The final arc of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon has always been its darkest. It's the culmination of all of Usagi/Sailor Moon's fights up to this point, the answer to why enemies keep attacking and to why she and her friends have been able to continue to reincarnate in the first place. While this makes sense—the villains have been upping the stakes and escalating their tactics in every new arc—it's still important that we be able to see just how terrible Usagi's situation really is. In all of the other arcs, she's had her Guardians and Tuxedo Mask to support her until almost the final moment, even if that's only been in spirit form. But here, in the end, Usagi is all alone.

Much has been said about Usagi's immaturity as a heroine. When we first met her, she was a crybaby and more than a little whiny. Even in the past, as Princess Serenity, we saw her give up at the crucial moment, choosing death once she'd lost Endymion. Over the course of the four arcs which came before this one, she's grown up little by little, learning to rely on others and to trust herself. All of this is Usagi coming into her own power, and that feels natural. We all have to grow up some time (or at least learn to fake it well enough to get by), and for her, that means overcoming the mistakes of past lives and battles to fully embody a superheroine. With each subsequent transformation, Sailor Moon becomes a stronger, more confident person. Is her final instinct still to sacrifice herself to save others? Yes, but she's also more reluctant to play that card—coming to understand that it's the final option and looking at it less as “giving up” and more as the last gift she can give: the gift of her warmth and love to a galaxy that badly needs it.

We see this demonstrated throughout both of these films. Usagi's trajectory begins with her normal world crashing down around her ears, her daily life destroyed by Mamoru's death at the hands of Sailor Galaxia, the new villain. Unable to cope, she represses the memory, but as Galaxia's minions begin picking off the Sailor Guardians, and with Chibiusa back in the thirtieth century, she has no choice but to face facts. Instrumental in this are new characters the Three Lights, a boy band comprised of the Ko brothers Taiki, Yaten, and Seiya. They are, in fact, actually female Sailor Guardians, the Sailor Star Lights, and they're the ones who not only make Usagi look truth in the face but also tell her who's behind the deaths: Sailor Galaxia. Together—and with the addition of the Star Lights' princess Kakyu and a mysterious little girl named Chibi Chibi—they set out to confront Galaxia and to save the galaxy.

Like many of the other female villains, Sailor Galaxia is a foil figure to Sailor Moon. In many ways, Usagi/Serenity has lived a charmed life—she's had hardships, yes, but to outside eyes she looks like the luckiest girl in the world: she's always had a loving family, devoted friends, a handsome prince, and vast power. All of her enemies have wanted that to a degree, although they each fixated on a different part of it. Galaxia wants everything—and she's willing to go to any lengths to get it. Like the Dead Moon Circus' queen, her primary desire is to live in the light and her yearning is born from the terrible circumstances she experienced before her awakening as a Sailor Guardian. Although the imagery is largely symbolic during its depiction of her past, the swords shown running her through give us two potential interpretations of what happened to her: she certainly could have been subjected to an endless, painful cycle of death and rebirth, or the swords piercing her could be indicative of a past of sexual abuse and torment. Both offer a dark parallel to Usagi's history (remembering that she stabbed herself with a sword at least twice), but because Galaxia didn't have the support system that Queen Serenity established for her daughter, she was forced down a different, darker path.

The idea that everyone Usagi has had to fight has been leading up to this battle with Galaxia is important to the films, as well as the overall throughline of the series. This is made apparent by the many visual tributes to the original anime from the 1990s, something director Tomoya Takahashi did very deliberately. The first theme uses Moonlight Densetsu, the original opening theme from the 1990s' first four seasons, while the second film uses Sailor Star Song, the opening theme for season five, Sailor Moon Sailor Stars. Even the images used for these themes is a callback to the originals and the films themselves make use of both sights from Sailor Moon Sailor Stars and Naoko Takeuchi's original manga. All of this plays into the message that this is Usagi's final battle, the one she has been moving towards since her reincarnation on Earth. She needed the earlier fights to build her relationships with others but also with herself and her own power. The Usagi Tsukino of the first season could never have become Neo Queen Serenity. The Usagi of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos is halfway there, and her final choice, to at long last make a well-considered sacrifice out of love for everyone in the galaxy rather than any more selfish motive (even if they didn't seem selfish at the time), shows the woman and queen she will become.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Cosmos is a much better duology of movies than Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal. It has a better story flow—and the increased freedom the director was given allowed the films to hew closer, both literally and thematically, to the source material without being dragged down by it. The animation is lovely and the art captures the windy, art nouveau feel of the manga, while making use of some nice mythological imagery. The ending is both emotional and cathartic, bringing the story to a close that doesn't feel too final—we know that the future will happen and that it will be a better one than any other. There is some info dumping (Sailor Lead Crow is particularly guilty of this)—and the little soft shoe routine the Sailor Star Lights do during their transformation is very awkward—but overall, this is a fitting way to end the reboot of one of the most influential magical girl series: with hope.