Yes the story is convoluted and retcons a lot, and that’s upsetting, but hear me out!
For years, fans have complained that Sylvanas is OOC. She was supposed to be fiercely loyal to her Forsaken and a champion of their free will. Instead in BFA, she’s comically villain batted and cares nothing for the free will of others. Understandably, fans whined and moaned that BFA Sylvanas and Classic Sylvanas were two different people.
Hint hint.
Imagine that the writers took a hint - they want to fix the mess of BFA Sylvanas, to return her to Classic Sylvanas. But their only solution to turn back the dial is the mess of Shadowlands.
Now fans are complaining that this soul merge somehow obliterates the Sylvanas fans once loved. Not so. Sylvanas soul is NOT two different people. She is ONE person split into two.
When her soul was split, the two halves were IDENTICAL. The Banshee Queen who saved the Forsaken and gave them free will IS the Ranger General Sylvanas. It didn’t matter which half was where - either half would have walked the same path because they are the same person.
The only difference was time.
What this convoluted story does is obliterate the BFA Sylvanas - and reset her to the original personality that saved the Forsaken.
Correct. Uther explains how soul fracturing works very clearly. The sheared off part is basically like a saved copy of you from the moment of your death.
When it is restored, you are forced to look at yourself from your past self’s eyes. Its like past you time traveled and you are forced to show them everything you did, good and bad. Ultimately this perspective has to be reintegrated into the whole, and as a result you come to see what you have done in a very different light.
That’s not the issue that I have with it, the issue is that the retconning of the Jailer into the rest of Sylvanas lore and the split soul cheapens the rest of her story.
Because now out of the blue we’re being told that the character we’d been with this whole time was not her full self. We’re being told that part of her and the Forsaken’s core identity, which was breaking free from and rebelling against the LK/not serving unlike the standard Scourge, was a lie. She just traded one master for another. The Forsaken themselves in turn traded one master for another despite not knowing it as they followed Sylvanas.
I’d be more than happy to see Sylvanas reigned in, but the way that they did it was such a brute force cop-out that it ended up tarnishing large swathes of her story.
Can you really claim to be giving back the previous iteration if you need to do that?
Honestly, I think that the cinematic is largely a symptom of poor writing reaching back to BfA and earlier. I don’t think there was a way to do it cleanly at the point that the cinematic came out.
That said, I think even if you just don’t have the whole “Zovaal was actually the master manipulator behind Ner’zhul, Arthas and Sylvanas this whole time” part then I wouldn’t find it as jarring. But the combination of that and the Sylvanas we’ve known not even being her full self is too much.
I mean, she was her full self. Uther was his full self as well, the sheared off part does not take with it anything the rest of your soul does not also have. Both parts are the same person, one is just a past version which witnesses what the rest ended up doing, and contributing their perspectives to their whole when are merged back together.
And Sylvanas never saw herself as serving, really. She made that real clear. She thought they were partners with aligned goals of tearing down the system that had made her suffer so much. The moment she could not lie to herself that wasn’t true she turned on him, which it seems he expected as he had already thought out a way to punish her for it. Without Uther she likely would of been trapped in that unending nightmare forever.
Zovaal’s bit seems to be to exploit peoples emotional wounds and vulnerabilities to sway them to his side, though they did a terrible job showing this in game. Hopefully the Sylvanas book touches on this far better.
She was in the way that the choices she made as the Banshee Queen were her own, minus the whole Jailer manipulation thing.
She wasn’t in the way that the Sylvanas we knew did not have her whole soul and the Ranger General part is functionally a different person at this point. So we have an entirely different Sylvanas being shoved into the Sylvanas we’ve known for the past decade plus.
Even if the best case scenario occurs regarding that, the way that we got there feels bad. We don’t get to see our Sylvanas grow and come to grips with it all, we instead have to swallow the fact that the old version of her had to provide that perspective. That’s not actual character growth, that’s hamfisting it.
That doesn’t make it better. Whether she was conscious of it or not, she functionally traded one master for another; taking the Forsaken she’d “freed” along with her. Whether she realised it or not, her and the Forsaken’s “escape” from Arthas was largely a farce as they fell into the servitude of the very character that was behind it in the first place.
