The big bad was actually trying to save us from a bigger bad. We’ve gone through this already.
He was the ex-arbiter. What if, after judging souls for a millenia, he grew disillusioned by the lack of souls he deemed noble, and began sending too many souls to Revendreth as he kept seeing evil inside every soul. This prompted the other Eternal Ones to cast him down, as his arbiting was throwing the Shadowlands out of balance. Denathrius then felt cheated, since the new Arbiter was not sending enough souls to Revendreth to his satisfaction, and sought to restore Zovaal to his “rightful” place.
To me, that seems like a good enough motive to create a villain. We don’t need cosmic existential threats simply trying to save us from other cosmic existential threats. That’s just passing the buck.
In order to make a villain or character more complex, we would have to learn more about them. Clearly, the writers are concerned about Sylvanas, so we’re only going to see anything involving her.
Even the Jailer’s grand scheme is put on the back-burner so Sylvanas Windrunner can have her redemption.
It reminds me of how the Night King was instantly forgotten in Game of Thrones so everyone could fight over a chair.
“I will wipe out all life so the void does not consume everything. I am hoping new life will spring up but a lifeless universe is better then one consumed by void.”
It actually isnt a bad plot line, he is afraid of the same thing sargaeas is afraid of, it makes the threat even more interesting because cosmic beings and gods are afraid of this thing and trying to make a counter to it and all of them shared the same flaw.
They all had no faith in mortals to deal with the threat, so these “gods” were trying to deal with it themselves.
Kick the can. BC follows.
Kick the can again. Wrath time!
Kick the can a third time. Cataclysm! Now with Old Zones cut off!
Kick the can yet AGAIN. Mists. “Why do we fight? That is to ask, why do leaves fall? Rather, ask what is worth fighting for!” And… after WoD, might as well never have ASKED.
Kick the can! To Alt Draenor! Oh look, Warlords of Draenor was so poorly written and designed…
Kick the can another time! Legion! Kneejerk reaction! Storywise!
Punt the can! Battle For Azeroth! Let’s FORCIBLY forget that Legion was about working together as a team!
Stomp the can! Shadowlands! … The lore is both shoehorned so hard that when, as OP so well puts it:
s:
Hey, this is novel and new!
/s
Yeah, this writing team is stuck in a rut.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Easily my biggest complaint about that final season. Over and over, they told us the war for the throne didn’t matter compared to the one against the dead. The show even opens with rangers going north, which means it’s the central theme, yet there we were at the finale, watching an anti-climatic resolution where it doesn’t even end with one throne but two. It’s like the writers completely forgot what they wrote. Kind of similar to the episode with the three eyed raven telling Bran over and over, “The past is written, the ink is dry,” then watching Bran change the past, present, and future. Or hearing how tough Dorne and the Sand Snakes were, only to watch them get wrecked by a pirate. Or Samwell being told Grey Scale is impossible to cure, then curing it with ease as an untrained maester that read a single book about it.
I’m glad the spin-offs were cancelled. They butchered a masterpiece.
He clearly to clean out the bickering Cosmic Forces and build up his army from scratch not realizing that he is out of time! The Enemy is already on his doorstep and he is removing the defenses to replace them without having enough time to replace them!
He failed to consider that he had no time to face the threat coming for everyone for if he did consider that fact he could have simply just opened the way from the Maw and sent his Burning Legion-sized Army of Mawsworn to Azeroth to help weather the coming storm!
He should have grabbed all the Maldraxxi Allies, Forsworn, Venthyr Loyalists, Nathrezim and Mawsworn, built up his armies and sent them to defend Azeroth the moment the Enemy showed up!
It’s not like anyone ever encountered Mawsworn, Venthyr or Forsworn so them showing up to defend Azeroth from the 7th Cosmic Force the second it began invading would have endeared them to Azeroth!
Instead Zovaal wanted to wipe out all Cosmic Forces and try to build up an army from scratch without realizing he is out of time for that!
Because the Nathrezim claimed that the Void Lords(agents of the Indistinct Shadow) would create a nightmarish world of Torment everywhere just so that Sargeras would target the Void Lords alongside the Light and Life as a test run for a greater army.
Unfortunately as N’Zoth stated: “The Light has struck a bargain with the enemy of all.” and as Il’gynoth has stated: “The Vassal of Life disguises treachery. Beware the eyes of green.”
Once all of that happened Denathrius immediately resorted to aiding Zovaal’s plan as his own plan to use the Shadow as a training target for a united Army of Cosmic Forces ultimately led to the Light and Life siding with the true Darkness: The True Void…
Sargeras of course decided to do exactly what the True Void itself wanted: wipe out all of existence! If the True Void showed up in front of Sargeras and explained it’s true nature I’m sure Sargeras only knowing of the Shadow being a Cosmic Force bringing Torment(instigated by the Nathrezim to make them a training target) would readily side with the True Void just so that he can erase everything!
Sargeras, the Light and Life have all fallen into the schemes of the True Void with those seeking to stop the True Void(I.E. the Nathrezim, Void Lords and Zovaal) shooting themselves in the foot out of recklessness and not thinking out the consequences of their actions!