Board Thread:New on Code Geass Wiki/@comment-67.236.229.79-20130808044346/@comment-124.40.60.47-20140605111422

I don't really feel like the director counts as much as the writer would, and though there are lots of arguments about the things that happened in the series, I don't think the author actually intended Lelouch to be dead, because I don't think he could bring himself to kill him. He could not, after all, actually bring himself to kill Nunnally in the F.L.E.I.J.A. blast.

If you look at the important characters who died, particularly those with emotional deaths, you can see this. Rolo had too many kick the dog moments, killing Shirley in particular. Shirley herself exists almost exclusively to lust after Lelouch, and provide tragedy for him. Especially with Kallen and CC around, there was really no way she could have reasonably survived the series. Euphy, meanwhile, provides Suzaku the motivation to become what he is for the rest of the show (while simultaneously providing Lelouch more tragedy).

Meanwhile, lots of characters live when there is no real reason for them to survive what happened, such as the Ashford Academy (and its students) taking almost no damage despite being a major part of battles or in a city that was effectively annihilated, or Gilbert surviving that once again "deadly" blast. Heck, even Cornelia surviving Schneizel shooting her or Ohgi living through the ship crashing (and staying behind).

So, while the ending might, in fact, be better with dead Lelouch, I really don't think it meshes with how the Author protects his characters, and is therefore unlikely to be the ultimate intent.

Of course, I'd also like to point out that, even without the Code, Lelouch's injuries at the end have been shown to be survivable by other characters. As much as Mao got shot up and with Cornelia taking a few bullets through the same area, he could have concievably been saved by medicine.