Sylvanas Redemption in Shadowlands - Why it will happen

Lore Story Forum
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I think most of us have come to terms that Sylvanas is gone from the Forsaken for good, doomed to either be Kerrigan 2.0 or go the way of Garrosh 2.0.

That being said, I still hold out hope for Nate. Is he being a boneheaded idiot? Absolutely, but he has always been a curious case among the Forsaken, being pulled from the Lich King by Sylvanas instead of breaking free himself. He owed his second chance to her entirely, having given himself to her in life and death. Since she’s so far gone, I would like to see one final betrayal from Sylvanas. And that’s to Nate himself. Have her leave him to die against a member of the Forsaken, preferably Voss. Though Calia would be acceptable if we’re going to have her shoved down our throat anyways. Both of them need connecting to the Forsaken anyhow.

Have Nate’s entire purpose shatter, leaving him broken and ready for death at the hands of Voss/Calia only for them to reach out instead and offer him a place with his real people. Have him take it. Have him earn his place among the Forsaken going forwards.

If there is a redemption story I’d like to see, it’s his.

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I honestly have a hard time understanding why it is that people somehow think it’s a good idea to give Arthas any role in this - much less a role where he’s somehow responsible for Sylvanas’ suffering. I’m just going to roll my eyes at the fact that these turn into “Sylvanas torture fantasy” threads, but including Arthas in it really just baffles me.

Like… I don’t know, maybe an analogy would work. Say that a cruel and abusive parent raised a child that, as a result of said abuse, turns out to be a twisted person themselves. Now, said upbringing isn’t a reason to handwave away subsequent crimes, but if this offspring later went to trial for what he or she had done, who would give that abusive parent the time of day, much less call them into the courtroom to talk about what an awful person that child had become? That parent bears no small amount of responsibility for the outcome - but given the way some of you talk about Arthas smirkingly damning Sylvanas, it seems like people would nod approvingly as this abusive parent gives testimony.

I can only imagine it’s some sort of recency bias - what Arthas did was long ago and not shoved in your face as much, so people seem not to care? I’m not even complaining about the “sexism” or whatever angle that people sometimes try to push on this issue - I’m saying that Arthas has earned his own punishment for his sins, and certainly doesn’t deserve any sort of triumph over the monster he created.

That is, unless, people want some one of those bleak, gray stories about how the world is unjust and unfair and in real life those people do sometimes get away with such horrible deeds… but I can only imagine the utter crapstorm this forum would become if we went down THAT route.

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Dark Mirror gives me the impression that something like this could happen, although I don’t think that Sylvanas will leave Nathnos to die, or that Nathanos would care even if she did. He’s seems to find the idea of eternal suffering a potential outcome. Even an acceptable outcome.

Nathnos’ “regret” at the end of Dark Mirror can’t be cliffhanging there for no reason (or can it?). So, I think at the end, if things go bad between Nathanos and Sylvanas, it will come back to that somehow. That Nathanos will suddenly care about something he does not want Sylvanas to destroy.

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Its about as good of an idea as Teldrassil was.

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Sylvanas is so worse than arthas, she is like arthas times 11, if arthas kills her he is 100% more good than anduin at that point, literally sylvanas has done more bad things than any major villain of the story.

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I don’t believe Arthas is a character who would want redemption even if offered to him on a silver platter. The guy basically had an HD plasma screen with a non-stop live stream of himself killing his father, his mentor, his men and his people from the moment after he picked up a cursed blade of his own free will, and then watched himself destroy the land he swore to protect. The moment Frostmourne is broken and he’s dying, all he asks his father is if it’s over, and that he sees only darkness before him.

Not exactly the dying words of a heartless man with no regrets. More like a boy waking up from a nightmare.

