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There are three common interpretations of the story of Orpheus and Euridyce , specifically pertaining to why Orpheus, knowing it would cost him his lover, turned around to greet her one final time, only to see her soul dragged back to the Underworld.
The first goes as follows: Orpheus, fearing that the gods had tricked him and overcome with love and desire for Euridyce , turns around to check on her, unable to fight his mind any longer. Maybe he hears her stumble or fall, and he turns around to help her. Either way, this interpretation states that Orpheus turning was instinct, something so deeply ingrained into his very soul that he was impossible to resist.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. They were supposed to win. The election should have been theirs. He should be in L'Manberg right now, talking and laughing with Niki over a glass of wine too many. He should stumble home to an empty house, not expecting Tommy's footsteps until he and Tubbo finally parted ways around dawn. He shouldn't be in a ravine, half-written letter to his father precariously laid out on a single crafting table, listening to Tommy's feather scratch on paper as he called for aid. They didn't need help, no matter how much Tommy insisted on getting Techno involved. They'd live on, like they always had, on new lands and under new management. Their own management. They didn't need L'Manberg . They didn't need looming blackstone towers, spleef -able earth, a burning drug van, the fields their society first toddled along in, the rivers that had given them life, the community that had protected them, their friends, their family. Fundy. Wilbur told himself he didn't need any of that. But when his head hid the rudimentary pillow of his improvised bed, he found himself reliving a golden sunset and bright voices under her light. He found himself vowing that, no matter what happened, L'Manberg would be his again.
The second interpretation of why Orpheus turned is that, as he approached the end of the road, he chose the tragedy over Euridyce . He decided, right then, to keep her memory, to immortalize her in art and music, and to revel in his own sorrows. He accepted her death, and chose not as her lover, but as a poet who'd found his eternal muse.
The walls of the already small room were seemingly closing in even further as he approached the button. It felt almost comforting, the finality of it all. The L'Manberg he'd known, his life's work, was gone. It had crumbled alongside her walls. Those magnificent blackstone borders, ironically built to keep them safe by the man who would later betray them, had indicated home. He wondered, sometimes, if they would be what Hell looked like. If, when he blew himself up alongside his country, he'd spend eternity trapped in her likeness, forced to reminisce on a past unattainable. It didn't matter yet, though, what the afterlife had in store, as he still had to press the button on the wall. It was oak, and hundreds like it decorated the walls of Pogtopia . He supposed it would be his tomb now, his final resting place, considering that he could hardly be laid down in the smoldering remains of a grieved country. It didn't matter, either, that his dad showed up. A half-written letter from his first night after the election drifted to the forefront of his mind, and he briefly wondered if Phil actually cared about him. He dismissed it. He wondered again what death would be like, if she would cradle him softly in warm arms as she led him to damnation, or if she would scoff and throw him down by his neck. He didn't know which one he'd prefer. The words on the walls screamed their immortal anguish as he rested his fingertips on the wall around the button, letting the wood scream at him for a second before finally, after all this time, dipping his finger down and pressing the button.
There is a third way the story ends. Maybe, it wasn't Orpheus who made this decision. Maybe Euridyce , aware of her own eternal mortality, knowing of where she was meant to be, instead called out to him “Turn around”.
“Kill me, Phil.”
“Let me go.”