Paradise Regained: Why this ending?

At then end of Paradise Regained, Jesus wins a tremendous victory over Satan, causing Satan to fall from the sky[1]. After this great victory though, he “unobserved, / Home to his mother's house private returned.”[2] He went home, back to life as usual with no fanfare, nothing to mark that the Son of God had just defeated Satan. This seems an odd thing for a victor to do. The expected course of action would be for him to return home in a blaze of glory, declare his victory and claim his throne. Christ, however, simply and sedately goes back to his duty, back to obscurity.

One possible reason that Milton ended Paradise Regained this way is to continue to show the very marked contrast between Jesus and Satan. Throughout both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Satan is shown to be in pursuit of glory. Jesus, however, is not seeking glory for himself, and has submitted himself to his fathers will, to bring glory to his father[3]. For Jesus to go home asserting his victory would have been looking for glory for himself. In having Jesus return home unobserved, Milton is showing that Jesus still is not concerned with his own glory even when he has something to glory in. God’s glory is more important to him.

Also, for Jesus to have come out of the wilderness declaring his victory would have cost him that same victory. He won over Satan because he was not in it for his own glory. For Christ to declare himself victorious would have been seeking glory at the expense of the father.

The ultimate glory that Jesus could bring to God was his crucifixion. If he had conquered Satan but not beaten sin and death, all he would have accomplished was showing that he was stronger than Satan. Satan, however, would still have had the last laugh because he took humanity down with him. It was not just about Satan. It was about undoing the damage that Satan had done. To do that, humanity had to be restored. If Christ had gone back and proclaimed his victory, at that point the Romans might have crucified him, but he would not have been the innocent sacrifice for sins. Declaring himself king and then getting killed would have changed the meaning of his death. He would have died for insurrection, not because he was eerily innocent. Also, having declared himself king, it would have been abdication to let himself be killed. He would have looked like just another failed revolutionary. The amazing, different thing about Jesus was that he was not another revolutionary. He knew his kingdom was of another realm, and admitted it readily. To come out and declare victory over Satan would have been to claim his kingdom then and there, thereby losing it. He had to go back and be a carpenters son who could do miracles, read minds, cast out demons, and who was eventually killed for being too good, and for threatening with his very goodness the corrupt powers that were.

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[1] IV. 560-581

[2] IV.638-639

[3] IV286-364