That’s the damaging part. It’s damaging to what has been the core of both Sylvanas and the Forsaken.
If anything; that Sylvanas, who Blizzard have tried to pose as a “genius”, did not realise her servitude sooner makes the situation worse for her.
The core issue with Zovaal’s manipulation is that we’ve never even heard of this character before Shadowlands.
Retconning him as this puppet master doesn’t feel satisfying at all. How could it? We just met him and now we’re supposed to just accept that over a decade of lore was actually not the truth? That when they explicitly covered things like Ner’zhul, the Helm of Domination, Arthas and Sylvanas’ death at ICC that they just happened to omit this huge looming threat?
Like I said, I don’t think the cinematic is the cause and effect. I think poor storytelling in recent times created a situation in which there was no way to resolve this cleanly.
But I think the occurrences of SL were close to as poorly as it could have been handled in the end. None of it is a satisfying way of closure, not the Jailer’s insertion into decades of lore and not the sudden introduction of soul splitting that also was never hinted at before.
But perhaps that’s the issue. Perhaps given the circumstances, expecting a satisfying resolution is expecting too much.
The lack of build up for him is for sure clumsy. Since Legion’s end the story feels very abrupt and zig-zaggy for sure, like about three people were trying to direct it in different directions.
Zovaal needs a lot more detail than they gave him, which has lead me to conclude they have fallen prey to a classic writer mistake. They didnt give us the info inside their heads, and just presumed we knew and understood stuff somehow.
I am personally okay with the soul split stuff as it is sort of neat, and does not really mess with agency.
Given that they didn’t, I’d have preferred they just made him the big bad of this expansion and left it at that.
I wouldn’t call that a “classic writer mistake”, I’d call that “bad storytelling”. If you’re introducing a big bad that nobody has heard of before and then retroactively inserting him into your previous lore, you’re not creating a satisfying story.
Which is what people like me are upset about.
As I said in a previous comment here, had the Jailer manipulation stuff not also been a thing I could probably have swallowed the soul split on it’s own well enough.
It wouldn’t have been my preferred path. I’d rather have seen “our” Sylvanas come to terms with what she’d become in some fashion without “old” Sylvanas having to be shoved into it in order to force her to see it all. That would have represented organic character progression where the soul split represents a way to artificially force her into a position of “growth”.
But all of it together has just left me soo disillusioned with the whole thing.
It is weird that I’m seeing posters who love this when it comes to Sylvanas but hated it when it happened to Kerrigan. Just replace Zovaal with Amon and Banshee Queen with infested Queen of Blades.
Hell Ner’zhul / Arthas = Overmind in this comparison. With Duran = Dreadlords
Actually, Valerian = Anduin in this too. Which is funny as they are basically the same character AND voiced by the same person.
This is why I feel they did it correct when it came to N’zoth. Taking things that honestly needed expanding or taking characters that were rather one note (Deathwing and Azshara) and expanding them. Spreading these developments over several forms of media. From novels, short stories and the game itself. N’zoth was first name dropped in Cata but his character could be traced back to the War of the Ancients Trilogy. However with Zovaal they just shoved him into a story that was already concluded. We knew the backstory of the helm of domination and frostmourne. The WC3 manual and Arthas: Rise of the Lich King goes into detail about that. I mean in Shadowlands they basically said that Bolvar was well aware of the Jailer. Why didn’t he share this with the Ebon Blade during Legion? Like the Legion was a big threat but Bolvar knew of a bigger one. It honestly does feel like Zovaal was created some point during BFA and the only thing they had hinting towards him was the Tauren heritage armor chain… which they ruined with shadowlands anyway.
