Expedition 33 star Rich Keeble weighs in on the game’s hotly debated endings
Overview & Key Takeaways
Rich Keeble played Monoco and others in Clair Obscur Expedition 33. Like many fans, he's divided on what ending he prefers in the game.
Nothing is easy in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and one of the hardest parts of the game comes at the very end. While Expedition 33 has a few critical choices scattered throughout, like whom you want a certain character to romance, it’s mostly a linear story. However, a major choice is thrust upon players at the conclusion of the main story.
Suddenly, players have to decide between one of two endings, and the decision is nerve-wracking. Even one of Expedition 33’s stars has gone back and forth on his preferred ending for the game.
[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for the ending of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and season 3 of Prime Video’s Good Omens.]
Image: Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive
Rich Keeble voices Monoco, the gestral warrior who only wants to fight and collect enemy feet. In a recent video interview with Polygon, he said he used to view Maelle’s ending as the “correct” one. In Maelle’s ending, the canvas and its inhabitants stick around (and in some cases, like Gustave’s, are repainted, AKA brought back to life).
“I'm obviously saying this tongue in cheek, because everyone's living happily ever after, and what could possibly go wrong?” Keeble sarcastically said. “And why would you kill everyone in the canvas? That's what I was saying when the game came out.”
Over time, though, he’s come around to seeing the reasoning behind Verso’s ending. If players side with Verso, the canvas and everyone in it — including Keeble’s character Monoco — are destroyed and the Dessendre are forced to confront their real-world grief.
Image: Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive via Polygon
“I meet loads of people who do both endings, but I can see that Verso's ending is the most logical for many people, because you're not forcing anyone to do anything against their will,” Keeble said. It’s a sharp distinction to Maelle’s ending, where Verso is forced to keep living despite how much he wants to die.
“You are just living in the real world, and facing up to truth, and managing your grief in arguably the most healthy way,” Keeble said. Still, he admitted he wasn’t totally convinced. “I don't like living in the real world. Look what I do for a living.”
Like many fans of the game, Keeble is mostly divided on the endings, since there’s no true “right” or “good” ending. Ultimately, though, he does have a preference. “Of course, there's a way of completely circumventing this contentious argument by explaining that there is a third ending, which is the François ending.”
Image: Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive via Polygon
François, whom Keeble also voiced, is Esquie’s turtle-like friend. Keeble pointed to a video from CarbotAnimations on YouTube, which makes funny cartoons and parodies of video games. “They have a video where you've got Verso and Maelle arguing over the ending, and then François turns up and does the Strongest Ice Attack Ever,” Keeble said. “And that's the François ending.”
No word on Monoco’s fate in the François ending, but Monoco does get erased, along with the rest of the painted characters, in Verso’s ending. Oddly, it’s not the only time one of Keeble’s characters is forcibly erased out of existence in one of his recent projects.
He played Mr. Arnold in Good Omens, which aired its finale in May 2026. “There's a beautiful coincidence in it where [...] in the Good Omens finale, you see my character actually kind of gommage, sort of evaporate.”
The coincidence extends further than his characters sharing the same fate. “Who steps into frame with my character disappearing, but someone wearing a red beret? It's like it's meant to be,” Keeble said.
Keeble said people ask him if the Good Omens red beret and gommage were deliberate callbacks to his role in the game, but Good Omens was filmed before Expedition 33 came out. “It was just a pure coincidence,” Keeble said.
“The universe wanted to make these connections,” Keeble added. “Universe wants to keep gommaging me.”
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Rich Keeble will gladly voice Monoco from his London home for the Expedition 33 movie
