One Baldur’s Gate 3 companion is undeniably the best choice to turn into a Mind Flayer at the end of the game. In fact, they’ll even end up praising you for the tough decision.
Every Baldur’s Gate 3 companion has their own reasons for trying to stay alive. For Astarion it’s ascension and revenge, for Shadowheart it’s rediscovering herself, and for Karlach, it’s simply just trying to find a fix for the ticking timebomb that is her infernal heart.
As such, choosing to make a companion a Mind Flayer, which is a choice you can make towards the conclusion, can be amongst the toughest choices in the game. Ultimately, they all have something to lose. That is unless you pick Karlach, who will actually praise you for turning her into one of the all-knowing octopus-like beings.
As seen during the final scenes of Baldur’s Gate 3, and through dev notes highlighted by players in the Baldur’s Gate 3 Reddit, Karlach will actually end up thriving as a Mind Flayer, explaining that she feels “like I’m finally complete” and that the decision “means I’m going to live.”
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Interestingly, these lines are spoken whether she’s a companion or an origin character, proving that it’s both her internal monologue and her general feelings that praise the player for their choices.
Such praise was highlighted in an interview with IGN in which the lead writer Adam Smith for Baldur’s Gate 3 explained that Karlach “has a completely different reaction to it than other people” when speaking about turning her, proving that she’s the only companion who would happily welcome the change.
Turning any other companion into a Mind Flayer is practically a death sentence for them, as they end up becoming the monster they had been spending the last few acts trying to keep out. But for Karlach, it was either Mind Flayer or the Hells – and it’s clear she’d happily pick the expansion of mind and ability to live over the fiery inferno of Avernus.
