Fullmetal Alchemist Quotes That Hit Different After the Finale

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood ends by making its opening rule come true. Equivalent exchange, stated in the first minute by two boys who did not understand it, turns out to be payable, and Edward pays it with the one thing he actually wanted to keep. That trade reaches back through the series and changes what the early lines were saying. The quotes below are all verified and already on this site; this page is the second reading. It spoils the ending, which is explained separately.

Advice he had not yet taken

“Stand up and walk. Keep moving forward. You've got two good legs. So get up and use them. You're strong enough to make your own path.” — Edward Elric, Brotherhood episode 3

In episode three this is Edward telling a grieving woman to stop waiting for a miracle. The ending reveals that he was describing his own last act. At the Gate, with Alphonse's body on the other side and nothing left to bargain that he would agree to lose, Edward offers his alchemy, the ability that defined him since childhood, and walks out of the story as an ordinary man with two good legs and no power. "You're strong enough to make your own path" was a prescription he had never filled. The finale is him filling it: a path with no alchemy on it, made on foot. The line was a preview of the trade, delivered years early to someone else.

The chair, and who ends up in it

“Will you sit in that chair wallowing in self-pity, or will you stand up and seize the chance the military can give you?” — Roy Mustang, Brotherhood episode 2

Mustang is recruiting a boy with one arm and one leg into the army that burned Ishval, and the line's confidence comes from a man who has never had to sit in the chair himself. Then, in the final battle, he is forced through the Gate as the fifth sacrifice and comes out blind. The officer who told a maimed child to stand up and seize the military's chance is, at the end, the one being helped to his feet, seeing nothing, dependent on Hawkeye's voice for where the enemy is. He takes the chance anyway; his sight is restored by Marcoh's stone and his first announced use of power is the rebuilding of Ishval. But the speech's easy contempt for self-pity had to pass through his own body first, and the show makes sure it does.

The rain, felt

“I can't feel the rain hitting my face. That's something I miss...all the time. I wanna get my body back soon, Brother. I just wanna be human again.” — Alphonse Elric, Brotherhood episode 5

The whole series keeps a ledger of what Alphonse cannot feel, and the ending pays it out. When he returns from the Gate he is emaciated, barely able to stand, and the first things the story gives him are exactly the small sensations the armour had cost: touch, warmth, food that tastes of something, a body that tires. The line about missing rain on his face reads on first viewing as sadness. After the finale it reads as a wish list, and one the show honoured item by item. Alphonse gets to be human again, in the plain sense he asked for, with nothing grand about it, which is the point of his arc and the reason his reunion with Ed is quieter than anything the series' villains do.

Survival, argued by someone who could not bleed

“Survival is the only way, Ed! Live on, learn more about alchemy! You can find a way to get our bodies back and help people like Nina. You can't do that by dying!” — Alphonse Elric, Brotherhood episode 5

Al's argument in episode five is that Edward must live because a living alchemist can still find the way back. The ending inverts the terms. The way back is found, and it costs the alchemy. Alphonse wanted his brother to survive so that alchemy could fix things; what actually fixes things is his brother giving alchemy up. The sermon was right about survival and wrong about the mechanism, and the finale is kind enough not to point that out. Nina, whom Al names here as the reason to keep going, is never brought back; nobody like her is ever saved by the research he is urging. The brothers help people in the end by becoming people, not by becoming better alchemists.

Men, pain, and the friend who was describing himself

“In general, men prefer to let their actions speak instead of words. When they're in pain, they don't want to burden anyone with it, not if they can help it.” — Maes Hughes, Brotherhood episode 9

Hughes gives Winry a rule for reading the Elrics, and within an episode he is dead in a phone box, having told no one about the danger he had uncovered because he did not want to burden anyone with it. The rereading most fans do is that one: the man describing men who hide their pain was hiding his. The ending adds a second layer. The person who carries Hughes's death through the whole series is Mustang, who spends the finale at the edge of murdering Envy for it and is talked down by Hawkeye, Scar and Edward. Hughes said men let their actions speak. The action Mustang almost takes would have made him unfit to lead the country Hughes died protecting, and the people who stop him are honouring Hughes better than revenge would. A line about reading men becomes, by the end, a warning about what reading them badly costs.

The chain, and the man who unhooked himself

“Until one of us dies, this chain of hatred will continue.” — Scar, Series run

Scar says the chain of hatred continues until one of them dies, and then he does not die. He survives the Promised Day and works under Major Miles on the restoration of Ishval, the policy Mustang announces as the first act of his rise. The line was a schedule, and its author cancelled it. What makes the reversal land is that nobody argues him out of it; Scar gets there through the accumulated cost of his own subscription, Winry's parents, the girl he prays over in episode four, the brother whose arm he carries. The ending gives him no absolution and no death, only work. For a character whose first line on this site is a prayer over people he has just killed, ending up rebuilding rather than avenging is the most complete rewrite the finale performs on anyone.

Reading the rest

These are the lines the final episodes change most. The remaining verified quotes, including Mustang's terrible day for rain, are on the Fullmetal Alchemist hub, and the two endings, Brotherhood's and the 2003 anime's, are set side by side in the ending explainer. Every quote here was checked against Wikiquote's Brotherhood transcript before it was published, and this page uses only those.