YMMV / What Remains of Edith Finch

• Accidental Aesop: Don't send your kids to bed without dinner, otherwise they may ingest something deadly in their hunger.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: If there are any other takeaways, it would probably be "Remember your loved ones as they were in life, not how they died". Edie has a hella odd way to remember her passed on loved ones and, because of how she memorialized them, Edith (and the players) don't have too much of an idea of who the deceased were in life.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is there really a curse on the Finch family, are they just really unlucky, or have they become so invested in the idea of a curse that they have become Death Seekers?
  • Is Edie just trying to preserve a tradition near and dear to her, or is she using the Curse to excuse reckless and criminally negligent behavior that keeps her family in the newspaper headlines? Similarly, is she using the idea of a curse to try and rationalize all the deaths, and even find some manner of comfort in it, or is she using the curse as a way to become popular, using her dead family for media attention? Maybe it started off as coping/rationalization on Odin's part but Edie, in perpetuation, may have gone off the deep end. In fact, there are many who argue that the closest thing to a Big Bad in the story is Edie herself.
  • Is Edith a very mature young woman whose reconnection to her family history is heartening and whose acceptance of the inevitability of death is inspiring and commendable? Or is she a pretty typical teenage girl who thinks she's a lot deeper than she really is, and who has fallen victim to exactly what Dawn was worried about and took her away from the family house to avoid - namely, Edie's toxic romanticizing of death and the morbid family legacy, possibly leading to Edith indulging in both at once by dying in childbirth to continue the Finch line ^note While we aren't told enough to know whether she had any way to ensure her survival, it's all too easy to imagine her ignoring some kind of warnings from her doctor in the same way that many other Finches neglected self-preservation in favor of acting on their feelings. After all, climbing around rooftops when you're 22 weeks pregnant isn't the most sensible thing to do in the first place. Though it should be noted that we only see what her son imagines she was doing, which might not have been as dramatic as shown in game. Edith might have been talking more about the discomfort of using the ladders than any potential danger, as the house is probably not as run down as Edith's son pictures, considering he only has the present state of the house to go by.? On another note, most of what Edith knows about her family are stories and not a whole lot else (as she's never met them), so, perhaps, her reasons for recording the Finchian legacy is a little different.
  • Has Dawn lost it and developed an irrational fear and loathing of her heritage because of all the death and misfortune she's had to endure in her life, causing her to mistreat her daughter and her grandmother and ultimately be driven into a several-year incoherent flight from a curse that might not even exist? Or is she the Only Sane Woman who realizes that something is very wrong with the house and the family, whether it's supernatural or psychological in origin, and fights with everything she's got to break the cycle and save herself and her last surviving child from it?
  • Was Lewis someone who got so caught up in his ideas of a fantasy life, coupled with realizing he would never escape to a life he wanted, that he took his own life out of some sort of desperate desire to be something, or was he someone who suffered a mental illness that made it impossible, as he grew up, to separate reality from fiction?
  • Is Christopher (Edith's son) doomed to the same fate as the rest of his family, or is he in a position to break the Vicious Cycle? His broken arm and indirect exposure to the family stories indicates the former, but his status as the last living Finch and the modest bouquet he leaves on his mother's grave (which implies he doesn't romanticize death) indicates the latter.
  • Screen Therapy posits that the game is about "death anxiety" and that the characters' parts in their storylines (and deaths) came from them trying to control their own unease towards the subject, which went horribly wrong ^note Sam dying in a hunting accident while trying to teach Dawn survival skills, Walter getting hit by a train after being a Basement-Dweller years after Barbara's death, Calvin deciding to live without fear and swinging himself off a cliff, and Edie romanticizing and creating stories out of her family's deaths
  • What exactly was Edie's final story about? Note that it's the only story we don't see in completion.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: After completing Barbara's segment, Edith starts pointedly mentioning the music box at regular intervals until the player takes the hint and goes to deal with it. Since this is the only real puzzle in the game, it makes sense that the developers wanted to make sure that you didn't get stuck because it took you by surprise... but if you want to explore a bit further before continuing, those non-too-subtle hints that you should get on with it already can start to grind very quickly. Apparently, the developers weren’t sure that mentioning the solution in the comic AND having the player act out the puzzle solution in a POV segment in that same comic would be enough hints on their own.
• Anvilicious: Appreciate life while you can, because it could be over at any moment.
• Awesome Video Game Levels: The comic book and cannery portions of the game tend to be the two most beloved chapters in the games by fans, due to how well they develop their characters and dramatically switch up the gameplay and art style.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • How the family curse began in the first place, and who started it. Was it a feuding family? Or simply an ancestor who was born under an unlucky star?
  • What's more, what did the Finches do to deserve the curse, if anything?
  • Milton is implied to be the King from The Unfinished Swan, meaning that his son, Monroe, is also a Finch.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Edith's speech about the fleeting nature of life during the final scenes, followed by the credits listing the developers alongside their baby photos.
  • After reading the poem Dawn wrote in tribute to her younger brother Gus, Edith mentions that her mom once told her if she had been a boy, she would have been named after him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Four years after this game came out, Disney released a movie that also tells a story about a large family living in the same house, and how the family's legacy impacts each member (and with a mysterious family member secretly living in the house, to boot).
• Narm Charm: Molly turning into a shark from an owl and rolling down a hill into the ocean is ridiculous, but it fits the surreal nature a little girl’s Dying Dream would be expected to have.
• Signature Scene:
  • The story of Lewis Finch. It is considered an extremely good use of gameplay interaction to integrate the viewer into a feeling of daydreaming in a monotonous work.
  • The story of Milton Finch is another one. Especially for those who played The Unfinished Swan, as there are multiple Easter Eggs to that game.
• Squick: If you are even remotely uncomfortable with fish, especially dead fish, the story of Lewis Finch is going to rapidly become horrifying.
• The Woobie:
  • Edith's mother Dawn goes through a lot. Her brothers both die when she's young, and she has to live for years in the room that she used to share with them (with Edie's memorials also present). Her father later dies in front of her, and two of her children disappear and commit suicide, respectively; she tries to eke out a peaceful life in hiding from the supposed Curse by sealing up all of the rooms of the deceased, only to eventually snap under the pressure and drag Edith away from the house. And then, years later, she suddenly develops cancer and dies in the hospital with Edith by her side.
  • Edie doesn't have it any better. All of her children and grandchildren die in tragic circumstances, she has to live in the house where many of these deaths occurred for decades, and when only her granddaughter and great-granddaughter are left, they pack up and abandon her after a painful argument. The last thing she sees of her family before she dies is Dawn and Edith driving off into the night.
  • Edith herself has gone through a lot too. One of her brothers vanished without a trace, and her remaining brother very graphically took his own life. She also had to witness her mother deal with the emotional and mental weight of the family's supposed curse, which ultimately separated her from her beloved great-grandmother. Finally, not only does Edith's mother succumb to cancer, but Edith herself ultimately dies giving birth to her own child. While she accepts this, it's still a sad situation.