The mirror breaks and Low is left behind on the other side, yet another kid trapped within the terrifying hellscape of the Nowhere in Little Nightmares III. Thankfully, he’s not alone. With no Maw in sight but that all-seeing Eye making its appearance in multiple forms this time round, how will Low return home?
Here is the full rundown of Little Nightmares III, showcasing our interpretations of the story, how it links to the previous entries, and what we make of that abrupt ending.
Major spoiler warning throughout.
Table of contents
Little Nightmares III plot, summarized
A standalone game taking place in the Little Nightmares world, the third entry is a sequel that follows two new protagonists: Low and Alone. A sight of a mysterious mirror shows a glimpse of Low’s old life, an escape route from the hell he’s just woken up in. Behind him, a broken mirror with shattered glass rests near his feet. He wakes from his dream of the mirror to the promised land, now knowing where he must go if he ever wants to escape. With Alone by his side and a trusty map to guide them, the pair set off into the great unknown—the Nowhere.
Little Nightmares III story analysis
A similar start to Little Nightmares, Low wakes beside piles of suitcases. Based on the interior of the train car-looking vessel Low wakes in, I’d bet we start our adventure from inside the Maw. The door is reminiscent of what you’d find on a ship or submarine. There are piles of suitcases like in a cruise ship and a decaying rat in the corner. All of this tells us we were underwater. The final clue to this room being a place on the Maw is the broken mirror.
Mirrors are already a part of Little Nightmares lore. They were mostly destroyed by the Lady on the Maw, where a handheld mirror would be her demise at the hand of Six. In this instance, mirrors act as a gateway for the children to use as a means of teleportation, similar to Mono’s power with TVs. A reason to smash these outside of the Lady’s vanity is to potentially stop children from escaping Nowhere. There’s proof that Low isn’t the only child who can travel through mirrors, as the areas Low teleports to are always lived-in with a bed nearby.
The chapters of Little Nightmares III seem to exist as manifestations of Low’s childhood. This version of Nowhere is incredibly dreamlike, where monsters with doll and porcelain appearances show up throughout, linking Low to the very creatures that keep trying to kill him.
Necropolis
The first chapter takes place in Necropolis. Its definition: a cemetery belonging to an ancient city. Necropolis is a giant city encompassed by massive stone walls, its interior collecting dust. A dense sandstorm fog coats the land—it’s impossible to see where the city starts and ends. Necropolis looks like an hourglass, yet it houses a ridiculously large threat: the Monster Baby. Crows also exist here, but there’s not much for them to eat as the Monster Baby turns anything that moves into stone. This monster very much acts like the Eye we see time and time again in Little Nightmares, but in this case, the baby transforms residents into its playthings.
Residents once lived here until the Monster Baby arrived with its glowing eye, peeking through the curtains and delivering an afterglow in the sky that’s never settled. Interestingly, the Monster Baby’s main gameplay is to stand stationary and survey an area for movement, much like a security camera.
Candy Factory
The Candy Factory is ominous because there are hundreds of Guests moving in and out of it on hanging conveyor belts. We know the Guests from the Maw would become ravenous at the sight of a live child and that the Lady could absorb a person’s essence, transforming children into Nomes. It’s heavily implied that the food in Nowhere is the flesh of its residents and children. The meat hanging up in Little Nightmare‘s freezers is human-shaped, and we see Mini-Kin enjoys consuming human flesh. The Guests work to mass produce the sweets, while others are likely ground down into candy, all stuck in a trance by the television’s strange broadcast.
The Supervisor is an eight-limbed creature resembling a spider. If we’re talking symbolism, a simple explanation is that Low has arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and entomophobia (insects) as there’s also the Beetles residing in Necropolis. This factory may exist to get children hooked onto candy so they don’t want to leave—to slowly transform them into little nightmares—like what Six became. The candy junkyard is surely a metaphor for overconsumption and waste.
Carnevale
Similar to the story of Pinocchio, the leading antagonist of this chapter, the Kin, forces children to perform as entertainment at the Carnevale. Rather than consuming the children that get lost in Nowhere, he uses them as entertainment. Falling asleep to the static television that has nefariously twisted the shape of so many creatures before him, the Kin has a ventriloquist appearance, with a living hand (Mini-Kin) that can come off whenever it pleases.
Evidently, the Kin’s business is to force children to entertain the Carnevale goers (the Herd), who partake in violent games and magic shows. The Carnevale Puppets are incredibly similar to Little Nightmares II‘s Bullies. Could they be children transformed into wooden marionettes to keep the Herd entertained at the Carnevale?
This version of Nowhere behaves much like a conveyor belt, in that everything in it is recycled. The Herd move onto the Carnevale after gorging themselves on the Maw, just to be transported to the Candy Factory via hot air balloons, where they’re turned into food or become mindless workers. Everything becomes a husk to the will of the Eye—broadcasting to all—taking everything you are. It is awake while everyone sleeps.
The Institute
Everything we see has in some way been impacted by the Little Nightmares Eye. While the camerawork and depth perception the series uses could point to the player being the Eye itself, there’s equally a ton of evidence pointing towards the Supermassive Games’ version of Nowhere being more psychological than Lovecraftian—or both.
The Institute could be the real place Low was forced to spend time in, as the cell is the same in his flashbacks. We see the Institute Overseer (placeholder name) as a gigantic monster whose limbs contort around the Institute corridors, symbolizing how this character was everywhere, making it impossible for Low to escape. This could explain why both the Monster Baby and the Institute Overseer are significantly larger than anything we’ve ever seen before in Little Nightmares—being manifested and distorted trauma.
Little Nightmares III ending, explained
The prison cell we revisited after every chapter showed Low trapped in some kind of youth psychiatric institution. Unlike previous entries, Little Nightmares III has three locations that clearly center around children: A Candy Factory, Carnevale, and the Institute, which has toy trains, lollipops, and spelling blocks.
While it’s heavily hinted throughout this title that there’s something more to the dolls we kept picking up, the main reveal in Little Nightmares III‘s story is that Alone is Low’s imaginary friend. She is the doll that Low held onto during his time at The Institute, the same doll that has magical powers capable of distorting reality back to how it was in the past. He created her through his time alone, left with nothing to do but draw.
Alone is spat out from the mirror as she can only exist in the Nowhere. She disappears without Low’s imagination to keep her alive, leaving only her clothes and goggles. While Low draws himself and Alone at home atop a hill, that could never become a reality. Low’s imagination came to life, where Alone acted as his best friend and pillar, ensuring he had the courage to keep going. This means it’s possible to create something nice in Nowhere, but it wouldn’t last long before the Eye replaced the good with evil.
The final scene shows Low looking at the broken mirror pieces, hoping to fix it so that he may be reunited with Alone. While life on this side is a lot brighter, it may be another trick. The window is broken, where vines spill through the broken glass. There are moving boxes and torn wallpaper that have seen better days. You can see the doll of Alone beside the now broken mirror. But where exactly has Low ended up if he didn’t include his family in his drawing of home?
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