By “happy” I don’t mean redeemed…I simply mean that he should be judged by the Arbiter since that is the way the cookie crumbles in the Shadowlands. Arbiter judges every soul and send them to their appropriate afterlive…
Thoughts?
Now in order for this to happen, we have to find out how we can make and unmake mourneblades to save the soul shard.
The Arbiter would send him either to Revendreth or the Maw… In the first case it becomes the Venthyr’s problem. in the second case, it then means that Devos was right all along.
Yes, he should have been judged by the Arbiter, and people with a much higher bodycount went to Revendreth, but it looks like he’s going to die permanently in the raid, and he’s still evil.
Having Sylvanas forgive him would be a very bad idea, though.
I wouldn’t expect Sylvanas to forgive him. But, it could go differently.
If Sylvanas has the chance to obliterate his soul - but then decides she should not decide his fate, and that it should be left to the Arbiter…
That would be something.
It isn’t forgiveness. It is acknowledging that she shouldn’t be the judge, jury, and executioner. It puts her ahead of Devos and Uther. Uther might regard her strength, because he failed that test.
The same should apply to Sylvannas herself.
Uther wasn’t exactly “all there” when he consigned Arthas to the Maw.
Is this even worthy of a question?
The only answer is “Yes”.
If Sylvanas, for all she’s done, is allowed to be granted judgement by the Arbiter
then so should Arthas.
It’d be criminal of the Narrative Design team to let him sit in the Maw without a proper conclusion.
What I would have liked to see is the Prince Arthas soul fragment rescued within the Maw prior to the Sanctum of Domination raid, and for him to have been the one to have rescued the Ranger General Sylvanas soul fragment to return to Banshee Queen Sylvanas.
Then for Prince Arthas and restored Sylvanas to work together to rescue Anduin and get back the Lich King Arthas soul fragment from within Kingsmourne to help restore Arthas.
Then, for the final story chapter of 9.2 to involve the judgement of both Sylvanas and Arthas together, ideally for both to be sent to Bastion directly. There they’d be able to both let go of their past sins.
He does show up in the anduin raid encounter and still appears to be pretty evil.
Whether he deserves the Maw or not is another matter entirely though 
It’s fairly obvious to me that just like Uther and Sylvanas, he too has 2 soul fragments.
So he has no reason to be treated worse when Uther and Sylvanas both got the chance for a conclusion.
The evil fragment we see isn’t Prince Arthas, it’s just the corrupted side which is the Lich King fragment.
It’d be incredibly bias of the narrative team to allow Sylvanas to get restored and granted the chance for redemption and judgement, while not doing the same for Arthas who is in the same situation.
Honestly the question is kind of imprecise.
Does he deserve a happy ending right now? As he still exists, with his crimes and self-justifications still not addressed and therefore - by any reasonable accounting - with Arthas still as convinced he was in the right as when he died? Well, no.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve a chance to address those things in the hereafter over time and possibly earn some form of happy or at least reconciled ending somewhere down the line, whether we ever get to see it or not.
That said, I’m not especially optimistic about how such a thing would be handled. At this point they’re leaning really hard into Azerothians being uniquely able to reconcile and earn forgiveness in a matter of minutes when the rest of the universe’s souls take a really long time to fundamentally reassess their lives. So if Arthas were to be granted such a chance, I’d expect it to be some hasty, cartoonishly easy thing to accomplish whereby in a span of a few quests Arthas is suddenly a paragon of virtue who fully recognizes how wrong he was and is venerated for having overcome his sins and burdens, leaving it all feeling very rushed and unearned.
Honestly I can imagine them just deciding that Arthas has been watching everything from inside the mourneblade this whole time or something, and when the sword gets broken he’ll pop out having reevaluated his entire life in the interim and cast off his sins, becoming “good Arthas” and helping to save Anduin’s soul. Ugh.
I am not sure how much of Arthas is even there anymore. He might not be more than a shade of who he was at this point. The happiest ending we might be able to provide him now is to destroy him and end his torment.
That’s the point of Revendreth… it’s the last chance redemption station for evil souls.
It’s possible that Arthas doesn’t die in the Anduin encounter, because the quests we have on the PTR that take place after Anduin’s rescue don’t mention his death, as far as I know.
Obviously. Just depends if we’re talking about death knight arthas or the entity called the lich king.
RE: Evil Arthas in the Anduin fight
Has it been established yet whether or not this, like Boss Babe Banshee Queen, is just a fragment of Arthas? Because some part of him went into Frostmourne or somesuch. It could just be that Arthas was broken just like Sylvy.
Regardless, he should be judged. He should go to Revendreth. World-killers get a trip there, and no thian character can claim to have a similar body count (except maybe Nerzul).
I don’t know. I mean arthas did wipe out one kingdom, was nearly successful in doing so with quel’thalas and sacked dalaran. Not to mention all the people he killed or converted to his cause while he was the lich king.
He was no slouch in the mass murder department himself
They’re pretty much the same person. The Lich King we fought and who died on top of Icecrown was Arthas through and through since he had eliminated the Ner’zhul personality.
I’m not saying he didn’t kill a lot.
But he certainly didn’t kill, say, all the dwarves, all the night elves, all the remaining high elves, every human everywhere, every gnome, every troll, every…
You get what I’m saying.
Send him to Revendreth.
This is certainly not true.
The Lich King we fought is not the same person as Prince Arthas.
They’re two totally different personalities just like what we were shown with Sylvanas.
He decimated Lordaeron. He did even worse to Quel’thelas, His creation Sylvannas did the same to Teldrassil. Whether he has a numerical amount high enough to impress you is irrelevant. He should go to the Venthyr and if they cah’t redeem him… the Maw.
That is a very weird way of going about agreeing with me.