All Hollow Knight Endings Explained (Which Is Canon)

Five endings. One infected kingdom. Zero hand-holding. Team Cherry didn't just hide the endings of Hollow Knight behind skill walls and obscure quest chains. They buried the meaning of each ending deep in lore tablets, NPC dialogue, and environmental storytelling that most players miss entirely.

If you've beaten Hollow Knight once, you probably got the default ending and felt a strange mix of satisfaction and confusion. If you've beaten it multiple times, you might have three or four endings unlocked and still not fully understand what happened. And if you've completed the Godmaster DLC content, you've seen things that raise more questions than they answer.

This guide breaks down every Hollow Knight ending explained in full: what triggers each one, what happens narratively, what it means for the lore of Hallownest, and which ending most likely leads into Silksong. We're going deep. Spoilers for absolutely everything ahead.

The Lore You Need to Understand

Before the endings make sense, you need the foundation. Hollow Knight's story isn't told through cutscenes. It's scattered across hundreds of environmental details, and missing even a few changes your understanding of everything.

The Radiance

The Radiance is the true antagonist of Hollow Knight, though you can finish the game without ever knowing she exists. She is an ancient being of light, a moth deity who once ruled the dreams of all creatures in Hallownest. The moths worshipped her. Her light gave them unity, purpose, and a shared consciousness.

Then the Pale King arrived. He offered the bugs of Hallownest something the Radiance couldn't: individuality, free thought, and a kingdom built on reason rather than blind devotion. The bugs chose the Pale King. They forgot the Radiance. And forgetting a god, it turns out, doesn't kill it. It just makes it angry.

The Infection

The Radiance's response to being forgotten was the Infection, a plague of orange light that strips bugs of their individuality and returns them to a hive-mind state under her control. The Infection spread through dreams, turning sentient bugs into violent husks. Hallownest fell. The Pale King's grand civilization crumbled from the inside.

The Hollow Knight (The Vessel)

The Pale King's solution was brutal. He bred thousands of void creatures, called Vessels, in the Abyss beneath Hallownest. The goal: create a perfectly hollow being with no mind, no will, and no dreams. A Vessel that empty could contain the Radiance's light without being corrupted by it.

One Vessel was chosen. The Pale King sealed the Radiance inside it and chained it within the Temple of the Black Egg at the heart of Hallownest. This Vessel became known as the Hollow Knight. The plan worked, for a while.

But the Hollow Knight wasn't truly hollow. It had a thought, a feeling, some flicker of attachment to the Pale King who raised it. That crack in its emptiness allowed the Radiance to slowly break free. The seals weakened. The Infection returned. The kingdom fell again, this time for good.

The Knight (You)

You play as another Vessel, one of the thousands discarded in the Abyss when the Pale King chose the Hollow Knight. You were thrown away. You crawled out. And now you've returned to Hallownest, drawn by instinct or fate, to finish what the first Vessel couldn't.

That's the setup. Now, the endings.

Ending 1: The Hollow Knight

How to trigger it: Reach the Black Egg Temple and defeat the Hollow Knight boss without having the Void Heart charm equipped. This is the ending most players encounter on their first playthrough. What happens: You fight the Hollow Knight in a lengthy, emotional boss battle. Partway through the fight, the Hollow Knight begins stabbing itself, a sign that some fragment of its original will is fighting against the Radiance's control from inside. You finish the fight, the Hollow Knight dies, and the screen fades.

When the scene returns, you see chains reattaching to a figure in the Black Egg. That figure is you. The Knight has taken the Hollow Knight's place as the new vessel containing the Radiance. The temple seals again. Hallownest goes quiet.

What it means: Nothing has changed. The Radiance isn't destroyed. She's just been transferred to a new container. The cycle will repeat. Eventually, this new seal will crack too, because the Knight, like the Hollow Knight before it, may not be perfectly hollow either. This ending is Hallownest hitting the snooze button on its apocalypse. Lore significance: This ending confirms the Pale King's containment strategy was always flawed. Sealing the Radiance inside a Vessel is a temporary fix, not a cure. The Infection will return eventually, regardless of which Vessel holds it.

Ending 2: Sealed Siblings

How to trigger it: Acquire the Void Heart (which requires visiting the Abyss and unlocking the charm), then fight the Hollow Knight. When Hornet appears during the fight and holds the Hollow Knight still, do NOT use the Dream Nail. Instead, keep attacking the Hollow Knight normally until you defeat it. What happens: The battle plays out similarly to Ending 1, but with an addition. Hornet crashes through the ceiling mid-fight to help you. She holds the Hollow Knight in place with silk threads. After you deliver the final blow, the sealing process begins again, but this time both the Knight and Hornet are sealed inside the Black Egg together.

The final image shows the Black Egg sealed with new chains, and Hornet's mask visible among them. She's trapped alongside you.

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