As Silksong players unlock Act 3 and push deeper into the optional endgame of Hornet’s adventure, many of them are now discovering Seth, a boss with a deep backstory even by Team Cherry’s standards: he was conceived by 16-year-old Hollow Knight fan Seth Goldman, who died of a rare form of bone cancer called ewing sarcoma in 2020. As players have encountered the fight with Shrine Guardian Seth, they’ve also discovered his origin, prompting a wave of emotional posts across Reddit, comment sections, and even Goldman’s obituary.
The Goldman family published an obituary for Seth on the website Dignity Memorial in June 2020, leaving it open for condolences. While most of the messages were posted in 2020 and 2021, Silksong players discovered the post over the weekend and began sharing their own messages of support in Seth’s memory.
“I am one of many who never got to meet Seth, I am not even from the same country, I only got to know of him thanks to a video game that we both share a passion of,” reads a message submitted on September 13 by a player named Nahim Cano. “I just encountered his character in Silksong and as I remembered his story alongside the sad music that plays on the fight against his character, tears started to form in my eyes. I never got to meet you but I can’t help but to thank you for creating such a beautiful part of that videogame.”
In early 2020, TheGamer reported that Goldman’s father had reached out to The Marty Lyons Foundation, a non-profit focused on fulfilling the wishes of children with terminal illnesses. Seth’s wish was to have a video chat with Team Cherry, which the Foundation arranged. But TheGamer wrote that “that one meeting turned into several and Team Cherry invited Goldman to make a custom NPC boss character in their under-development game Hollow Knight: Silksong.”
Goldman got to see the completed boss design in action, despite Silksong being five years away from release. He posted on Reddit in April 2020 that the in-game Seth is “really cool and has a boss fight” and telling another Redditor who hoped Seth would kick his butt that “Ohhhh, he will, I saw gifs of Seth and he is a fucking monster.”
Videos of the boss fight from the finished game show Seth to be an agile warrior equipped with a cymbal-like shield that he hurls Captain America-style. He can teleport to quickly get behind Hornet and performs a quick diagonal downward stab that resembles her own—except Seth’s creates an explosion with a flashy musical gonggg on impact.
It definitely seems like Goldman’s assessment of his namesake boss held true for the final game. “Bro might not have beaten cancer but he sure did beat my ass,” reads the top comment on the video embedded above.
The condolences left on Goldman’s obituary are naturally more serious, but across the internet reactions to Seth seem to universally reflect an appreciation for his story and contribution to the game.
“Despite never personally having known you, I just want to say that there are countless people from all over the world who care about you, and who mourn you all the same,” player Minna Rewers wrote on the Dignity Memorial page on Goldman’s birthday.
“You would have turned 22 today. We would have been the same age, only having entered adulthood the year prior. Happy birthday, little guy. May you be remembered until the very end, and beyond.”
