I think it’s a mistake to look at what Sylvanas says as some metatextual dig from the writers to Arthas fans when the much more straightforward answer is that, in universe, that’s just what Sylvanas would say.
Like, really Arthas is there to give Sylvanas closure. This is a woman whose story we’ve been following over the course of the expansion, and this is the moment where she has some self-awareness and admits that she became the thing she hated because her obsession with vengeance was so corrosive. To banish Arthas, to forget him, is the only closure she’ll ever get. She’s not going to absolve him, she’s not going to forgive him, she’s just going to move beyond him and let him fade from memory.
And even outside of Sylvanas on a character level, it’s an appropriate end to Arthas’ character because his villainous goal was to be immortal and live forever. He wanted to be invincible. To have a character who wanted immortality fade not just from existence but also from memory is the ultimate defeat of this villain, the poetic justice he deserves.
And like, if you’re sick of everything being about Sylvanas fair enough, I totally get that. But the idea that this is some sort of message in a bottle from the writers telling you to forget Arthas just seems like bending over backwards to be outraged when the obvious answer to what’s happening is very straightforward.
And by the way, the reason Jaina and Uther don’t speak and Sylvanas does is because Jaina and Uther both got their own version of closure for Arthas. Jaina forgave herself for what happened with Arthas in BFA (since her arc in that expansion was learning to forgive herself to be a woman worthy of forgiveness from her mother) and Uther resolved his anger towards Arthas in the 9.1 questing campaign.
Further proof that the factions are garbage under the current team…
There seems to be no one left in house that grasps why The Horde appealed to so many people, and every time someone on Team Blue thinks about doing something interesting, Anduin finger wags them back to Holy Golden Blandsville.
The same pretty much applies to Sylvannas herself. Her crimes won’t be forgiven and since so much of her story parallels Arthas, I do not think that she’s going to survive the closing of this chapter. The most likely avenue of redemption for her will involve her true and final death.
I don’t care if she gets redeemed if it where done well, but if they write characters she wronged as forgiving her. Well that would not make any sense, and they really do like killing the hordes leadership every other expansion.
This is why I continually say Sylvanas and Anduin are narrative black holes. Nothing survives contact with them and emerges whole—lore, convention, and personalities suffer polar or incoherent shifts.
No, I think Drahliana is correct that she won’t be forgiven and I expect that Sylvanas will get an echo of this kind of interaction with Tyrande. Tyrande will neither absolve nor forgive but she will move past Sylvanas and whatever fate befalls her.
Though, I don’t think that Sylvanas is going to be killed. Maybe? But I think it’s more likely she’s banished to be the new Jailer or she’s going to Revendreth for a long, harsh atonement, or any number of “she’s in limbo from now on” endings.
Sylvanas is a principled villain motivated by justice and morality (as opposed to someone like Garrosh or Arthas.) She believes that the machine of death is unjust and wants to make existence better by remaking that machine into something that is just. Her villainy is that she’s willing to do terrible things to accomplish that goal, in a typical “ends justifies the means” sort of evil. (Villains like Garrosh and Arthas are instead motivated by selfish desires for conquest and immortality, by contrast.)
That kind of “I’m doing this for the greater good” villain tends to get more sympathetic endings than more straightforward villains motivated by selfish desires. And I expect that to hold true for Sylvanas. Garrosh is the kind of villain that gets an ending where he just dies. Sylvanas, I expect, will kind of willfully accept eternal exile and banishment.
You say Justice but Justice is different for each person, Arthas thought it was Just to hunt malganus. And Arthas in a sense yet blinded by vengeance thought malganus’ death was for the greater good of his people.
Also she’s not gonna be banished if she’s said to be in the future of the game
Blizzard forgot allot of what was said in wc3 when they brought him over to wow, like how at the end of the human campaign you get that text wall talking about how the sword drove him insane, or how Arthas soul was the first one taken by frostmourne
Arthas did spend most of the human campaign in Warcraft 3 motivated to save his homeland but that motivation wanes pretty quickly as he defies the will of his father to pursue Mal’ganis to Northrend. At a certain point, “save my homeland” became “kill Mal’ganis.” From there, he would pick up Frostmourne and become a villain, one who explicitly condemned his homeland to undeath when he led the Scourge to ravage Lordaeron.
At that point, once he becomes a villain, his villainous motivation is invincibility and immortality, where he tells Uther that he’s going to live forever. And this doesn’t come from nothing, either, this has always underwritten Arthas’ character. Arthas names his childhood steed Invincible since it was a Lordaeranian custom to name your horse after an aspirational trait like that. And when Invincible suffers an injury he can’t recover from, Arthas is forced to put him down. This is the moment that fuels him to become a paladin, to get the power he needs to not have that happen again. But even being a paladin isn’t enough. He wants more and it’s the power of being a Death Knight that truly fulfills Arthas’ desire for invincibility, where he can resurrect Invincible and correct that mistake from his childhood. Even further, when King Anasterian injures Invincible while Arthas is attacking Quel’thalas, Arthas can just heal Invincible’s wounds with Necromancy.
So, “save my homeland” is a much weaker, much less important facet of Arthas’ character than that desire for immortality and invincibility. And when comparing the motivations of these two villains, Arthas’ villainy is motivated entirely by the selfish desire for those. Sylvanas’ villainy is motivated by a sense of injustice that she wants to correct.
I don’t think I could ever agree to that. Sylvanas self exiled herself from the Horde, went to the Ghostlands… then went to Northrend and beat up Bolvar. She broke the helm and made the sky portal, so Mawsworn could fly out and capture Anduin… and why did they grab Jaina, Thrall and Baine again? Especially Baine? Then lose them only to recapture… It’s just so convoluted.
There really wasn’t a story that had to be told with going to the Afterlife. Sylvanas was “fine” until she went completely off the map in BfA. Shadowlands wasn’t needed to ‘end the WC3’ book. It’s on par with the Star Wars sequel trilogy, having the “Empire” return and Palpatine, “somehow” only to die again. “Oh no, the Scourge is on the loose and again and their true master needs to be defeated.”
The quests on their own might be neat, but in context to the “story.” It was awful. There’s these evil looking Kyrian, better warn Bastion! “Oh, you’re new here. Come let me show you around!”
All of this was a facet of the book but not the story of wc3, it is why I don’t care much for the book. But what can I do about it? And from that very same book he began to view the undead as his people and couldn’t bear to part with them when they became to decayed to continue on.
lol I like this one, it’sa good point. All the main story beats of WC3 where taken care of in wrath, then in Legion with the burning legion. Saying this is a course of wc3 story is more an excuse to right Sylvanas and the bfa arc she had more then actually end wc3, which was already ended with those two expansions.
Mal’ganis represented the head of the undead Serpent so far as Arthas was concerned. Vengeance was clearly a large part of his drive, but at his core, up until he seized Frostmourne, his single-minded purpose remained eliminating the Scourge threat to prevent the fall of Lordaeron. After that, he was essentially a puppet of Ner’zhul until TFT.
Sylvanas is motivated by fear. Her entire existence after Arthas is avoiding the Afterlife that she thought awaited her. Justice might be how she is attempting to spin it now (and all the Dany break the Wheel GoT nonsense they decided to lift) but avoiding that fate at all costs became her purpose post WotLK.