Several times people have thrown around the terms “good and evil” and “redemption” for characters. Between double standards and the writers playing fast and loose with cosmology and morality, there is a question; what determines whether the characters are redeemable or not? For example, here’s similar actions from five characters;
Illidan; Forced Akama to serve him by splitting Akama’s soul and threatening to let Akama’s evil half devour his other half if Akama didn’t serve Illidan’s plan against the Burning Legion. Is Illidan irredeemable?
Sylvanas; Imprisoned Kolitra and tried to brainwash him to serve her, and also helped the Jailer control Anduin with Domination magic. Is Sylvanas irredeemable?
Odyn; Forced Helya to become the first of the Val’kyr to collect his chosen champions. Is Odyn irredeemable?
Xe’ra; Tried to replace Illidan’s fel magic with the Light for her “Child of Light and Shadow” plan/prophecy to defeat the Burning Legion. Was Xe’ra irredeemable?
Garrosh; Forced enemy POWs to fight for him by holding their families hostage. Was Garrosh irredeemable?
Are these characters percevied differently despite their similar actions? If so, why? Now with the controversial examples out of the way, here’s a few characters where it’s less ambiguous;
Gul’dan
Xavius
Archimonde
Azshara
Deathwing
Like me, would you say the second list of characters are less redeemable than the first list? What makes irredeemable characters irredeemable?
I’m tempted to give Neltharian the pass on true-evil, and I suspect anyone who says otherwise missed Charge of the Aspects, which is honestly the most important piece of explanatory lore there is on him. He was in constant agony beyond imagination from the weight of his Titan-given powers, and it beat him down mentally until he was just emotinally weak enough to give in to the Old Gods who promised him freedom from the pain. The Primalist attack where he finally gave in was just his last straw. After his corruption/mind control, how much is really his fault?
This one is perhaps a bit weird. We know damn near nothing about the guy, since he more or less just crushed things while blindly following orders from the brains, Kil’jaeden. His backstory is more or less just “he liked power, so he tried to get more of it without really thinking too much about it or anything else.” He’s very one note. I’d almost argue that Archimonde, despite being one of the greatest sorcerers out there, is kind of portrayed as a big, dumb, lumbering, brute who can barely think for himself, and just mindlessly carries out the orders of those above him so he can blissfully do what he likes doin’ most.
I guess I’m saying I wonder if Archimonde ever thought about the morality of his actions enough to even know how evil it was. Someone like Gul’dan is very much aware his wrongness, but, man, Archimonde is sometimes portrayed as pretty dense.
I think redemption is a funny thing.
And it can be hard to quantify what makes someone “redeemed”.
It’s why I think redemption is more about the journey than the destination.
The point of redemption isn’t that someone succeeds, but that they earnestly try.
That they acknowledge their faults and try to improve.
At what point does the road to redemption actually reach redemption?
Who knows. It’s kinda subjective.
Duroz of the Dragonmaw believed himself beyond redemption, despite dedicating his life post-2nd War to improving the world and striking down evil.
Did he reach redemption?
He would say no (and would die thinking that).
Others would say yes.
For the characters listed above, I think it’s more feasible to outline the ones that are unlikely of redemption due to their own disposition.
After all, the single biggest factor of redemption is the acknowledgement of your follies and an earnest attempt to be better.
Illidan, Odyn, Garrosh (especially Garrosh) are mostly defined by their narcissism.
They’re “irredeemable”. Not for their actions, but because they’re refusal to be wrong.
I’d also list Gul’dan, Xavius, and Azshara here.
Sylvanas used to be part of that group, but it was caused by a magical malady that has since been fixed.
Archimonde is a bit of an unknown as a character, so it’s hard to say.
And Deathwing got filled with evil juice. So culpability is always gonna be an issue there.
That’s not because of her actions, but rather how she was written. She flip flopped so much, her inner monologue was often later retconned. At this point I don’t even know when reading or seeing her what is her and what will be changed the next patch.
She was easily my favorite character for most of WoW but at this point any redemption story will fail for me because our of universe failings of the writing team in regards to her.
Though I would say Neltharion, funnily enough, would be the most redeemable. Nothing has been point blank changes about him, we just learned more. Dude struggled under a massive burden and eventually broke. I think if he had a way to return to sanity he would have been deeply ashamed and saddened at what he had done.
Friendly reminder that Word of God insists the soul fragment didn’t change who Sylvanas was and wasn’t a piece of her that prevented her from being the Banshee Queen, even though that is overtly what the story demonstrated.
I’d say it mostly depends on timeframes. A couple of years; sure, most of these characters would never change their tune. But a few millennia would be more then enough time to completely alter an individuals sense of everything.
Do I remember Blizzard once saying that they kind of wanted Gul’dan to be the one WoW character who was truly, unquestionably, irredeemably evil? As in, most other people can be understood or sympathized with in some capacity, but he’s the one dude that is just rotten to the core in every way?
I’ll go out on a limb and say Gul’dan is probably the most heinously evil mortal in just about every AU. I don’t think there are any deviating threads on this guy.
She showed absolutely no sensitivity in her contact with the player character, her first contact throws you in a 3 day coma and every one after that is agony. She’s essentially WOW’s version of Dark Kosh.
He absolutely is but he is motivated by power first and foremost. We have seen evil beings use the Light before, for instance the Scarlets.
I have no doubt if he was shown how to be a Mage (IE: Arcane magic), or how to be a Paladin, or really how to be anything at all that guaranteed power he would have taken it. Gul’dan just wanted power, being a 'Lock was a means to that end not the only path he would have taken.
I mean originally he was going to be a Shammy, though that might have been retconned not sure if it was or not.
