The party is level 20 with a few mythic tiers. Team Big Bad set up a horrible trap by opening a portal to the Negative Energy Plane (as a homage to Tar Baphon's trap for Aroden). However, despite having every advantage, Team Big Bad still suffered a humiliating defeat that makes it clear they have little chance to defeat them.
What should I have the Big Bads do? Should they just give up and attempt to make peace?
Run away, hide, then get revenge by destroying everything their foes hold dear.
That is, if you want to prolong your misery running a 20th-level campaign.
Or just declare the glorious success of the mission, general accolades for all, and then ask them to roll up new 1st-level guys. And watch crests fall. <g>
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A lot will depend on the nature of the Big Bad:
Time: If the Big Bad is immortal (diety, demon lord, etc.) then just outliving the PCs might be a good plan. Of course, for most evil creatures, if the PCs destroy enough of your power base, your own rivals will take advantage of your relative weakness and things might spiral down quickly, so this option is best if the PCs don't seem to be a real threat to your 'core'.
Faux-Coup: Similar to just outliving your foes, making it look like your underlings rebelled against you and cut up your powerbase between them while you actually maintain control from behind the scenes could be an option if the conflict is 'personal' in nature, but it might also encourage the PCs to take advantage of an apparent division.
Alliances: If the Big Bad can't defeat your enemies, perhaps he could find some allies? This is a bit of a risk, but if you've realized you can't defeat your foes and are in danger of losing everything, what do you have to lose?
Betrayal: More of a 'bring this campaign to a close' move, while the Big Bad considers his options, his allies, associates, or underlings decide this is a losing proposition and betray him to the PCs, leading to a climatic showdown. Honestly, if you have a party of level 20 PCs with Mythic levels, you're going to have a really hard time actually threatening them with anything other than the mythic equivalent of 'rocks fall, everyone dies, repeat ad nauseam as you get resurrected...'
The Big Bad claims a great victory, and that all reports to the contrary are fake news. Hey wait a minute . . . .
Think this will echo most here, but level 20 is world shattering stuff so gets pretty rough to work around. As for the big bad, play dirty. What did they learn from the last encounter, are there weaknesses? Most likely though if they really hate the characters I would attack the supporting characters and then fade away. Aka Character comes home to find his/her family slaughtered..even if they track down the person who did it, it's a hired hand with no idea who hired them... Basically if you cant kill them, hurt them until they quit. If they are playing with no connections then divide and conquer
Don't just kill the supporting characters, turn them into undead. Yes, their powers will be just about wiped out, but imagine how a PC would feel if they returned home and their spouse had not only been murdered, but turned into an undead the PC had to kill. That would destroy a hero.
the evil mastermind plot phase B;
the previues part that seamingly failed was just a lure to have the party busy someplace else while the REAL major part of the plan was taken care of. now there is even less time in the party's hourglass before the big bang arrive!!!
just as i planned all along BWAHAHAHA!!! (*insert evil finger piramide here*)
also i have set eye witnesess before head for phase A and the
pr campaign to smear the name of the so-called heroes is just starting. go evil girl-scout squad! ('they killed mommy!!!!')
The Big Bads own an entire nation in the distance that currently isn't in good shape. Their objective is to silence a dangerous secret from the party and prevent the party's allied minor demigoddess from getting vengeance upon them. Up until this point, their plan has been to hurt the party's loved ones or give them other more important problems to worry about. However, all it has done was make the party more determined to stop them.
From your pitched ideas, I'm starting to brainstorm something. Perhaps as a back up plan if the battle went awry, the Negative Energy Plane portal is designed so it unleashes an enormous world-threatening monstrosity. If the party fails to deal with it immediately, not only will it threaten countless lives across the Inner Sea but also the party will be blamed for unleashing it. And after the party and their allies are wounded and exhausted from killing it, the bad guys (after recovering from the previous fight) swoop in for the final kill. Depending on how the party plays it out, some of the bad guys might think this plan has gone too far and betray the others.
The big bad might unleash an even greater evil in desperation or revenge. Just insert some ancient evil power that was sealed away long ago and have him start working to free it. In Golarion, the extreme version of this would be Rovagug.