mostly because i think i’ve made some sense out of it and it’s not nearly as mysterious as we thought

so the ending comes off as gainax-esque, but i don’t think thats the case. and i don’t think it’s a time loop either!

joey wrote to henry and asked him to come talk to him. that’s the apartment scene we saw in the ending, leading to henry entering the studio. whether or not the studio is actually attached to joey’s house (maybe it was torn down and he built his house on top of it? who knows) or if it was just for the sake of a quick transition i don’t know. but it is a setup scene, and it’s full of important information.

firstly, the letters from old employees. this implies that henry is not the first person joey reached out to in order to deal with his problem (demon bendy). we see that he at least wrote to both allison and wally, but we’ll focus on allison since we’ve never seen evidence that wally returned. we can assume from his tapes and recent move to florida that wally denied coming to see joey. however, allison and tom accepted, and they eventually became alice and boris. i’m on the fence of whether joey invited them to turn them, or it was a result of him using them in an attempt to stop bendy. opinions are welcome. regardless, tom and allison entered the studios and never came back, forgetting who they used to be and their relationship with one another.

secondly, the ink machine. or another one. this one is an important tidbit but we can’t clean too much from it yet. clearly joey hasn’t learned from his mistakes and will eventually repeat them. or perhaps he’s keeping it safe? is that what he used to turn tom and allison? probably, since he’s obviously against setting foot in the studio again. why go fix his own mistake when he can make others do it? more on that later.

lastly, the storyboards. i’ve seen a lot of people jump to the conclusion that they indicate the game being a dream, or a story joey is telling (possibly to henry’s daughter, given the “tell me another uncle joey” line at the end). i think it’s actually joey’s plans to stop bendy. it depicts a fight between bendy, sammy, allison and tom. the couple’s presence puts more evidence in the camp that joey transformed them and planted them to fight bendy, but not enough to be definitive. anyway, joey can’t see the fight going any other way than in bendys favor. he boards it because it’s how he knows how to plan things out, even though he didnt do any animation work himself. before henry arrives, joey believes the current scenario in the studio will only lead to bendy’s victory. which is why he invites henry.

so. why henry. why is he here.

because henry made bendy, so joey thinks he should destroy bendy. 

we all know by now that henry was the true creative vision behind bendy and friends. that joey shoved him in a corner and took all the glory for himself. this is old but important news. joey hates responsibility, as shown through the lackadaisical way he runs his business. joey shows some remorse in the ending, but ultimately pins it on henry again;

“The truth is, you were always so good at pushing, old friend… pushing me to do the right thing. You should’ve pushed a little harder.”

in joey’s eyes he only made mistakes because henry left. because it was henry’s job to keep him on track and stay a good person. so one last time, he makes henry do all the work for him. he sends henry into the studio to run a reel that just says “the end.” an oddly simple solution given the harrowing trip it took to get there. but bendy’s somewhat anticlimactic defeat makes sense (and isn’t actually the focus of the ending, more in a second), given what we know about joey.

so much of joey’s problems could have been fixed by simple things. the tapes showcase this tenfold, but joey refused to listen. because he’s joey drew! who cares! all it takes to defeat bendy is by running an ending reel. a strangely easy fix to a problem. seem familiar?

joey doesn’t want to do the work involved in an easy fix. joey wants to do things his way, and that is to spout off an idea and then do nothing. joey sends other people to do his dirty work, and they are dumbfounded at how simple the solutions to overcomplicated problems end up being.

we, the player, are dumbfounded at how easily we ended bendy. it was so simple! what was the point? why are we even here?

because joey didn’t want to be.

so now, bendy is gone (supposedly). henry is trapped in the studio, and so are the other employees turned monsters. but that’s not joey’s problem. none of this was, really. just a mess he had to take care of before moving on to the next thing. is he sorry? kind of. i don’t trust him and neither should you, since he’s left henry in the lurch something terrible. the last tape told him how to defeat bendy, but what now? how does henry leave? what about the other mysteries left unsolved?

not joey’s problem.

themeatly has hinted that this isn’t the last we’ll see of bendy, and i’m not surprised. not because of how easy it was to defeat him, but because henry is still stuck down there. the story isn’t over. knowing henry, he wants to find a way out, maybe a way to save those who succumbed to the ink. but the game ends here for now, because we did it.

we found what joey wanted to show us.

and that’s all joey cares about.

in short,