So, let me say right off the bat that I am only being half-serious with this topic. It is a trend on this forum to discuss whether various characters in the Warcraft universe can be redeemed/deserve redemption, and I noticed that Deathwing is often left out of said discussions, so I thought it would be kinda fun to bring up. I realize that the idea of Deathwing being redeemed is kind of absurd, so consider this a devil’s advocate argument.
Deathwing was originally corrupted/driven insane by the old gods, so an argument could be made that his actions while under their influence was not wholly his own. True, as Neltharion he was bitter about his role as a dragon aspect and that this bitterness helped make it easier for him to fall under old god’s sway, but at the end of the day I still think you could chalk his actions up to insanity.
This raises the question of whether or not he can truly be held accountable for his actions. Many real world legal systems would argue that no, an individual who is insane cannot be completely held responsible for their actions due to the fact that their grasp on reality is tenuous and thus they are unable to distinguish right from wrong. I don’t think these laws were written with a giant dragon in mind, but I digress.
If we accept this argument that begs the question; if we cannot truly judge Deathwing, what can we do with him? Mercy killing is always an option, but for the sake of argument let’s say he could be captured and imprisoned. Alexstrasza herself was once kept prisoner in Grim Batol by the orcs of the Dragonmaw clan, so this sort of thing is not entirely unprecedented. The other dragons could then perhaps begin the process of rehabilitating Deathwing, which would not happen overnight granted, but would be a preferable alternative to death. Perhaps Magni or the young Wrathion could play a role in returning him to his sanity. Overtime, Neltharion might return to his senses and restore the Black Dragonflight to their proper role.
I realize that this whole scenario is absurd and quite frankly kind of fan-fictiony, but hopefully it sparks an interesting discussion. How would Azeroth react to these events? How would the events after Cataclysm have changed?
I remember when bad guys were just bad because they were greedy, selfish and arrogant. Now days it always has to be underlined with some sort of corruption by a third party or some retaliation for some past Slight.
It has become so repetitive in blizzards writing that every bad guys ultimately could be redeemed. It has sucked the life out of the story and they should simply just let a bad guys be bad.
Corruption is such a lame trope. Once or twice its fun but this is nearing constant occurrence.
What happened with relatable villains who think they are doing good but go about it all wrong?
Part of me thinks thats what the Devs think they are doing or at least trying to accomplish with Sylvanas but they are failing horribly.
Charge of the aspects implies that Deathwing at some point willingly sided with N’zoth because N’zoth promised to remove the powers Khaz’goroth gave him. As Neltharion began to see it more of a curse than a blessing. Whenever Azeroth (the planet or the world soul) was hurt, so was he. Basically Azeroth was one giant voodoo doll of Neltharion. We see in End Time that N’zoth did hold up his end of the bargain though, just not the way Neltharion expected. This concept was also present in Cata itself when he confronts Alexstrasza in Twilight Highlands. So everything Neltharion did was actually on his own. I do like to imagine though that Madness of Deathwing was N’zoth taking full control since Neltharion wanted to die after the Spine of Deathwing encounter.
There are some antagonists that were ‘influenced’ by the Old Gods but their actions were 100% their own. Loken for example. Yogg didn’t make Loken have an affair with Sif and then kill her when she regretted it. However Yogg did capitalize on the situation by blackmailing Loken. Likewise picking up Frostmourne was still a choice Arthas made on his own free will if we replace old gods with Ner’zhul.
So this question is floated around a lot, and it’s honestly a debate worth having (since now would be the time to see him again if we did). Personally, I’m of the opinion that Deathwing’s madness was induced on him unwillingly and he could have come back from it, but by the time we killed him, Neltharion was pretty much all the way gone. He was obsessed with causing the Hour of Twilight, even though he knew it meant his own death and the death of his flight. He was literally coming apart at the seems to the point that he needed to be literally held together with plates. Even if we had by some slim chance managed to save Neltharion’s mind, I doubt he would’ve wanted to live with what he’d become and what he’d done in his madness.
This isn’t anything resembling true. Moral relativism can be done well or poorly, but black and white morality in storytelling is ultimately boring in a continual narrative. Look at Malygos - he’s one of WoW’s best regarded villains in a lot of circles, and a lot of this stems from the fact that he had a point to his actions. Sure he was a villain and he needed to be stopped, but the ideas that float around of “could there have been another way?” lend a lot to the story.
Bad people aren’t just bad by default. Be it corruption or something wired inside, something MAKES them go bad. Doesn’t mean they all can or should be redeemed.
Honestly N’Zoth is probably the strongest mind taker we’ve yet interacted with. Seemed he could make anyone his personal flying monkeys eventually. Old God’s can afterall even twist robots meant to contain them to their will if given enough time.
So I don’t know about dropping all charges but he’s got a solid insanity plea defense at least.
Exactly. While Malygos was charged with ‘giving the gift that is the arcane’ his fundamental charge was to protect Azeroth. Mortals reckless use of the Arcane drew the Legion to Azeroth in the WotA which ended with a large majority of his flight dead. If it wasn’t for the time changing consequences in the WotA novels, his flight was gone. As it was in Day of the Dragon (which happens before the whole timeline changes caused by Murozond in the WotA trilogy). So to him, mortals cannot be trusted with the arcane unless they are truly loyal to him. The thing that put Malygos into a villain was attacking the other dragon flights and redirecting the leylines to the Nexus, which was creating an unstable rift that would’ve destroyed the whole planet if we didn’t stabilize it.