With that in mind, if the story team really wants to involve Arthas in the Sylvanas plot that much, his whole involvement in the creation of Sylvanas should be addressed in-game, and not in a heroic fashion. In a hypothetical scenario where he joins the hunt for Sylvanas, he’s not jumping at the call to hunt her down. He’s fetched in the Maw out of desperation as some kind of last ditch effort to help the champion and whatever other forces are allied with us, because he’s a powerful soul or some other excuse used in the story, and he doesn’t even want to go with the champion initially. He flat out refuses and tells the hero to get bent. He’s a broken, depressed mess suffering in his own personal hell, and he’s just taking it because he knows he deserves it.

Eventually he decides to go, not because he thinks it’ll make everything right miraculously, but because… it’s his mess. And he knows it. And after he died, his mess proceeded to cause the deaths of countless people across the world, and then his mess broke the planes of reality and came back to haunt him years after his death. He killed her, he raised her, and what she did as an undead ultimately traces its way back to him and how he treated her. She’s his responsibility.

Sylvanas mocks him, tells him that he’s no better than her. And he says… she’s absolutely right. Killing her won’t make him a better person, won’t erase everything he did as a Death Knight and as the Lich King. Won’t erase the fact that he made her what she was. He says that he’s not going to lecture her on how him standing against her gives him the superior moral high ground - they’re on just about even terrain on that end after everything they both did. They’re just two monsters facing each other down.

But if he just steps aside, does nothing and just stays in the Maw suffering apathetically to what is going on, not only is he shirking his responsibility in his part in creating her, he may be damning more than just his own, already lost soul. He’s dead, he’s paying the price he deserves, but now countless others are subject to suffering they don’t deserve by being shoved into the Maw instead of being filtered to their proper afterlives. It’s not glamorous. There’s no smirking. He’s regretful that it led to this, even though he knows just being sorry won’t fix anything. All he can do… is try his best to help prevent her from doing whatever it is her plan is. Maybe Arthas even hopes for a suicide by cop, and that if she kills him instead it might bring her a measure of peace she was missing since she wasn’t there to kill him at Icecrown. And given Sylvanas’ general disposition, she’s definitely not going to take regret or pity from Arthas well, nor would she be particularly inclined to let him, of all people, stop her.

Maybe when everything’s all said and done, some Bastion-type or Uther gives him a pat on the back and tells him “good job, boy” and everyone who’s playing gasps in horror at the possibility of him being redeemed simply by helping bring down Sylvanas, but he brushes it off coldly, reminds everyone that he helped them do maybe one “good” thing that involved solving a problem he caused in the first place and that there is no triumph in that, and ultimately returns to the Maw willingly, to his “special place in Hell”.

Where he truly believes he belongs.

Of course, this is just my personal hypothetical “what if they really really really wanted to bring Arthas into this” scenario. Ideally, I’d rather they not bring Arthas back at all. There would be no real character arc to speak of, he’d just be a supporting character who shows up in the expansion and then disappears. I would’ve instead made him return in Legion, taking up the spot and arc that went to High Inquisitor Whitemane but dialed up to 11 (with the same broken, depressed mess I mentioned before, on top of being actually mistreated by the Ebon Blade who hate him but he’s there because Bolvar said so and the Ebon Blade and the Lich King have an agreement together). Add the fact that Calia returned in Legion, was involved in the pre-BfA stuff and was actually killed by Sylvanas herself, and Jaina returned in BfA, and all together I think there would actually have been something more interesting than “lol i’m here to kill sylvanas, yay i’m good again, bye” which is… probably what’s going to happen if he shows up again.

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i dont like sylvanas but i gotta say arthas was worse
arthas killed a lot of ppl man, sylvanas is probably second though at this point

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From a purely numerical sense, Sylvanas isn’t as bad as Arthas. Se only took Darnassus and the night elf lands. Arthas took Lordaeron and most of Quel’Thalas. He also created the Scourge, which has remained a potential problem. And of course, he created Sylvanas who would have remained a ranger-general of the high elves had Arty not come around. And none of this even considers his actions during Wrath. Literally, Arthas caused events that shaped modern WoW in some of the most fundamental ways. His influence on the state of present day Azeroth, either direct or indirect, is probably second only to the Burning Legion and that had thousands of years and three invasions to do it in (and of course, created the Lich King in the first place).

