A thread of loose ends

[Errorname]

So you're saying the Ark is a great analog for the Snarl. Also that it's easily possible for a compressed epilogue after the villain has already been defeated to be dramatic for the Ark (and, thus, for the Snarl).

If you ignore the entire point of what I was saying, sure. The ending scene gets all of it's meaning because it's following up on the big climactic sequence where all the set-up about the Ark gets paid off in explosive fashion. With a different climax, that epilogue would still work, but it would play very differently and much more anticlimactically. It'd turn the ark into a true macguffin and make all the portent about it's terrible power mere flavour.

Also, ignoring that the linked scene is arguably much more iconic than the island scene.

Disputable, although frankly neither are the most iconic scene of the movie, but there's no point to arguing about that, they both exist as part of the same movie and if you're only looking at the epilogue you are getting an incomplete picture.

So what, is your issue that it hasn't happened yet and thus never will or can? Because this seems pretty directly relevant to your statement that it cannot be dramatic.

I think resolving the rifts in the epilogue after the actual conflict is over is kind of undramatic in comparison to weaving it into the actual climax, it's the sort of thing that you do with something that doesn't matter. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I could imagine a version of this story that really is just stopping Xykon and convincing Redcloak to help the good guys that's still a very good comic.

But as far as predicting where the comic is going it really doesn't feel like how it's going to go. Because the Rifts and the Snarl are a big deal, there's strong set-up for a big reveal with the world within the rifts, and a great thing about fantasy stories is that as a writer you have the tools to reverse the apocalypse in a way that a more grounded story doesn't.