have the greatest gift of prophecy within the show. Even the show's structure seems to be made to match the ideas of Freemasonry. As mentioned before, they have three levels or degrees of initiation, but only the first one is actually referred to as an initiation. It is publicly known that when you make it to the second degree, it is referred to as being passed to the second degree and then raised to the third degree. This matches the journey of Heron in the show, who is initiated into Olympus with his own death and resurrection in Season 1. Next, at the end of Season 2, he seems to pass away before Season 3 has him being raised from the dead. Freemasonry has only publicly existed since the 1700s, and while they are said to make use of a ceremony that takes inspiration from the original ancient Egyptian mystery schools, their practices before becoming legally official are only known to date back as far as the 1200s. The idea of the number 3 being used by this institution for death and resurrection seems to be inspired by the stories of Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus in the New Testament of the Bible is largely seen as a with Jesus being killed on the eve of Passover and rising from the dead on the third day. Thus, modern mystery schools like Freemasonry use the number 3 for their initiations. While they do have appendant bodies like the Scottish Rite, which offer more ceremonial degrees, the highest degree there is the 33rd degree, keeping the Jesus symbolism by paralleling the number of years Jesus lived before his crucifixion. The final mystery that Heron has to solve here is also known as the mystery of forgiveness, once again attaching the number 3 to Jesus Christ as the death of Jesus Christ is used to forgive the sins of others. Heron, of course, is not that different from Jesus, being the prophesied son of a supreme God, with the third season of the show revealing that Heron, like Jesus, was born specifically to be a sacrifice so that his father's reign as God can continue. Now, Season 2 ended with Heron being betrayed by Hades after trying to establish peace, leading to a brutal death. In her anger, Gaia invoked the name of the god Typhon, a giant monster who torments the Olympians. The season starts with Heron rising from the dead as we said before, coming back after seeing his own life as well as the life of people he interacted with flashing before his eyes. Even with Heron being revived, however, Gaia cannot see a path to peace among the Olympians and wants to see their era end now. Because of that, she goes to Tartarus and talks to Kronos, the great hell that Kronos and the Titans were banished to after being defeated by Zeus ages in the past. Kronos is informed here by Gaia that even if he escapes, that prophecy about his death at the hands of Zeus is still in effect. Despite this, Kronos takes the opportunity to try and defy prophecy, getting revenge on the Olympians for the time being and hopefully finding a way to prove Gaia wrong. All season long, we see Kronos rallying up the other fallen Titans that the Olympians had previously defeated and attacking the human civilizations to destroy their temples to Zeus, reducing his power. This characterization of Gaia returning to help Kronos instead of the Olympians is something that makes a lot of sense in the original mythology. Gaia is Greek for Earth and we typically like to see Mother Earth as a wise spirit who has all of the answers, hence her sense of prophecy in the show. But in the show and even the original mythologies, her allegiance yo-yos back and forth because of this. What Gaia wants as Mother Earth is peace on her planet. And while Kronos is a prisoner at the time of the show because of his heinous crimes, it's important to remember that in the earliest Greek mythologies, Kronos was a hero to Gaia in particular and a ruler of a great golden age that Zeus has never been able to replicate. This is clear in the earliest written Greek accounts of Gaia, the 8th century text Theogony. Theogony translates as Genealogy of the Gods and as the name suggests, this is a history of the entities that all came from Gaia as the first manifestation in existence. From the nothingness, Gaia emerges and it's she who creates her husband Orinus, the Sky. Blood of Zeus doesn't show us Orinus but alludes to him being a horrible person, with it being explained that even he was spared the fate of being erased in the abyss, indicating that he was someone who might have actually deserved it and at the very least, most evil entity known to the gods. In Theogony, Orinus is the mate that impregnates Gaia with the gods, but he forces them to live inside of her, causing her great pains, especially when he came to have his way with her. He was portrayed as a tyrant over the earth essentially, who was hurting Gaia and her children, the twelve titans. It is Kronos who is seen as the most brave and powerful of these children as he is the one that castrates his father Orinus using a sickle given to him by Gaia. It's because of this that Gaia has reason to love her titan children beyond just having given birth to them. They were victims of the same evil she was, victims of a father that she herself had created. For a while, Kronos was said to rule with that golden age, but like in the show, Gaia sees a prophecy that Kronos will be overthrown by his own children. Up until this point, the golden age indicates that this wasn't an oppressive age for humans, with Kronos trying to be the opposite of his father Orinus, but when threatened, he became a monster who started eating his own children. This was a horrifying act for Gaia to witness, and once again, it was somewhat her fault. She had told Kronos the prophecy, likely wanting him to self-sacrifice in some way, to step aside as opposed to truly being overthrown. But in the end, it was her own actions of revealing the prophecy to Kronos