It was my headcanon too.
4 Likes
His worst crimes if I recall is burning the Night Elf Villages to keep any Night Elves from following him to the Tomb of Sargeras and swiping Draenei Souls from Auchindoun to power the Portal to Mardum!
From WC3: TFT and the Illidan Novel respectively.
Enslaving Broken to power the Coilfang Reservoir and sending the Scryers to invade Shattrath and yet not even bothering to send a replacement invasion force when they defected pales in comparison to that!
I like the Scryers. I hope they show up in Midnight.
There was also murdering some of the Night Elves who confronted him after he made a second Well of Eternity and what he did to Akama with the whole “split his soul and force him to serve on pain of having the evil half consume the good half”.
2 Likes
“Woah, wouldn’t it be cool… if Illidan, Kael, and Vashj were raid bosses… bro…”
Illidan suddenly being an evil tyrant alongside Kael suddenly being a Legion servant never made story sense and depended fully on off-screen character “development” to make work.
5 Likes
While you’re not wrong, it’s just like the opposite extreme of Illidan suddenly being “the chaotic neutral antihero we needed all along” never made story sense and depended on retcons and character shilling to make it work.
1 Like
Don’t care. It worked. Loved Legion. Love Illidan. Warcraft has always been about bombastic moments and big personalities. Legion is one of the few expansions that actually understood that.
Then it sounds like you don’t care about story sense and just care about seeing moments you like, in which case, okay then, though that’s personal taste, not “story sense”. And what do you mean by “big personalities”? If it’s about being loud and committed to a cause, do Tyrande and Turalyon count as “big personalities”?
1 Like
I care about story sense, but Illidan being rewritten to be more morally grey didn’t actually overwrite any TBC lore. He still did all the evil things he did back then, they just wrote more of a justification behind them beyond “he went crazy after fighting Arthas”
And Tyrande and Turalyon certain fit the bill, the issue with them is more how they’re handled. Having Tyrande rage out a bunch but unable to actually accomplish anything due to the structure of the story she’s in just makes her look impotent.
And Legion Turalyon is pretty much antithetical to his original character. People who read the WC2 novelizations and have the takeaway of Turalyon being a Light Zealot missed the point so hard it isn’t even funny. Turalyon is supposed to be an everyman thrown into the role of leadership he never wanted, doing what he has to against improbable odds for the sake of his homeland and friends.
Seperating him from the other sons of Lothar for 1k years(from his POV), turning him into a special snowflake lightforged Paladin, and having him allow Alleria to be treated like she was by Xe’ra is diametrically opposed to who Turalyon was originally.
Tides of Darkness Turalyon would have concluded Xe’ra is a false prophet due to her behavior rather than go “well if the light says so” at every turn.
All in all, I’m not a fan of the idea of Turalyon getting villain batted when the light stuff pops off. At least TWW is writing him a bit better than Legion and BFA did.
5 Likes
It did, and it overwrote Illidan’s WC3 lore. Illidan was retconned from a wild card to an antihero. And he was still whitewashed with retcons more than any other WoW character except Sylvanas.
What did Illidan accomplish?
True, WC2 Turalyon was devout but more open-minded than his fellow paladins. Alleria was punished by Xe’ra for breaking a law on Xe’ra’s own warship after being warned not to… but how dare that Naaru make and enforce rules on what is or isn’t allowed on a ship she owns, especially forbidding provably dangerous Void magic eh? lol. Since Alleria would’ve gone full “Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!” if not for Locus-Walker, looks like that Naaru had another valid point.
Turalyon still argued against harming Alleria (hardly “well if the Light says so”). And you know I’m no fan of Turalyon getting villain-batted either, especially not for Light conflict stuff.
What WC3 lore specifically? His line about only caring about Power? Or do you mean his WotA lore, which was moreso expanded on. And What TBC lore specifically? And him being a wild card and an anti-hero are not mutually exclusive. I’d say he remained the Wild Card in Legion considering his actions throughout the expansion.