No doubt it can be done well and blizzard has done it well in the passed, However blizzard have reused this story so many time it has lost all substance, especially recently.
The fact that they are trying to paint Sylvanas now as some sympathetic moron who simply has been tricked is pathetic. Deathwing was a compelling villain before dawn of aspects tried to write him as sympathetic. They should have just left him as the power hungry bad guy who just wanted the power to ascend to becoming a god.
Deathwing was a stereotypical medieval dragon who easily could have been guarding a kidnapped princess or hoard of gold before Dawn of the Aspects. Dawn of the Aspects made him into an actual character. Showing us what he was like before he turned bad doesn’t inherently ruin him as a villain. He still betrayed his kin, and he still caused the Cataclysm, so the drive to kill him still remains intact.
A bad guy who’s bad just for the sake of it is insanely boring.
Considering the stories of Arthas, Deathwing, Sargeras, Kil’jaedan, Illidan, Elisande and Kael’thas, and others that I could list, I think you do have a point. These are all characters whose stories follow similar beats.
However, I think that there are also plenty of villains who are just moustache twirling jerks, and many have been recent too. Gul’dan, Azhsara, Archimonde and Kel’thuzad are just a few.
The original war of the Ancient trilogy actually gave him a decent background. He had heard the whispers of the old gods and built the demon soul however they wanted him to use the power to release them. Instead he used it to ascend to becoming a god.
It was actually one thing I was sad they didn’t reference more back in BFA on how the Heart of Azeroth was exactly what the demon soul necklace had been.
Personally I think what Dawn of the Aspects and Charge of the Aspects did by giving Deathwing a proper motivation was a good thing. It shows that he struggled with his duty as an aspect but the pain of being the Earthwarder was too much to bear. Which is when N’zoth came in and manipulated Neltharion into siding with him (Give us the girl [Azeroth] and the curse will be gone). Once Neltharion had agreed to the bargain, manipulating him with promises of true power and dominance was easy. Plus as we saw in End Time, the tragedy at the heart of his fall from grace is that he was just a pawn that N’zoth just threw away. Honestly, the tragedy that is Neltharion just makes N’zoth in BFA all the more sad.
Not all the time, but they need to have max stats in charisma.
I just want to point out that making the Villain inexplicably convey regret out of no where after they’ve been defeated with zero prior evidence to support it in any way shape or form leading up to their fight doesn’t make a Villain “redeemable” or Sympathetic.
Kil’jaeden’s story was that he traded his people for power and that was his story up until the very end. Then on his death bed he suddenly espoused that he only did it cause he couldn’t believe there would be a way to stop Sargeras so Velen gave up some headpats of forgiveness.
Same with Elisande. She shows zero traits of being anything than a greed corrupted villainess and then after her death she goes ghost and is like “Oh I looked into the future and never saw a reality where the Legion would lose.” (which is the exact same thing for Kil’jaeden essentially) and suddenly you were supposed to feel sympathy for her because she encourages you to go beat up Gul’dan.
They were also far more compelling villains for the Players to fight as well. where as they others that require “redemption” always seem to rely on NPC’s to do the work which sucks out agency from the player.
I will go easy on Elisande though and point out that she was just the villain for a single patch, and that was it. As far as I know there is no mention of her in the lore before Legion, and so she wasn’t built up for years and years like some of these other villains. She was standard, and she probably won’t be remembered as one of the great villains, but given the context I think she served her purpose well enough.
I would say that what happened with Kil’jaeden was more of the result of the Draenei retcon in TBC and blizzard was just fully fleshing out his character as a result. Honestly I would say that him being envious of Velen adds to his character instead of taking away from it. It implies that Sargeras appearing as his pre corrupted self was more to deceive Kil’jaeden. Sargeras had studied the Ereder for some time before approaching them. He knew that Archimonde would side with him no matter what, Velen would have some doubts and would most likely decline, mainly since his power of foresight would allow him to see Sargeras for the fraud that he was. So the only one that he truly needed to convince was Kil’jaeden. Which was why Sargeras played the “join me and you can learn knowledge and power beyond your wildness dreams”. Knowing full well that Kil’jaeden, despite being Velens best friend was envious of his natural gifts of foresight. The self titled deceiver was himself deceived. So when Velen refused to side with Sargeras, Kil’jaeden saw it as a personal betrayal. Basically the same way Catra saw Adora siding with the rebellion at the start of She-ra (2018). Side note: If Blizzard had to turn a main character gay for random reasons, I wouldn’t mind if they did it with Kil’jaeden. What Kil’jaeden did following Velens exodus from Argus makes it seem that there was more to their relationship than just a simple bromance, at least on Kil’jaedens end.
As for Kil’jaeden continuing to side with Sargeras through it all. Sargeras was a titan who had killed his fellow titans. How could anyone stop a literal God like being if his fellow Titans could do nothing to stop him?