that led to him being a monster. It's because of this that she didn't just hide Zeus away like we see in the show, but in Theogony, she actually gives the Olympians the information they need to finally defeat and overthrow their parents. Despite this, Gaia gets mad at the Olympians when they banish the Titans to Tartarus, which is considered the very worst of the hells, the second worst fate in existence after being thrown into the abyss within Blood of Zeus. The reason Gaia gave the Olympians this information was not just to defeat Kronos, but with the hope that the Olympians would go easy on the Titans. She didn't even want the Titans to get away scot-free, but just wanted some level of mercy if not forgiveness. The Olympians didn't do this, however, and that is why she actually first created the monster Typhon. While the Olympians would defeat Typhon as well, Typhon didn't actually die, and was just sealed beneath the Earth like we see in the show. Always there to be a threat hanging over the Olympians' heads until they stop taking it seriously. There have been a lot of adaptions of Greek myth, but Blood of Zeus is the first one to really capture Gaia's character as she actually appears in Theogony. The crying spirit of the Earth who always does what she has to for peace, but then becomes angry when others don't do the same. And this is why she set Kronos free in the show, even if she knew that his fate was to fail. At this point in the show, Zeus himself is in the Underworld, and just as Kronos was set free, Zeus can be set free too. But, as is common in the show, after a season of doing something rather unrelated to the plot of the Olympians, Heron comes back in the last episode to save everyone as the main character. Now, the idea to tie Heron into the prophecy of Kronos' defeat makes sense in the mystery school tradition explored specifically in season 3, the one surrounding the god Dionysus. Season 3 of Blood of Zeus has Heron learning about Dionysus, but not meeting him like the other gods. Instead, like in season 2, the show is more focused on getting us to think about the mystery school that surrounds this myth, by having Heron interact with this mystery school directly, or more accurately, this mystery cult. You see, back in ancient Egypt, the mystery schools were basically the government itself. The highest of initiation ceremonies existed specifically for the pharaoh of Egypt. This was believed to initiate him not just into the mysteries, but into the afterlife. By performing the most elaborate version of the death and resurrection rituals for their god, the pharaoh was said to become one with them after their death, joining Osiris to judge the dead. While others were initiated into the lower levels of the Egyptian system as a whole, these were more distant relatives of the royals, the priestly classes, and the titans of industry. In Greece, the Eleusinian Mysteries were started by people who had traveled to Egypt, and wanted to share that ceremony with the rest of Greece. While it had government oversight, it wasn't the government itself, but wasn't considered a cult either. It was more so a separate, but officially recognized somewhat spiritual system. A place where people would go beyond the temples to get more spiritual enlightenment, but not connected directly to the temples themselves. When it came to the mysteries of Dionysus, it's more so as we see portrayed in the show, however. A mystery cult that was presented as wild and on the fringes of society. Something the official governments didn't like, and even found possibly dangerous. Instead of having a hometown like in Eleusis, the cults of Dionysus would travel around Greece and other areas, initiating people wherever they could. Their death and resurrection ceremony was considered particularly grisly, and they were even accused of killing and eating other humans. This is due to the initiation ceremony of the Mysteries of Dionysus, In the Mystery of Dionysus, the initiate played the role of this god, who is prophesied to rule over all of existence. Out of anger, the titans come to kill Dionysus before this can happen, tearing apart his flesh and devouring him. To experience the death of Dionysus, the initiate would act out that role, up until the moment where the titans are supposed to eat him, at which point he would be substituted by a wild animal. The other members then would kill and eat this animal, just as we see in the show, claiming it as a way to honor Dionysus and the way that he died. However, the maenads that worship Dionysus talk about how his divine spark exists in all of them. This is due to the original mystery play where Dionysus is killed, as after his death, Zeus comes in with thunderbolts to kill the titans. This burns their flesh, turning it to ash, and the ash mixes with the blood of the dead Dionysus, leading to the creation of humans. Humans thus now have the divine spark of Dionysus inside of them, as well as his potential to rule creation, but only by purging themselves of their evil aspects from their titan lineage. This myth is of course very similar to the story of Heron, which combines the ideas and prophecies concerning Kronos and Zeus, but pushes them into the next generation. This myth is alluded to in the show because it's the story that Heron has taken over, with Heron, the initiate, representing our modern age that still needs to let go of some of our ancient selfishness. The maenads even accuse Heron here of wanting to replace their beloved Dionysus, the god who is meant to rule all of creation, and by the end of the season, Heron does, taking the place of Dionysus as the divine spark inside of all people. Interestingly, the maenads end up bringing Heron to an oracle after their ritual honoring Dionysus, once again tying the idea of mystery schools and their trials to gaining the gift of prophecy. This oracle they take Heron to is no random