Personally I would’ve been fine with it if the Banshee Queen Sylvanas was always there. Not as a separate personality but a byproduct of her environment and experiences. Have it that she was overwhelmed by the pressure of being ranger general. Since she was not the first one in line to succeed her mother. Alleria was and she turned it down to hunt orcs on Draenor. Meanwhile Venessa, being the youngest had a lot to prove but also had the most freedom. Sylvanas being the middle child of her 3 sisters could’ve developed some dark nature within her. The Banshee Queen was that aspect of her. Like how the Sha primes were mostly parts of Shaohao that he conquered. Except for Pride. Because Shaohao was always a prideful person. And that led to several instances. Such as believing he deserved a clean and just reign, to getting angry at Xuen for refusing to give him an army to fight the Legion. Shaohao believed he was above a God. The only person in Pandaria who believed that was Lei Shen and he proved it at least. Shaohao had a tantrum when he couldn’t pass Xuens test. I do feel that the cinematic tried to make this the case. With the Ranger General accepting that what the Banshee did was her. It was always her. There is no hiding, no making excuses. She did those things and no-one else. However it is clear that was not what most people got from that cinematic and I don’t blame them.
I really liked Ranger General Sylvanas, so good job there blizz. Too bad she can’t just be the character she was created as back in Warcraft 3. Hoping to see her redeemed by expansions end, although the innocent Ranger General accepts blame for the banshee, hopefully it will be obvious to Anduin, Jaina, Thrall, Baine etc. that she is no longer the evil Banshee Queen, and receives a way forward.
So, the Sylvanas character arc is to ruin a bunch of lore, twirl her mustache, and reset to what she was before?
And the Tyrande character arc was to become the Night Warrior, ruin Elune, then reset to what she was before?
The Anduin character arc was to be dominated into an Arthas knockoff then get broken out and reset to what he was before?
So uh… the story since Legion was just characters spinning their tires so the cosmology could be flushed down the toilet and ancillary cast could be depicted as inept, depressed morons or killed off (Horde cast, of course, because the one thing Horde fans have never complained about is all their characters and Warchiefs constantly dying).
That is, what I mean to say, is this is such an epic conclusion to the first saga of World of Warcraft. Top notch. So much more satisfying than dropping Arthas and imprisoning Sargeras.
It’s even stranger when you consider that this is exactly what people hoped wouldn’t happen.
There were two outcomes many feared as Sylvanas began down this path.
That she’d become Garrosh 2.0.
That she’d become Kerrigan 2.0.
I guess we were too focused on the Garrosh one, and so they gave us Kerrigan.
It’s confusing because the most popular villains have always been the ones with an extended presence.
I truly do not believe that Arthas would be held as dear to many were it not for his presence in the RTS series.
Yet here they just seemed to think for whatever reason that this direction with the Jailer would be good.
I actually was looking forward to the Jailer initially, I thought he might be a new bad guy that we’d meet in Shadowlands and then expand upon moving forward. Instead, he was haphazardly jammed into old lore that had already been long established. Now I hope we don’t see more of him.
Exactly, these were all things that had been detailed. The same applies for the death of Sylvanas at ICC. These weren’t mysterious aspects of the story that are now being expanded, that would be perfectly fine. No, these were things that we had explored in a good amount of depth.
It feels like we weren’t supposed to think about it. It feels like we were supposed to just think the Jailer was “cool” for being this master manipulator that was soo devious that he was pulling the strings from behind the scenes all along.
The issue is that it’s not because he was devious or “cunning” that we didn’t know about his machinations, it’s because when we were given the details of this all he just wasn’t even hinted at. That doesn’t make him feel like a clever villain, it makes it feel like we were misinformed.
The cinematic displayed the “old” Sylvanas witnessing the new. She did admit that her and the banshee she saw were the same, Uther also told her as much.
Even so, as I’ve said, I don’t feel good about it.
Seeing the old version judge the new felt off. Yes Banshee Queen Sylvanas had committed “unforgivable” crimes, but something about a version of Sylvanas that did not have to suffer everything that the Banshee Queen had judging her rubbed me the wrong way. They’re the same person, the old Sylvanas has no clue as to what her banshee version experienced. She gets to just wake from a dream vaguely remembering her death, while the Banshee Queen suffered mercilessly at the hands of a vengeful Arthas and then had to carve out a place for herself in undeath.
