A Tale of Two Sylvies and why the Jailer Reveal was Bad

Lore Story Forum
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The problem is that Blizzard is trying to reconcile exactly two distinct arcs for Sylvanas, that were probably dreamed up by two different teams. Unless we figure out otherwise, I will always be 100% convinced that the Helya/Lamp subplot with Sylvanas was originally just another step in Sylvanas’ “find a solution to the Forsaken body degradation” plotline, and nothing more. There’s no way in Hel that the Jailer was even a thought in Blizzard’s mind when that was written.

Somewhere around Legion is where everything started to fall apart, and they began to retroactively change all of her motives and plotlines for some reason. Whatever “Cata Sylvanas” was building up to got cancelled when BfA was dreamed up, and we’ll now never know.

Full on conspiracy, the lamp plotline exposes the plan to alter her progression.

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We know for a fact different people have written for her at different times. Metzen has the writing credit for WC3. That’s why the claim that this stuff has ever been ‘set up’ is up for debate, because Danuser can’t set up things embedded in a story that someone else wrote.

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Zovaal feels like Sylvanas’ most powerful henchman though he’s supposed to be her boss.

At this point I’m viewing him more and more as an empty vessel to which all of Sylvanas’ villainous or evil acts will be transferred so she can be absolved; as though it were never her doing and/or she had no choice. Which we could learn is very much the case.

But emotionally, he hasn’t been very impactful.

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I’m not sure it feels like that to me. Zovaal feels compelling and powerful to me on his own. If the sell is that he’s the one calling the shots, I do believe that Sylvanas is lower on the totem pole, so to speak.

Sylvanas is a classically misguided villian. She thinks she’s right. She thinks the cause is worthy. Usually these villians die moments after realizing they were wrong.

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He comes across as menacing and powerful and inhuman. They’ve done an acceptable job there.

We won’t know if Sylvanas is misguided or not until that story concludes. We’re seeing her waver, perhaps, with Anduin. Maybe re-examining her steps along the way now that we’re reaching culmination of it all?

I’m interested to know what Sylvanas will be like going forward after Shadowlands. Maybe she’ll be great again?

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They have a lot of work to do with her to excuse the intentional reframing and misleading of the audience. If she’s not killed off, she just needs to be locked away like Illidan-- alive, but not in any way to actually impact the story. I’m not interested in a character that I’m not allowed to even partially understand for years.

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I don’t think that’s a tin foil hat moment. I know Legion is where they’re setting up the Sylvanas arc but legitimately I’m not sure how it fits. Using hindsight it very much looks like she’s working against the Jailer there. Maybe she still was working with the assumption that her deal was with the Val’kyr and sometime after she learned about the Jailer? I really don’t know.

This isn’t a commentary about Sylvanas being good or evil, it’s just that it’s bad writing to try to stuff a villainous presence in the last decade, which in my opinion was grossly unnecessary.

Would anyone have been disappointed if instead of what we have now, at the end of BfA/beginning of SL we just had Sylvanas meet the Jailer (via some means, Helm of Domination, a dreadlord disguised as … whatever, I don’t even care).

We might quibble with her decision to follow him then (question her motives etc) but it doesn’t create a number of awkward moments in a decade worth of interactions.

This whole introduction has basically made Sylvanas into having a dozen personalities stuffed into her head as the reasonable explanation for times where she says one thing, does something else, has an inner monologue about her true goal being a third thing, while really there’s a fourth thing she’s trying to do.

It’s one thing to suggest she’s a liar. Fine, some characters lie and manipulate. It’s another thing entirely to suggest she’s cleverly protecting her thoughts from the fourth wall - or I guess the potential of mind reading. Is that even a thing in WoW?

Yeah, Blizzard got us alright. Six month subscription and all.

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Two words… Patricia Hearst.

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Well if they had actually come up with the jailer and this plot in EoN, and actually built it up consistently we wouldn’t have this huge disconnect I feel.

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On the other hand, Sylvie as a character makes that difficult. She’s always been the type to wear a mask. The type to say and do one thing, while meaning something completely different. And one to have personal objectives laced in half-truths. This is a character who you could only possibly “know” through alarmingly few windows into her internal dialogue. Which means that unless you stumbled across her agenda, you’re unlikely to know what the hell she’s doing or thinking at any given moment.

She’s the unliving embodiment of a Public Face and a Private One. So … working around that in a format like an MMO is tricky at the best of times.

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Which is fine, but this jailer stuff was only dreamt up late Legion early to mid bfa. There’s no real set up for it so it’s far out of left field.

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I mean, I always figured her Val’kyr were too good to be true. And I always thought that Yogg-Saron might have something to do with what’s she was doing. The Jailor is new face for the same role.

But you are probably right that the didn’t commit to a course with her until (my guess) Stormheim in Legion. She pulls a damned “new world order” Arthas homage in that zone to the Alliance PC and leaves the Horde one in Hell. Then they proceeded to do nothing else with her the entire Expac. I am pretty convinced that that was a sign they knew where they wanted to go with her that early into Legion.

