Look, its no secret that by all indications SLs is shaping up to likely be another round of WoD style “Running Away from the Consequences of a Faction Conflict Expansion”. A means for the writers to escape trying to write around the pretty miserable writing choices they made in the previous installment, and focus on something new and flashy. And while ironically BfA was almost exclusively a tool to settup SLs, I honestly do not expect that much direct involvement with the events of BfA beyond hunting Sylvanas and “*freeing X amounts of souls”?
But looking at this settup and the small roster of characters that managed to make it to the other side of the gate, the selection is rather … interesting. Uther of course is getting heavy focus. Jaina gets dragged into the Maw, and I doubt it’s just because she’s one of the peace voices on the Alliance. Calia for some bizarre reason follows Bolvar into the SLs, apparently using the same method he used to get there. We even have Anduin, with all his heavy handed Arthas parallels in the BfA cinematics. Quite the choice of characters there.
A part of me would like to believe that taking these specific characters away from Azeroth and leaving nothing but Hawks on the Alliance side is an indication that perhaps we’ll see Turalyon going on a bit of an EK light crusade in our absence. Jaina’s dialogue does seem to imply that time might work differently in the SLs after all. But the other part of me doesn’t expect Blizz’s current writers to ever commit to such a thing, and rather will simply use SLs to focus on bringing that massive laundry list of TWO Alliance regrets … down to one. Purge that grey from their ledger.
Thus, I expect Arthas to get a bit of an Illidan treatment here in SLs. Heck, he may even become the new Jailor or even the Arbiter by the end.
Arthas Menethil is redeemed and becomes the New Jailor in the Maw.
The first Soul he is given to torment for eternity is Sylvanas Windrunner, and he whispers to her. “Remember when I told you I would never give you the peace of death…”
Then we scream as we fade out, not seeing what torment awaits.
they said the involment of arthas would be minimal but … yea take that as you will.
that said ill need to quote myself to explain my reasoning, there is another thread where a user asked if sylvanas deserved the maw.
basically they can just redeem anyone because there is precedent to a planet reaper repenting. i do not like it and i hate being railroaded into moralizing questlines whose goals are just to pidgeonhole a redemption arc.
They also said they “Love writing the Horde”, yet seem to only like it within the confines of using the Faction as a plot-device for pushing stories they don’t believe they could get away with with the Alliance. Its why they seem to have deliberately avoided actually rebuilding the Faction and its laughable character roster over the last decade. And why I highly doubt we’ll see any real movement on the “Horde Redemption” issue in SLs.
You put Arthas as a central focus of Uther’s cinematic story, Arthas is going to have a bigger role than they are letting on. You throw his waifu Jaina (where he is still one of her greatest regrets), his sister, Sylvanas, and his weird parallel child into the mix … its all but guaranteed the guy is going to have a major part to play.
I’m not too sure about Arthas than Garrosh since Thrall, Baine, Jania and Anduin are in the Shadowlands. If we see more from Nazgrim then we would have all of Garrosh’s friends.
Well, Arthas is a fan favorite and he is an iconic character, probably top 3 in WoW history. From a writers perpective is a good move to use him one more time.
And I really dont think he will get redeem, theres just too many bad things things he did back in the day.
yea well… we would need to define redemption first,
from dictionary.com
Redemption: an act of redeeming or atoning for a fault or mistake, or the state of being redeemed.
To be honest the main problem i see is that we go to the shadowlands where all these other characters that were horrible persons in life (no matter if they had good reasons) are all walking around in positions of power and because such afterlives need them theyre suddenly capable of redemption.
I’ll speak for myself, it seems the shadowlands have a different system of ethics and morality than that of azeroth or what any modern country currently has for their nature, they judge an almost infinite amount of atrocious people, its very unsatisfying for me to pull the veil and see all these characters suddenly redeemed, not burning in hellfire or getting back on some kind of cicle of reincarnation to get their karma on their next life, on the flipside, people that worked tirelessly to do GOOD on their lives get MORE work on their afterlives a la uther and alexandros.
this is why i dont want arthas to be redeemed and just go to the shadowlands to whack bad guys and stuff.
I agree its a good move to use him because of that popularity, but truly I do not expect them to not pull the “Arthas did nothing wrong” card.
Things like: “Stratholme needed to happen, those people were already dead. And it hurt him to do it, just as much as it hurt him to put down Invincible; which is why he lost his connection to the light.” “He wouldn’t have needed Frostmourne if Jaina and Uther hadn’t just abandoned him, they share blame”. “He wasn’t in control after he picked up Frostmourne, and what little of his soul was left may have been what kept the LK from unleashing the Scourge”.
Arthas story was awesome, it can’t get better so it should stay like that.
If Blizzard wants a new arthas story, she could build one… well blizzard did, its called Sylvanas.
I mean a cheat version of it but that is what blizzard is currently only capable of.
No thanks. Arthas is almost as evil as Sylvanas. He doesn’t need a redemption.
Don’t let the writers touch old established lore. It’s the same thing with Danuser removing Garrosh calling Sylvanas a btch, they shouldn’t ruin stories that decent writers have told.
I don’t like and don’t want a redemption for Arthas. Why ruin another good story? Arthas story had a good end. Before WoW and where the bad writing started.
How much more interesting would it be if we run into Arthas, and he’s still the absolute snake he was just prior to his death. By now he’s likely been made into a weapon or something in the Maw, so through a series of stupid events we manage to give Arthas a new body, like he inhabits a suit of armor (sound familiar) and he aids us in some stupid way in fighting the Jailer, only his goal is to take his place and claim the Maw as his personal kingdom.
I don’t care if ever interacts or gets even more punished about Sylvanas because I honestly don’t care.
At the end of the expansion, we get a recreation of the Lich King Triumphant, but this time the he’s the Maw King, and he sits atop Torghast, looking out at his new Kingdom.
And he didn’t? No one tricked Arthas into disobeying orders from his own father, betraying his own men, murdering his accomplices. Or the burning of Stratholme. Or killing his own horse. In all of these examples he simply refuses to listen to any voice of reason or moderation.
The Scourge, or Ner’zhul, or whatever did not require him to torture Sylvannas for days on end. It didn’t require that he keep her concious after raising her into a banshee.
All of the extra bits of cruelty and arrogance… that’s pure Arthas showing the exact same character traits he exhibited as a spoiled child.
