In the end, Ridley did get into the Impact Crater.
And he made another hole. Or, well, maybe? We didn’t see him make a hole, and he does come back later. Not in the next game, mind you. He really took a beating.
Considering Space Pirates had to go out of their way to add Phazon to Metroids, I didn’t really expect that the final boss would be called the Metroid Prime on my first playthrough. Really, the Omega Pirate felt kind of like a final boss all on its own, and it certainly did more damage than the others! Yes, Ridley killed me, but that was more than half of my health spent wondering why his weak spot went away faster than I could use a Super Missile. I did a lot better when I decided to just shoot him normally.
I’ve already streamed the game once before (on the HD Remaster), so I don’t feel like I need to go into too much detail about how I liked the game or what I think of the ending. The game more or less ends the same as most other Metroid games: the final boss dies and then the place collapses. Or did it? Yes, the place collapsed, but the Metroid Prime took Samus’s Phazon Suit right before Samus fled. It’s not actually dead, and we’ll get to see what happened with it in the sequels. At least the Chozo of Tallon IV can rest easy: the Phazon has been expunged, as far as we can tell.