oracle, but the character from Greek myth, Orpheus. Orpheus is a character from yet another mystery school play, with the story of Orpheus actually being closer to that of Persephone than Dionysus. The story of Orpheus is that he was the most talented musician and poet of Ancient Greece, something alluded to in Blood of Zeus with his musical instrument and his introspective talk about what music is to him. At some point, the wife of Orpheus dies, however, and Orpheus tries to use his music to tempt the powers of the underworld into letting his wife go. Even Hades and Persephone, important to the Eleusinian mysteries, are charmed by his music and allow him to guide his wife out of the underworld. But they warn him if he tries to look back at her even once before making it back to the living world, his wife will be returned to her place in Hades. Despite how legendary Orpheus is, he is still human, and because of that, he looks back at his wife and loses her in Hades forever. This is a dark ending, but it's an important one to think about when considering that this tale of Orpheus seems to be meant to mirror the story of Seraphim in the show, as opposed to Harren, who is meant to parallel Dionysus. While Seraphim does get a happier ending for the woman he loves, it's his story that has him descending to Hades and trying to tempt the guardians of the underworld to save Gorgo's soul. Harren, meanwhile, is the one prepared as the sacrifice to be torn apart by titans, much like Dionysus. In the original myth, it was Zeus and his siblings who were being eaten by the titans so that they couldn't overthrow them, and the mysteries of Dionysus just confirmed that that story of the Olympian gods was the story of the people themselves. People who were destined to rule all of the world one day, but only after they properly let go of the toxic traits that came from the civilizations before. The visit with Dionysus in the main ads in episode 5 is used to point to these themes being a part of Harren's story. How he will eventually die at the hands of the titans, but how afterwards, as Zeus explains, it is Harren's spark that will live inside of humans. When it comes to the death of Harren, however, he had to be shaped for this sacrifice. It wasn't like with Kronos, who would just eat his children, but Zeus had to make sure that Harren wanted to die in the right place at the right time. To do this, he actually in many ways had to mislead and cause pain to Harren. Instead of letting him live the royal life of a prince, or even just a happy person among his village, Zeus gave Harren the most humble life possible for him and his mother to barely scrape by. During this time, he would influence Harren as the old man who brings food for him and his mother. In this form, Zeus appears like he has nothing, but he gets to be the hero who gives what little he has for Harren and his family, giving his own son just scrapes to make Harren feel like this man actually cares about him. And from this fake authority figure at a young and vulnerable age, this man teaches Harren what he needs to believe in order to finally be a sacrifice at the end of Season 3. It's an ironic death for Harren, as Gaia's problem with Kronos was his willingness to destroy his own children just so that he could continue to live. Ultimately, Zeus does this too with Harren, just in a different way. It's rather sad that as Harren battles against Kronos in the finale, the last words that he remembers are the words of Zeus in disguise as the old man. Basically, the most comforting person to Harren at the moment he's about to die is someone who is entirely a lie. A fake father created by Zeus just to get Harren to sacrifice himself because a direct relationship with his real father never would have led to that. These last words that Harren remembers are about how the real hero in any battle is the one who makes sure that everyone else gets home. The implication being that he's willing to die for the others, who are unwilling to do the same because of their personal earthly attachments. The people that they want to return home to. And it's because of that that before his sacrifice, Season 3 had Harren largely dealing with the last of those. Throughout the entire show, Harren has been pulled along by fate, but in the Season 3 premiere, he became aligned with fate's goals. It was here that he was killed by Hades and had his near-death experience, where he saw the pain of everyone else he had crossed paths with, and had the realization that they were all cut from the same thread. Instead of a true sense of prophecy, Harren instead becomes aligned with prophecy in a practical way. At the end of the day, prophecy means knowing the future instead of just seeing it. You have to understand the future for it to really be considered a prophecy. In the show, they use the metaphor of a baby who can only see so far ahead. Technically, the baby is able to see visually in front of him, but he's not able to understand that the end of the surface leads to a fall. It's not that he can't see what's going to happen, he just doesn't understand what's going to happen until he experiences it himself. The same is true for death. We all witness it, but it's different to experience it yourself and then come back. To die and then somehow to return to your body means now having the understanding that you will die in that same way again, possibly very soon. And that leads to a very different outlook on life. Even today, people who have near-death experiences are reported to have changes very similar to Harren in Season 3. Not just the flash of life before their eyes or seeing the pain that others lived as well, but also the sudden desire Harren has to abandon his previous duties and focus on trying to help others. After Season 2 had Harren building up the idea that he wants to be a leader among the gods, Season 3 has him abandoning this