The moment the yeerks invaded Earth.
I’m only being about 37% facetious. K.A. Applegate emphasizes time and again — with David, with the WWII time travel, with the Andalite Chronicles — that there’s no such thing as fighting a war in a way that is “clean” or “moral” or “glorious.” There are only bad choices left to individuals when their homes are invaded. If the Animorphs had done nothing, they would have allowed invaders to abduct and enslave all their loved ones. If the Animorphs had tried to fight the war without hurting anyone, they would not have been able to stop the yeerk invasion. If the Animorphs had used a different strategy, there’s a distinct possibility they would have lost the war or caused even more deaths than they did.
For instance, look at David as a microcosm. It would be wrong for the Animorphs to kill him; he’s just a kid who got in over his head. It would be wrong for the Animorphs to keep him on their team; he has the power to kill them all and does try to kill Tobias, even if he is only doing so in an effort to get his family back. It would be wrong for the Animorphs to let him go; he would go running to Visser Three with their identities, and the whole planet would be doomed. It is wrong for the Animorphs to trap him in morph; the punishment is greater than his crimes of ignorance demand, and it is not the Animorphs’ right to mete that punishment out. The reality is, however, that under the circumstances there’s no such thing as a right answer.
Jake manages to pull off an ending that is better than anything the Animorphs could have realistically hoped for, in that the war ends without the yeerks enslaving the planet or the andalites annihilating it. He makes some unforgivably immoral moves, to be sure (a lot of other fandalites seem most angry with his decision to flush the Pool ship, whereas I will always be angriest about him essentially forcing James and the other Auximorphs to go die for him in the diversion play), but he manages to pull off a win for his species. The yeerks leave the Animorphs, and by extension the whole human species, exactly zero good options. They invade, and the Animorphs can either do terrible things to stop them or else allow even more terrible things to happen through failing to stop them.
It’s wrong for the Animorphs to kill innocent hosts in the process of killing yeerks. It would be wrong for the Animorphs to refuse to get their hands dirty by killing hosts to the point of allowing the yeerks to kill others. It’s wrong for Jake to send James and Craig and the others to die. It would be wrong for Jake to allow the yeerk inside Tom to invade some other planet using the Blade ship because that planet isn’t their problem. So on and so forth.
That said, I also think that the answer to that question depends on what you mean by “the ending.” I think that the kids all having PTSD and/or depression was pretty much inevitable by five or six books into the series. I think that the moral decline on the team started as early as their first pitched battle in #7 and got accelerated by the events of #21, #30, and #31. I think that the structure of the series as a disturbingly realistic war epic somewhat demanded that disturbingly realistic ending, right from the start of the series.
What happens to the Animorphs isn’t fair. What happens to the yeerk hosts also isn’t fair. But I think that’s part of what K.A. Applegate is using the series to do: send the message that “fair” isn’t a great standard to judge others. It’s not to say that this series has no morality, because it draws some pretty clear lines in the sand about what is and is not okay. It’s more that this series says individuals sitting at home in times of peace do not get to condemn individuals forced to engage in violence to survive for not miraculously finding a way to self-defend without violence.
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