Thrall only came back because Vol’jin asked him to help after the assassination attempt. The mana bomb had nothing to do with it. I don’t think he’s even mentioned it once if not relating to Jaina being hurt over it.
Vol’jin would put up a good fight, if not win 1v1 against non-Sha infused Garrosh. Cairne absolutely mogged him. He got one cut on Cairne.
I’m going to say it. I think that Baine and Anduin get a lot of hate on a conceptual level because of a weird masculinity thing.
It’s one thing to think the character is boring and perfect and everyone loves them, which is fair. Anduin needs more consequences and Baine needs to stop being a doormat for a minute. But the words used to describe these characters in the vitriolic posts are pretty evident of what the underlying problem is.
Anduin and Baine are both gentle male characters who don’t like to fight but will if they have to. I personally don’t like how they’re often portrayed as unambiguously correct for being this way, but I don’t think such characters are out of place or unsalvageable in a setting like Warcraft, especially as the game has slowly evolved over time to be more inclusive to different kinds of people. And more nuanced in general.
The idea that Baine is “stained” is…odd. Sylvanas can’t come back because of, y’know, all the genocide and murder, but Baine is a young dude and can feasibly go in many directions from here. Anduin, too.
Baine has been this way in all his WoW appearances, even the novels. Hell he was the first Horde member to stand with the Alliance in the Emerald Dream portion of the Stormrage novel and Anduin wasn’t even there. He’s always been a bootlicker.
Dude’s been in two revolutions in five years, he is not a bootlicker. 
You’re looking at the wrong boots, which is understandable since Baine is deepthroating the Alliances’.
I’m telling you, it’s a “Baine is too beta” attitude that makes people so angry at him, whether or not his actions are rational.
I hate Baine.
I do not hate Anduin.
Me thinks you are projecting.
Calm down, Freud.
I mean, that’s certainly part of it. Lok’tar Ogar is literally “victory or death”. Blood and thunder is the motto. Cairne wasn’t a bloodthirsty psycho, but neither was he a whimp. Thrall wasn’t a warmachine by nature, but he wasn’t afraid of standing up to anyone to their face. Baine isn’t just passive, he actively works against the interest of his faction and people because he personally prefers the company of Alliance members. And he gets to act smug about it. God I hate this stupid cow.
I mean, but he’s not wrong tho.
One of the major interpersonal conflicts within Tides of War is Jaina begging Thrall to return to deal with Garrosh, and he refuses. And shortly after comes the destruction of Theramore and Jaina attempting to drown all of Orgrimmar with a Tsunami. Its also the reason Kalec has to come in and stop her, because she no longer trust Thrall enough for him to talk her down.
Alright but what exactly does he say in the book? Because in War Crimes he never directly references Garrosh as abjectly evil because of Theramore. The only time he mentions it is when he’s thinking about why Jaina hates everything.
It essentially ends with him admitting that his decision to not return has likely damaged their friendship; perhaps beyond repair. And him being melancholic about it for a bit before the story moves on. Not that the Thrall we saw before WoD had any ability to do anything but shift all responsibility for his Golden Child onto everyone else. He’s not to blame at all for FORCING a live bomb into the Horde drivers seat. Clearly he had no lapse in judgement, and had no responsibility to return until after that bomb blew up in everyone’s faces.
Baine has only been in power for one expansion where his Warchief wasn’t psychotic. And that was the one where Vol’jin did absolutely nothing.
I do agree that Baine needs to be shown at odds with the Alliance more, even if his friendship with Anduin makes perfect sense, and he definitely needs to interact with other Horde characters more when the Horde is in a better state. It’s also probably worth noting that he didn’t join the revolution against Garrosh until Vol’jin was nearly murdered and then raised a rebellion in Razor Hill with Thrall.
Baine was then shelved for most of Legion but in his appearances right up to the War of Thorns, he was shown to have growing respect for Sylvanas and seemed comfortable in the Horde that she was running. Even when he knew he was deceived and Sylvanas sent him away from the invasion of Ashenvale, he wished Saurfang luck in the invasion and trusted for the moment that it was the right thing to do.
The next time Baine appears it’s to chew out Sylvanas for leaving Saurfang to die in the Battle for Lordaeron. Teldrassil pissed him off, obviously, but her disregard for the Horde’s heroes was his first on-screen disapproval of Windrunner.
The dude clearly cares about the Horde. The Horde has just been such a poopshow that he hasn’t had much downtime to bond on-screen with its members. And he’s kind of an irrelevant character with no power when the stakes are raised beyond the faction war so he usually doesn’t show up.
I don’t blame Baine for anything in BfA, because he was hardly the one to be “narratively convenienced” to ensure this plot led to SLs like it did. Derek was the “tipping point” of contention for nearly every character on the Horde, because no one was allowed to actually mention Teldrassil even once. Outside of Thrall and Saurfang, who were kept away for much of the main story. I also don’t really blame him for not challenging Sylvanas. Like, the only way he could have possibly had a chance of beating her was with Fearbreaker … and hed have to get that from Anduin. I’m sure Baine haters would love that. Him relying on a Artifact Weapon from the Boy King.