As for what he accomplished? Aside from disenchanting Gul’dan, the original plan was to seal off the Legion portal and hope they don’t come back. Illidan, being the only person other than the legion to truly recognize the Legion’s nature, understood that this strategy was doomed to eventual failure and instead opened the way to Argus to gamble Azeroth’s fate on sealing Sargeras.
Which ultimately proved to be the right path as Sargeras is now sealed and the Legion is too busy fighting itself to be a threat to Azeroth.
The WotA lore was another retcon.
Anti-heroes are ruthless heroes. Wild cards change sides on a dime because they only care about themselves. I think they’re mutually exclusive, though one can become the other.
The PCs already had Gul’dan dead to rights in the Nighthold, Illidan came in at the end with a kill-steal.
“the only person other than the legion to truly recognize the Legion’s nature” the Titans and Naaru say otherwise (in fact, that Naaru Illidan edgelorded to death saved him from Kil’jaeden at one point in the Illidan novel, and it was she who first discovered the Legion’s “get out of death free” card that was Argus’ world-soul - a hard counter to Illidan’s otherwise decent if basic plan of “cut off the head of the snake”).
Did the Vindicaar really need Illidan’s portal? Velen already planned to return to Argus after that business with Rakeesh. And Sargeras was sealed because we freed the Titans.
Ok, but what did Legion specifically retcon from the older stories? Give me an example of old lore that stopped being true with Legion other than Illidan going from the supreme edgelord who only cared about simping for Tyrande to the supreme edgelord who actually has an end-goal derived from his experiences up to that point.
Like you keep claiming Legion retconned stuff… but what? What did it retcon?
I agree. The total heelturn came out of nowhere.
https://youtu.be/eTOv6OmRELY?t=2779
Illidan being an evil tyrant ruling over Outland with an ironfist is definitely out of nowhere.
Enlightened felocracy is a legitimate form of government.
Wow, I totally forgot that Illidan was actually the first one to use the words “Merely” and “setback” in a sentence.
1 Like
Somehow Kael is the meme.
1 Like
For one, Legion retconned in that “Champion of the Light” prophecy.
Personally, I could go either way on Illidan being a Champion of Light or not; on one hand, I get some see it as betraying the idea of a demon hunter fighting the Legion with its own power, contradicting Velen’s implication that Anduin would be the champion and fears that taking up the Light means Illidan loses his anti-hero personality. On the other hand, I think with care and time there could’ve been a story for Illidan to prove worthy of the champion of the Light role, and we’ve seen less than pure individuals wielding the Light before so Illidan could retain his personality, and the prophecy said “a” champion of the Light, not “the”, so there could be more than one. The edgelord conclusion we got was the option I hated most (even if I’m not the majority, I’m not alone on that).
They also combined the previous retcons (such as the original “Illidan joined the Legion due to lust for power and envy” and “Illidan joined the Legion because he wanted to bring them down from the inside”).
It also retconned his death by giving him “an immortal demon” soul as a plot device to bring him back (and also make him harder to kill off).
To be fair, some of it was “expansion” (like the Mardum mission), plus I think we’re on opposite sides on how we feel about Illidan. And Illidan kept getting retconned in each work where he played a major role. For example, in the Illidan novel;
All of his previous characterization from his introduction in Warcraft 3, to the novels and Burning Crusade shows him as driven (Self admittedly) by his lust for power and magic. Having sided with the Legion in the War of the Ancients, to murdering people for protesting his creation of a new Well of Eternity shortly after the War of the Ancients. Along with willingly serving Kil’jaden for more power and only rebelling against the demon because he failed to kill Arthas and wanted to avoid punishment. He also oversaw massacres and mutilations of innocent night elven villages and other events such as the enslaving thousands of people in Outland.
Kael’thas wasn’t a servant of the Legion. He just slided into a situation where he needed real help to take his land back which did happen when the elves came back from Outland with new ways of magic.
1 Like
Likewise with the “it’s a trap” meme from Star Wars. Leia is the first one to say it in Empire (when Luke arrives at Cloud City). But it was the second time that the phrase was used that became the meme. That being in Return of the Jedi.
The amount of copium you are on is unhealthy.
the dude tried to summon Kil’jaeden and even referred to him as “master”.