entirely in order to help Seraphim, the last person he had made a promise to before his sudden death and return. Since coming back, Harren could find a way to heal himself beyond just trying to help Seraphim. But having actually experienced death, the only thing that matters to him now is trying to experience a good death. And in trying to do right by Seraphim, Harren is just brought back to Kronos for the final battle. Despite all this drama for Harren to become a sacrifice, the sacrifice doesn't make him the chosen one that Gaia described previously. As Harren's sacrifice doesn't deliver some sort of climactic final blow that defeats Kronos. In the end, Seraphim is the one who becomes the chosen one, but it's only because of Harren himself and the sacrifice that he's willing to make. In the final battle, Seraphim was ready to side with Kronos or take his deal to have more time with the woman he loved. The only connection he had outside of that had become Harren, the person he had initially fought against but who was now his greatest ally. It's Harren who convinces Seraphim that they can save her soul entirely by fighting against Kronos instead of aligning with him, even if Harren can't kill Kronos himself. It's because of the original prophecy and its focus on Zeus that Kronos was unable to realize how someone could tangentially lead to his defeat with a sacrifice. Kronos refused to sacrifice himself for Zeus, even if it could have led to a greater future. But Harren was willing to give up his entire life just to be a mere distraction. His death on the battlefield looked meaningless, but it's only because of his distraction that Hermes was able to steal the item necessary to bring Zeus out of the underworld so that he could rally up his brothers to hold down Kronos and finally Seraphim could deliver the final blow. It's easy to see how Seraphim and Harren are both really the chosen ones in this scenario, with that title going to Seraphim because he's the one who technically ended the battle. But it goes beyond just the fact that Harren had to sacrifice himself for Seraphim to do this as the two were really the ones who shaped each other to be what they needed to be for this final battle. This is important in the mystery school traditions and with something that Zeus even mentions in the show. The idea that some level of conflict and struggle does have to exist in order for peace to eventually be attained. What Harren and Seraphim actually are to each other are the forces that shaped each other into what they needed to be for destiny to occur as it had. In the end, they were both sacrifices by fate. Two entities set up in an amazing situation that had them fighting against each other in a way that brought them back together for the story's end. Finally, with the end of the show, it's time to talk about its final death and what exactly that meant. The show, of course, explored different levels of death, such as dying in the physical body but continuing in the afterlife, down to the idea of being wiped out by the abyss as a sort of final death. For Harren, however, his sacrifice goes well beyond him being allowed into the Elysian Fields and instead, his death more so reflects the ideas of the ancient mystery school traditions. For his sacrifice, Harren is given the honor of being a constellation in the stars, a shape given to him to inspire humans to be more like him. But at this time, Zeus also claims that the divine spark of Harren is now inside of humans. This is similar to what we said earlier about Dionysus, who in the show is said to be a divine spark that exists in humans, just as he is in the real mystery play. You see, deep in the past, people groups had the belief that their ancestors would go on to join each other in a very specific star or constellation. The worship of gods themselves were originally the worship of ancestors, and we see that in the Greek theogony, where we see that the genealogy of the gods and their conflicts is more so a representation of early human civilizations and the wars between their peoples. This is why so many of the gods in so many of the different cultures are associated with a planet or star or constellation. This is especially true of our most important gods, such as Zeus, who is of course known also as Jupiter, and his father Kronos, who is of course also known as Saturn. In ancient Egypt, this death and resurrection ceremony wasn't just to give the person a heightened sense of power, but as we described before, your soul was supposed to join Osiris in the afterlife, joining him in the duty of judging the souls of the dead that are meant to return to the earth or go beyond them to the heavens. Osiris himself was seen as equivalent with Ra in Egypt, the god of the sun, and for each culture, this ceremony was meant to connect you with your own ancestor spirit, each associated with their own stars or constellations. When these gods themselves are said to die in their higher spiritual realms, they are depicted as going to a world beyond where even the gods as we know them exist, a place where you return to that divine unity that Heron described at the start of Season 3. And from here, this is where the human souls are said to descend from, and to which we are all meant to return. If you've made it this far, you must really be a fan of the show or Greek Mythology, so either way, thanks for watching. And if you want more Greek Mythology in animation, consider checking out the playlist we have on all of the different Greek Mythology cartoons. We recently put out a huge video talking about the Disney Hercules movie, but we also have a video about Atlantis that has gained a lot of traction, as well as our breakdown of the other show inspired by Greek Mythology, the indie animated series God's School, and even our previous videos on Blood of Zeus, which go even deeper on the symbolism of characters like Seraphim.