It feels callous. I understand her not having the context and so being shocked by it. I think realistically the response of the Ranger General is relatively accurate. I also don’t think that her judgement is objectively wrong, just that it’s weird to see her judging a version of herself without any actual context as to why she became the way she was.
I would just rather the situation not arise at all.
Same. I would’ve preferred if his meddling just started with Mueh’zala whispering to Vol’jin. Have Sylvanas reject his offer until she is down to 3 Val’kyrs (darkshore warfront) or have it after her own plan for immortality (enslaving Eyir) failed. Make it feel like she has no choice to join him. That way the burning of Teldrassil could’ve been a “test of loyalty”. Like prove to him that you are actually committed to his course since you rejected him in the past.
I will never consider Shadowlands to be the “epic conclusion” to the first saga of Warcraft. No matter how much “new” Blizzard says so. That was Legion. The Burning Legion has been the main antagonists since the RTS era and they fall apart with the death / imprisonment of their high command and the loss of their faster respawn battery. I don’t even consider us meeting the Titans as part of any cosmology story arc since they have existed for a long time in the canon and they are bound to our reality. We didn’t go to some plane of order to say high to them.
Zovaal was forced into the story, continuity be damned because these new writers have to prove that they are the best by ruining everything that came before. There was no build up to Zovaal. He just appeared out of nowhere, said he was behind basically everything and is going to die in the expansion he was introduced in. N’zoths defeat was pathetic, but at least he didn’t randomly show up in BFA and claim he was behind everything. There was actual build up over the years. Even if it did start with retcons. However those retcons applied to footnotes in the story. Deathwing was just a generic evil dragon in WC2: BtDP. Azshara was just a footnote in the WC3 manual. Mainly there to provide context for the Night Elves and their history. Say what you will about the WotA trilogy but at least it fleshed out these two characters and gave them depth. It is just a shame that Deathwing was nothing like his counterpart from most of the novels. Acting more like his enraged state when the Dragon Soul was stolen from him in book 3 of the trilogy. If it was just Madness of Deathwing that would’ve been fine. Hell, I consider Madness of Deathwing to be N’zoth simply taking control of the puppet directly. Meanwhile Azshara was kinda wasted in BFA.
Why is it that in WoD, BFA and Shadowlands the secondary villains are the better written ones? AU Gul’dan was great. Troy Baker is always a win. Azshara was great for what little we saw of her. Daddy D? Perfection =). But can you say the same for AU Grommash for WoD? Sylvanas for BFA? Zovaal for Shadowlands?
Never played StarCraft so it wasn’t something I was worried about. But if you think about it they kind of did both.
They didn’t just make her Garrosh 2.0 they intentionally made her Garrosh + and then just heated her into the next expansion before SoO 2 electric boogaloo.
Now Sylvanas is getting integrated with her past self so she’s probably going to regret her actions and get all empathetic for the losers who have been chasing their tails trying to catch her for the last few years. Maybe make friends with Anduin over their ‘shared trauma’ like it seems like Uther’s trying to do with her.
It’s not a horrible outcome but it was a terrible way to get here and it’s unsurprising it’s being met with mixed reception (especially since half the fan base has been openly fantasizing about torturing, humiliating, and killing her in the most brutal ways possible for a few years now.)
It’s a Tabula Rasa. They wanted to create a new Sylvanas not weighed down by bad writing and character writing inconsistencies. Moving forward she’ll be Danuser/Golden’s Sylvanas, and not Afrasabi/Kosak’s.
We all get to know who she really is, starting with her book coming out in a few months. It will the new chapter setting the tone of who Sylvanas will canonically be. No more headcanons.
Part of the reason she was inconsistently written is there is only three sources of canonical lore for her character. Which consisted of a Paragraph in Tides of Darkness in WC2
a Chapter in Christies Arthas book and the Quel’thalas Registry, a Classic loot item. That’s the entire character sheet they and we had on RG Sylvanas.
I’m pleased that my headcanon seems to be thier new canon and it males me feel like I’ve always known this character but others are dissapointed so it’s pretty mixed.
Sylvanas has had several, several books written by these authors.
And they have caused more confusion and chaos than anyone else.
What makes this book any different than the rest?
