Please note, before you email me complaining about how unrealistic this idea is, understand that I do not believe Panzer Dragoon Saga ended this way. However after coming up with the idea, I came to the conclusion that it may be theoretically possible, just extremely unlikely. So without further delay, here is what is possibly my most peculiar explanation of the ending of Panzer Dragoon Saga.

The path to Sestren began in the Tower near Uru where Edge, Azel, and the dragon were last seen heading by the Seekers. If you remember the locations in the game, you will remember that just before the path to Sestren there was an ancient device (a save point). Then Edge and his dragon leave for Sestren and are never seen by anyone outside of Sestren again (as far as we know). This leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Where did Edge vanish to? And why, after the game is complete, does the dragon appear back at the last save point, the story continuing as if nothing had happened, yet the dragon still has all the experience and stats that were gained in the final battles?

The answer could be time travel. It sounds crazy for sure, but it’s also an explanation for this game mechanic as if it were part of the story of Panzer Dragoon Saga. The Ancients were much more advanced than most people thought, including the Empire. Being able to create a super being that could control the world through towers and monsters was an impressive accomplishment, but Sestren being located in another dimension “beyond time and space” (if the Seekers were right about that) was something else altogether. In the brief encounter with Sestren, we learn that Sestren’s Exsis form was able to throw hurl objects out of the past (such as Shelcoof and Mel-Kava). This could be seen as evidence of time travel being possible in the Panzer Dragoon world.

You are probably wondering, how would Edge and the dragon have been transported back in time to the Tower? Lets go back to the idea of save points, the “ancient devices”. In one of the books written by Zadoc the Compiler, the Memory Report, he admits that the Seekers were not completely sure of the purpose of these recording devices. It is possible that they were used to control monster populations, as if they were a mini Tower. Could Sestren have had some sort of backup system that he used to restore himself and actually sent the dragon back in time to one of the recording devices, a device which had recorded all that happened before the battle with Sestren? If so, this would give Sestren another chance at beating the impurity (as he called the dragon), and would also explain why the dragon’s stats were the same as they were after defeating Sestren.

There is, however, at least one flaw with this theory. Why does everything happen exactly the same the second time Edge goes after Sestren? If Edge has already fought Sestren and knows that he has little chance of returning, why would he tell Azel that he would come back for her (unless he was just being really brave), and act surprised when he learns about the Divine Visitor? One possibility is that Edge is knocked unconscious when he’s sent back through time, and it is a stretch. Another is that Sestren not only brought himself back from the past, but also the whole of the “surface world”. As Panzer Dragoon Orta’s encyclopaedia entry for the carrier sealance speculates, “It is thought that perhaps the surface world is nothing more than a testing ground for the Sestren itself.”