edit; apparently i had missed some datamining that completely invalidates this entire theory, but i’ll leave the post up for posterity. thanks to Kalzhun for pointing it out to me.
so the first time we see/hear about the jailer is when sylvanas jumps off icecrown AFTER the lich kings death. now you might say ‘that happened right after he died, theres no way he could have become the jailer in that time’ ahhh, fair enough, but remember, time works differently in the shadowlands. what may have only been minutes or hours to us, could well have been years on the other side.
‘the jailer is an ancient evil, likely older than just about everything else’… okay, also fair point, but what if the jailer was a title, a position of sorts, where whoever takes on that position BECOMES that thing. (Similar to… lets say… the lich king)
its been speculated thats sylvanas’ goal in shadowlands, is to replace the jailer, but if thats her goal, who’s to say someone else hadn’t already done it once… after all, if the jailer is some ancient powerful evil, why did the balance of death only start going sideways fairly recently, coincidentally around the time that arthas died.
and the final, bit, and actually the one that got me thinking about this whole thing. take a look at this picture here. https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/885430.jpg
those eyes, that hair, that crown… seems… oddly familiar somehow, very similar (not identical granted) to something i’ve seen before.
I addressed that as my second point. maybe it would help to read more than the first sentence before responding. but i’ll give you the tldr, the jailer could very well be ancient, and if arthas replaced him and became the new jailer that would still remain true. “the jailer” is a title, a job description, not a name, just like ‘the lich king’ was. would also line up with why the balance of death only started going funky coincidentally right about the time that arthas died.
Look, this is very speculative, its well written but unlikely to be true as it would be kind of cheap to his character and Blizzard doesn’t want to do anything crazy with Arthas in shadowlands. Ion said so in one of his interviews.
ion also said no blue eyed elves, and look how that turned out. blizz has also been known to… not be entirely honest with us when it comes to spoilers. but you are right, it is speculation, hence why i called it a theory.
The Jailer’s name is Zovaal and he looks like this:
I’m not calling this a spoiler because it’s been confirmed his face wasn’t shown at Blizzcon because they weren’t sure about his final design. We now have his final design and we know who our final boss is.
And I addressed that if they deviate from that and somehow Arthas is the jailer they told a bad story. It’s just bad to say “Nope, he’s an ancient being!” and then by the end it’s like “Lol Arthas is actually the Jailer because it’s an ancient title that he inherited and blah blah blah”. I want to say they said he’s in Shadowlands in a different way anyways.
Although considering how BFA and WoD story was so bad I guess anything is possible.
Don’t throw it all out. I recommend you take a look at Zovaal’s head rune, then take a look at Bolvar’s.
Then take a look at Frostmourne.
They have runes that align with those on the sword. I’m not saying they’re the same person… but the Lich King and Jailer are definitely connected
My personal theory is that the Helm of Domination was originally created for Zovaal. The reason those two both have head runes is because they are living things that put it on. Arthas put the helm on when he was Undead.
I think by the end of the expansion we’ll have a boss fight with the true Lich King (it’d also explain why Bolvar was called a usurper. The Helm was meant for Zovaal)
maybe those who go to the maw eventually get consumed into Zovaal and become amalgamated with him in some way. (similar to how some of the gods work in D&D Planescape with their petitioners)
could be that when he consumed arthas, that connection as the lich king was enough to ‘twist’ zovaal in some way that caused him to suddenly stop doing his ‘job’ properly. which would line up timeline wise.
yeah, those quotation marks are kinda what i’ve always thought as well. not sure if an old god can ever truly ‘die’, and even if they could i’m not sure if they would go to the shadowlands. and i think (hope) that blizz is gonna take a bit of a break from old god shenanigans, at least for one expansion (much as i love the tentacled goodness)
The OG break seems to be the plan. Though 10.0 might be an OG expansion.
I seem to recall a conversation about OGs dying and that like demons they’re bound outside of the Shadowlands.
BUT that doesn’t mean they are utterly confined to the void. They might have engineered a way out of it. It would explain why the maw is swelling up with souls that shouldn’t be there.
Remember the OGs were designed to be autonomous and they’re doing just that. They’re out for their own gain. If they found a way to truly die that should put them in the Shadowlands and seeing they’re not owed or aligned to anything there they can attach like parasites in the afterlife as well as in the world of the living.
I mean, Zovaal has kind of been a cosmic evil for a long time now. His name of the “Jailer” is an ironic one. He’s just a prisoner. Though I think that title may have been from a previous time when he himself was the Arbiter. Then the Progenitors (the mysterious people who created Oribos) probably threw him out.
The title of “Jailer” is probably why the Lich King is called the “Jailer of the Damned.”
interesting point, and while the lich king was created as a tool of the legion, there does seem to be some connection between the nathrezim and the venthyr. and iirc we do find out that the leader of the venthyr is working with the jailer as well. so a link could exist from jailer - venthyr - nathrezim - legion - lich king/jailer of the damned… but that also seems a wee bit convoluted. frantically starts slapping lines of string on a wall
very true, I just really REALLY hope thats not the angle they run with.
