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.
Marco would be the most open in-your-face unapologetic mental health advocate the 1990s ever saw. He’d advocate for other stuff as well — disaster relief, representation in films, LGBTQ+ rights — but his big thing would be going into interviews with “the other day IN THERAPY, by the way I was talking to A THERAPIST, and she said the funniest thing…” He’s amazing at walking up to the elephant in the room and hanging a party hat from its tusk, and that’s exactly what he’d use as his primary weapon. He’d be the celebrity who would lean across the table and loudly announce the hidden assumptions behind interview questions: “So you’re saying my appearance is the only thing that matters about me?” he’d say loudly, or “Oh, sure, since the American public is toootally entitled to know personal information about celebrities.” And he’d do it with such flair, such aplomb, such grinning self-deprecation, that most of the time it’d get aired anyway. He’d probably still be bored some of the time, but any time the itch started under his skin he’d go find a hurricane in need of an elephant or orca to help pull people out of the mud, or a village in need of a famous actor to show up with a camera crew and loudly demand enough donations to build a new school.
Rachel would probably start out by finishing high school (she’s a Packard Foundation Outstanding Student; she can’t waste all that good work) and then go straight on to college and law school. Whereas Marco would play the press like a finely-tuned violin, Rachel would come at them with chin raised and jaw clenched. She’d earn a reputation for responding to people who stared or took pictures or whisper about her in public by simply pointing right at the gawkers and loudly announcing “Those people are staring at me” to see how they like getting gawked at for a change. In spite of her brains and dedication and painfully direct style, she’d probably take a few extra years to finish her education. Not only would she be almost as direct as Marco about fighting for her need to take mental health days and work-life breaks, she’d have a quadrillion other things to do: skydive straight into the Arctic Ocean without a parachute, sneak a “borrowed” Bug fighter out of a dry dock and go joyriding with Tobias, find that lady who called Jake a war criminal and punch her in the face… Rachel would do the full college experience, from white-water rafting trips to silly philosophy electives, from guest lectures at current events seminars to blackout drinking at bars downtown. And at the end of it she’d be certified to go out there and start building a career: first as a paralegal, then as a D.A., then in her first political job as mayor, all the way on up.
Cassie would just jump straight into politics without bothering to get the kind of credentials that would make racist conservative pundits cry. She’d have too much to do, with almost five hundred thousand yeerk hosts — and twice that number of yeerks — whose interests she’d try and represent. Cassie’s the type who sure as hell knows privilege when she sees it, so Cassie would use her brand-new host of privileges (wealth, fame, media attention, humanity, political power) to advocate as loudly and thoroughly as possible for everyone who didn’t have access to those powers. Although she would cede to Rachel the need to play the game of appearances, she wouldn’t let herself lose sight of herself: she’d show up to board meetings in slightly used designer jeans and animal-safe mascara, attending benefit banquets in gowns custom-tailored by designers dedicated to ecological conservation in all of their product choices.
Jake would find his way after the war almost accidentally. Out of a desire to help, to make up for the damage however he could, he’d probably join a bucket line carrying water to one of the burning houses downtown in the first hours after the war. From there he’d find himself rushing over to help a group of relief workers bringing medical supplies to injured hork-bajir, and it’d be almost an accident when he’d sign his name to spend the next month sorting donations at a FEMA warehouse… So on and so forth. Whereas Marco would understand the value of attracting the cameras to places that need the world’s attention, Jake would instead embrace the value of ignoring them and responding to “Hey, aren’t you…?” with a shrug and a subject change. Eventually Jake would be a full-time volunteer at a nonprofit in need of manual labor. He’d work a hammer and saw and only rarely work a rope line in order to earn more funds for UNICEF or Doctors Without Borders. Jake would find that kind of steady, repetitive work soothing, and he would derive deep satisfaction out of getting to spend the rest of his life building rather than destroying.
Ax would sweep Tobias up in his mad quest to visit every country on planet Earth for the express purpose of eating as many local foods as it is possible to sample. The blog he started would be an incidental thing — just a place where he’d ask the denizens of the internet for assistance in finding where to go next — but soon it would be its own thing. The reviews wouldn’t be so much reviews, per se (every single one would give the food 10 stars, no matter how many times Tobias told him that he was supposed to cap it at 3 stars at most to imitate Michelin) as they would be rambling thoughts on everything Ax got to see about planet Earth. By the time his quick trip around the world was in its eighth year and his blog was the most-visited site of 2007, he’d give in to the inevitable and start writing full-time. Of course, The Earth Diary of Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill would already be a bestseller on five planets by this time (much to Ax’s embarrassment) so offering a whole series of books with an outsider’s perspective on the entire food industry of the planet would be almost a natural next step. Plus, the perks would outweigh the annoyances right around the time restaurants started offering all-you-can-eat deals in exchange for Ax’s patronage.
Tobias would start out just helping Ax’s crazy travel plans for something to do, readjusting to the benefits of opposable thumbs and the drawbacks of human eyes in little two-hour increments. And then, when he’s ready, he spends the afternoon hanging out with Rachel and simply doesn’t bother morphing back at the end of it. He tries hard to keep any of his friends from making it a big deal, because then he’d have to acknowledge for himself that it’s kind of a big deal, and he mostly succeeds. Tobias would end up at a different college halfway across Boston from Rachel, close enough to see her every day but far enough to let them figure out who they are without yeerks or birds or war. Much to Tobias’s amusement — and concern about imposter syndrome — he’d find himself squeaking into Harvard’s legacy program. Much to Marco’s amusement, Tobias would end up majoring in biological anthropology. Tobias would bump into Cassie at ecology conferences where he’d be one of several presenters in work on human evolution. He’d show up at ancient civilization dig sites to find Marco’s flock of news helicopters getting footage for UNHRC promotional materials, and he’d stop into a local cafe in an economically precarious Iraqi town only to find Jake on the crew of contractors building a water treatment plant next door. He’d be on the lookout for new cuisines and new types of food to recommend to Ax every time the job took him to a research site in Lesotho or Laos or Kosovo. And at the end of every monthslong project that had him crouching for endless hours in the unforgiving sun to extract miniscule bone chips which could tell us where we came from or where we’re going… he’d be able to come home to where Rachel and the rest of his family would be waiting.
There was a great headcanon I saw (and now I can’t find the post, argh) which speculated that the only reason Visser Three is so fond of eating his enemies is because that’s the only chance he gets to have fun tasting things. Which is horrible and amazing and, just… poor Alloran. Anyway, I gleefully accept this headcanon the same way that I gleefully accept any and all utterly horrible headcanons about hosts having far more influence on their yeerks than the yeerks themselves ever want to acknowledge.
Also, if anyone knows where that post is, please please please reply with a link.