Fundamentally, Baine needs work, but he’s not beyond improvement. He needs space from Anduin. Needs to find the balance between Peace/Force his father did (at the ripe old age of 100+, after he met Thrall). Needs to get a power boost. Which the current settup in SLs could provide.
I don’t think we’re arguing the same thing here. What I’m arguing is that, while he probably thought it dishonorable and unnecessary, the mana bomb wasn’t something that really factored into Thrall’s decision making. It was just something bad that happened to a friend of his. Nothing more nothing less.
I’m of the apparently unpopular opinion that there was a massive change in the story when BfA started which explains things like this and their earlier “lies” like that other thread lists.
You say that but we haven’t seen him do anything “for the Horde”, just for his own ego.
Does “For the Horde” actually mean “Do Whatever The Warchief Tells You To Do?”
No, it means “do the best for your people and your faction” which Baine always goes against. He sent a warning of attack to an enemy state in war times. He exiled his people for striking back against invaders. He’s f*cking pen pals with the leader of the enemy faction. What the hell, the more I think on his actions the more I don’t understand how anyone can stand on his side and call themselves Horde.
For some. Frankly, you’d be shocked how much people will argue to the death for Warchiefs and Racial Leaders that slaughter their own people en-mass … as long as they are hurting the other side as well. Hell, they don’t even need to hurt the Blues in the case of Wix, just be entertaining. Even if hating the Alliance is just lipservice, like it clearly was with Magatha, she’s got her defenders that claim she’d be a great leader … because “she hates the Alliance so gosh darned much!” Sylvie and Garrosh got similar treatments. Especially Sylvanas, even after her “Sudden but inevitable “The Horde is Nothing” betrayal”. Which … wow, two years waiting for that Band-Aid off.
Baine hasn’t done anything that has really hurt the Horde (outside of arguably his refusal to commit the Tauren to “revenge” for Taraujo). Beal Modan’s conflict with the Stonespire actually happened during Cairne’s reign, and further Dwarven activity post that date didnt involve the latter Tauren group). Baine sent a “Get Out” letter to Jaina, but didn’t contribute to making Theramore the meatgrinder it was. Garrosh did that intentionally, but always gets a pass (cuz blues died lol!). He also turned the stupid as hell plan of Derek into an Olive Branch that likely did help save the Horde; beyond game mechanics requiring it. He has to date done nothing really for Anduin.
EDIT: I also do feel like people forget that the Tauren have never been about revenge; Cairne was canonically pretty adverse to conflict himself until he met Thrall; and “Tauren Land” is a very new concept for the Kalimdor subgroup. “Losing it” does not have the same meaning for them.
Baine put up with a lot of crap from the Horde and still sticks with it. Going over his Wowpedia article again and refreshing my memory of what happened in the novels, I’m kind of stunned by how much worse the Horde is to him at any given moment than the Alliance. It’s a failure of writing that this happened, honestly.
Not only did Garrosh kill Baine’s father then bring it up to threaten Baine into silence for disagreeing, Garrosh had also let the power struggle between Magatha and Baine for Thunder Bluff take place without intervening. Because of his ego. He almost let the poisoner that used him to kill Cairne take power because he didn’t like that the son was mad at him for killing his father.
Even when he went against Sylvanas, Baine essentially ruined one stupid, butt-slappingly evil plot to raise, torture and then brainwash a man to use as a sleeper agent against the Proudmoores and went right back to defending Zandalar until Sylvanas captured him. And he only went against Sylvanas’ plan after he learned with Vol’jin that the circumstances around her ascension to Warchief were extremely suspect and probably illegitimate.
While Sylvanas was feeding Horde souls to the Maw for her own separate ambition, Baine was palling around with Vol’jin’s spirit and helping him out.
And this is part of the reason I’m so hard on Thrall, and why I’m stunned at how much of a free pass he always gets from the same people who condemn Baine as unsalvageable. It wasn’t just the Mulgore Tauren either, but the Darkspear have also probably taken more brutal hits from the Horde than the Alliance. And yes, I am including the KTs presence on the Darkspear Isles.
Garrosh’s rein was absolutely brutal, and with the way Blizz wrote it, caused massive rifts in the Core Horde races. Its part of why people like to just invalidate or discount so many of those early Cata and MoP era books; because it describes just how much crap the Tauren and Trolls had to go through because of that cherry picked nepotism child. It is far, far more convenient for people to shuffle both these groups into “The Greater Horde” to discount their issues with the very same faction. And sadly, there are a LOT of issues to come from the Cata/MoP years.
EDIT: People also like to forget how young Baine probably is. Considering his deliberately small model and the fact he’s referred to as “A Boy” in WC3, he was probably only around 13-14 years old (or the Tauren equivalent) when we first meet him. That would make him around 16 in Vanilla, and in his very early 20s in Cata. Where he had to deal with his father’s assassination; a brutal rebellion; entire sections of his people wanting to leave the Horde entirely due to their poor treatment under Garrosh; a World War; and finally a Horde civil war. He’s prob around his late 20s now.