Death Note: Does Light Yagami Die at the End?

When Death Note first came out, it was an absolute hit. Fans all over the world enjoyed the dark storyline, psychologically intriguing characters, as well as the mind games between the main characters. Today, many years after the series ended, Death Note is still an exceptionally popular title, and its main character, the villainous Light Yagami, is still one of the most popular characters in the history of manga and anime. But what happens to Light in the series? Does he die in the end, or did he somehow survive? This article will reveal what happened to Light Yagami in Death Note.

What happened to Light Yagami?

Light Yagami is introduced to the story as a model student, capable of achieving prodigious results, who leads a quiet but at the same time boring life. One day, he finds the Death Note, dropped on Earth by the shinigami Ryuk, and decides to use it to kill criminals with the utopian goal of purifying the world and becoming its new god operating under the pseudonym “Kira.” The mysterious deaths, however, will attract the attention of the authorities, who will put the best detective in the world, the brilliant L, on his path.

Although he can be considered an evil genius, as he thinks with a cool head and demonstrates that he has almost absolute control of the environment around him and the situations in which he finds himself, the delirium into which he begins to sink as he sees the tightening the circle around him, as well as the highly sadistic and cruel methods with which he leads his targets to death via the notebook transform him into a mentally disturbed psychopathic madman with a god complex. This will lead Light to no longer feel affection for anyone, not even his family, considering them, at best, tools to be used and sacrificed in case of need.

After managing to defeat and kill L, Light will take his place to be able to pilot the investigation on Kira and divert doubts about him. Still, he will come across, five years later, L’s two successors, Near and Mello, two brilliant boys and, at the same time, rivals among themselves. It will be Near himself, thanks also to the unexpected help of the now-deceased Mello, who will manage to unmask him.

Defeated, Light will go mad and, already reduced to death by the gunshots received from Matsuda, will finally be killed by Ryuk, who will write his name in his notebook as agreed in the first meeting with the shinigami and after his death, he will not finish either in heaven or in hell because anyone who uses the Death Note will after they die, end up in nothingness.

Light is dead… long live Light?

After Light’s death, as was inevitable, even if a part of the world’s population continues to hope for Kira’s return, the majority has returned to living as before he found the Death Note: crimes have returned to their previous levels, and the wars began again. In the one-shot set a few years after Light’s death, Ryuk gives the Death Note to a boy named Minoru, who, unlike Light, sells the notebook at an auction without ever writing anything in it.

Having obtained an exorbitant sum, becoming the richest man in the world, Minoru dismisses Ryuk, but a month later, the shinigami writes the boy’s name under that of Light: if a person uses the Death Note in any way, he is condemned to make a bad end; Minoru, like Light, was destined to die prematurely the moment he did not refuse the notebook as soon as it was offered to him.

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