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Droite you and I have discussed how we have never seen the Val’kyrs deal with Syl as anything less then a manipulation lol, I’m firmly off the opinion they dropped her in the maw to sell it.

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I think the question we must ask is why they went back to Edge of night to spin the story. I agree that they could place Sylvanas-Jailer first interaction during BfA but they didn’t. One explanation is bad writing -retcon another is that there is something essential for the story in EoN. I don’t know what is going to happen but i favor t the second explanation.
“The boy who would be Lich King” serves at the master’s table.

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Oh, absolutely they did. As real as that was, it was Kabuki Theatre.

That being said, I am of the mind that by the time of Stormheim, Blizz had generally committed to this sort of route with Sylvanas. With how forced her ascension to Warchief was; her activities and treatment of both PCs in Stormheim; and then Blizz doing absolutely nothing else with her beyond that? It was some of the most blunt force functionalist writing I’ve ever seen. Designed to get Sylvanas in a position to do something with the Horde that they felt they couldn’t justify with Jin.

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And that’s fine, my problem is there was no need to commit to pushing the Jailer in as a villain from four expansions prior who was heretofore unseen by anyone but was really pulling everyone’s strings…

My issue is just that none of this is necessary. You could bridge the end of Shadowlands directly from the end of BfA without any sort of, “10 Years Prior…” commentary and it seems to make more sense.

I understand Droite that you like to say she’s always been evil, but it’s not even about arguing her “evilness.” It’s that inserting “generic bad guy” from a decade prior is just really off-putting story-wise - even if their goal was to make her the villain of Shadowlands. There doesn’t seem to be a need to do it that way. People could still say she was evil the whole time and her siding with the Jailer at the end of BfA is on par for her character without making a decade long retcon.

That’s a pretty fair point and I’ll absolutely concede that it’s possible that there is something essential in Edge of Night (and/or it has to take place at that point in time).

I just don’t really know what it is.

From the “obvious” category we basically see the Val’kyr drop her off in WoW Hell until she agrees to a deal with them.

If the writers are determined to go to Shadowlands, fight the Jailer, and have Sylvanas be a villain - that moment still doesn’t seem to be a requirement:

“Hey, Sylvanas, I know we’ve been working with you for a while and helping you stay out of WoW Hell, but there’s this person you just HAVE to meet him. No really, you have to, plus everyone is hunting you, so you’re probably out of options. Also, tiny tip, if you break Bolvar’s hat it’ll open a door so we can leave … so … might want to do that. How do we know? We’re magic angels that can save you from WoW Hell, seriously, we know stuff.”

Hypothetically, maybe when she’s in the Maw, the Jailer explains that if she does anything he doesn’t approve of the Val’kyr will take her right back to WoW Hell. That’s just guessing though and it seems to fit pretty poorly.

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I dont even think it was in Legion. I think its more likely that Muehzala was going to be more important to the Shadowlands, at that time, but they moved away from it and manufactured the Jailer who had no ties to Helya or Odyn besides Muehzala who would have been a more interesting reveal if he wasnt overshadowed by the Jailer.

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I think you’re misunderstanding me. I never said she was evil from the offset, its just that Legion Stormheim convinced me that she was still very much operating off of the character motivation they gave her in EoN; and that as a consequence we were still very much dealing with the Sylvanas from that Short Story. The selfish nihilist that uses others as tools for personal objectives, and discards them when they cease to be of use. The one still dealing with her afterlife issues. The one who still has a shifty deal with her Val’kyr. The one who was NEVER given a motivation to start caring for the Forsaken (or the Horde) more as people, than her need to use them as tools.

In short, I didn’t know the Jailor was coming. But by Ogmot’s Dream Journal and her Warbringers, I figured there was some being she was operating under. I had honestly guessed it was Yogg Saron. But, the Jailor serves in the same role I had assumed the Old God of death was sitting in. That being said, I do think that at least since EoN, she has revealed herself to be a downright horrible person. Even if not always an Evil one.

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I don’t feel like I am misunderstanding. My complaints aren’t about her - it’s about the Jailer introduction.

Ogmot’s Dream Journal and Warbringers showing she’s working under some being is fine but then making that reveal she’s been working for that someone for a decade … who no one knew about … and isn’t mentioned … just isn’t necessary (unless it’s something akin to what Borcan mentioned) and is extremely off-putting since it can’t/doesn’t line up with the entirety of the story from the end of Wrath until Legion when they put her on this track.

To put it into perspective, why not have her join forces with the Jailer at the end of Legion? She fails to get the soul cage and Helya decides to introduce her to her new beaux as a way of seducing her to help avoid eternity in WoW Hell.

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As i see the story Arthas is the boy king of prophesies, EoN is the first lie and the reason they write Sylvanas as another character after BfA is that she is another character.

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