I’m not saying Sylvanas wasn’t horrible; she absolutely was. But downplaying Arthas and the world-changing actions he took seems unnecessary.

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Arthas killed his father, methodically killed the rest of the citizens of the Lordaeron kingdom, and went on to kill 90% of the total Quel’dorei population. He not only killed them he also raised them as undead, enslaved them, tortured them and he planned to do the same to the rest of Azeroth.

Sylvanas has done some terrible things, but tell me, what has she done that even comes close to the enormity of Arthas’ acts?

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Well Sylvanas nearly wiped out the Night Elves’ and sent all of them to the maw to suffer forever along with countless other innocents/heroes that died in the war she started. She also raised some of those she killed and she did plan to do the same to all of Azeroth too.

Not to mention Gilneas, Brennadam, the Wrathgate, Southshore or other things.

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Even put together those acts do not even touch the atrocity Arthas committed.

Also, she was betrayed at Wrathgate and it was Garrosh who started the campaign against Gilneas. She was protecting the Forsaken from being used as fodder as Garrosh wanted to do.

Her plan was never to kill all of Azeroth. As she says in the loyalist cut-scene, “…enough souls have been fed to the hungering darkness.”

Plus the Kal’dorei population is doing quite well. Teldrassil doesn’t come close to killing 90% of the Quel’dorei and destroying Quel’thas and the Sunwell.

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Well it’s hard to tell. We know that apparently most Night Elves of Azeroth were in Teldrassil by the time. They all died and went into the maw for eternal torture. It’s hard to tell which one was worse since we don’t have population numbers, if Teldrassil or Quel’thalas had more casualties. Darkshore was partly destroyed and Teldrassil was completely destroyed too.

I was told that Sylvanas was behind those so I don’t really know.

She did want to kill a lot more than she already did though.

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Arthas proclaimed he would destroy Quel’thalas, the Quel’dorei and their very culture as revenge for them defying him. He thought he succeeded. He was even surprised any still existed when Kael’thas showed up in Northrend with the Sin’dorei .

It was not Sylvanas’ intent to wipe out the entire Kal’dorei population or culture when she torched Teldrassil. There were other population hubs in Ashenvale. You cannot compare the two.

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And those were taken care of before the Horde reached Teldrassil. All civilians there were killed there mostly by forsaken assassins so…

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Only in the Alliance storyline. And even then, the idea that “most” were killed is hardly definative.

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Arthas had his soul stolen he was corrupted, everything Sylvanas did was out of her own will

And lol wasn’t she planned the whole thing you’ll see

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The idea that Sylvanas is worse then Arthas baffles me. Yea, Sylvanas is horrible too, no denying that, you can make a pretty apt comparison between Teldrassil and Silvermoon. But Silvermoon was just a drop in the bucket for Arthas, he destroyed Silvermoon AND Lordearon, became the Lich King, basically took over Northrend and made it into an undead hellscape, and was stealing souls even before he killed Sylvanas.

Sylvanas destroyed villages and a couple of nations, Arthas purged continents.

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No he didn’t the lich king did arthas was a pawn Sylvanas isn’t

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I don’t think that is right. I looked back at the WOWpedia page and most of the atrocities were before he became the Lich King.

The big ones did come after he had the Lick King whispering in his ear, but then we don’t know who is whispering in Sylvanas’ ear either. More interestingly, does having some whisper in your ear absolve either of guilt?

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I think the question of Arthas is pretty appropriate. Because I think Anduin’s reference to Arthas was not a throw-away line.

Blizzard redid Garrosh, and now they are going to redo Arthas?