Rain World 1.7 Hunter and Monk Endings
1.7 is only available on PS4 and switch right now.
I will share what I think below, though it is kind of limited, and is only my own interpretation. It is likely the ending is something else, and other ideas are perfectly valid. To be quite honest, it is too early to really know for sure what happened, perhaps we will never know what happened.
Monk's ending made me happy. It seems clear they meet survivor at the end, likely still at the tree. Definitely gave me a less evil view of the void sea. Perhaps, survivor and monk both ascend? They seem to be in nirvana, yet they both had attachments. Whichever way, they end up meeting each other again, so that's pretty cool and good.
Hunter's ending left me confused. While monk's cleared things up, hunter's ending made less sense to me than when I saw the ending for the first time in 1.01. (Though perhaps that's because I'm looking at it from more of a lore perspective.)
Hunter seems to not be able to keep up with the rest of the slugcats, and is left behind while... something grows out of them? It has a branch-like appearance, so it could possibly be the tree at survivor's ending. Now here is the absolute most confusing part. After this, hunter is curled up and seemingly held by an iterator. Although it was NSH who sent them, I find it unlikely it's them. Sliver of Straw is the only iterator we know of that has "ascended." It could be that SOS is there to guide the hunter to whatever ascension nirvana land there is, or...
Because of the way the screen subtly got darker, more sinister and blue, SOS could be there to guide them to the realm of echoes.
Unfortunately I think the latter is more likely.
Also this is kind of irrelevant but I keep seeing the ending iterator as the Onceler for some reason.