With World of Warcraft now being half way through the Worldsoul Saga, I'm starting to have some serious thoughts about some of the characters which we've, up till now, been directed to consider as "Evil".
Over the past several expansions, World of Warcraft has repeatedly asked players to reconsider the line between villainy, victimhood, personal responsibility, and redemption.
Anduin’s case is the easiest. He was dominated by the Jailer, stripped of his agency, and forced to commit terrible acts. Once freed, he was immediately surrounded by people who loved him, understood what had happened, and refused to treat those actions as a reflection of his true character. His struggle afterward was largely internal. The people around him had already forgiven him before he could forgive himself.
Sylvanas’s story was far more complicated, but not entirely that different from Anduin.
She was also dominated, violated, and forced to serve as a weapon. When she escaped the Lich King’s control, however, she did not return to a loving support system. She returned as an undead creature, alienated from her former people and severed from much of what had once made her who she was. She gathered the Forsaken around herself partly out of necessity, but perhaps also out of a damaged sense of family—people rejected by the living attempting to create a place where they still belonged.
In these recent expansions we've come to learn that Sylvanas was not merely traumatized. Frostmourne had literally fractured her soul, locking away a part of herself. Although she was no longer directly controlled by the Lich King, she remained incomplete, spiritually wounded, and highly vulnerable to manipulation. That does not clear her of responsibility for her later choices, but it should change how we view the choices she made.
Her actions surrounding Teldrassil, for example, become much more complicated rather than simply being the actions of an "Evil" person.
From Sylvanas’s perspective, peace between the Horde and Alliance had repeatedly proven temporary. Genn Greymane had attacked the Forsaken fleet in Stormheim during a global Legion invasion and seemingly faced no meaningful consequences. While she originally denied her emotional connection to The Forsaken, by the time the Dragonflight expansion came along she had openly admitted that they were as dear to her as her own family.
Just prior to coming up with the plan to assault Teldrassil, Orgrimmar was vulnerable. The Alliance remained a permanent military threat, and Sylvanas came to believe that capturing Teldrassil was the last chance to create lasting deterrence. It wouldn't exactly be peace, but it would deter war.
The original plan was not genocide either. Teldrassil was to be captured, its people held as leverage, and Malfurion killed to destroy the Night Elves morale. When Saurfang went against the plan and spared Malfurion, Sylvanas believed the entire strategy had collapsed. Instead of viewing his survival as mercy, she believed the Alliance would see Horde weakness and the Night Elves would see a miracle.
In her fractured mind, the choice at that moment may no longer have appeared to be between war and peace. It had become a choice between the eventual destruction of the Horde or the complete defeat of the Alliance.
That doesn't make the burning of Teldrassil morally acceptable. It does, however, make it understandable as the reasoning of a person who now genuinely believed that anything short of total victory would condemn her people to extinction.
That said, the eventual judgment of Sylvanas was therefore deeply flawed.
Tyrande had every right to speak for the Night Elves, confront Sylvanas, and demand accountability. That said, she was likely the least appropriate person to determine the punishment Sylvanas would face. Tyrande was not impartial. She was a direct victim, consumed by grief and vengeance, who had spent much of the expansion pursuing Sylvanas with the intention of killing her.
Tyrande's hands were far from clean by the time Sylvanas faced judgement for her actions. She had ruthlessly executed Forsaken soldiers. She left Horde commanders dying on the battlefield, rather than quickly ending their suffering. She performed the Ritual of Doom and made a Death Pact. She attempted to use the power of Elune to literally rip the head off Sylvanas, until Elune withdrew her power (which should have been a wake-up call for Tyrande).
Allowing Tyrande to serve as judge, jury, and executioner was not justice. It was vengeance. A much more appropriate individual would have been Uther the Lightbringer, as he had also faced a similar "stabbing" from Frostmourne.
Nevertheless, Sylvanas was ordered to enter the Maw and rescue not only the souls harmed by her own actions, but apparently every soul trapped there. That placed responsibility for repairing an ancient, broken system of cosmic suffering upon one person—many of whose crimes were committed while her soul was fractured and while she was being manipulated by one of the most powerful beings in existence.
A fair judgment would have considered both her responsibility and her diminished condition. It would have required restitution to her victims without pretending that her spiritual mutilation was irrelevant.
This brings us to our main topic... Sargeras.
Blizzard has already established a pattern of revisiting WoW characters once presented as straightforward villains and revealing that their actions emerged from trauma, manipulation, incomplete information, or a genuine threat answered through monstrous means.
Sargeras is a natural candidate for that very same treatment.
He was not originally motivated by greed or a desire for domination. He discovered that the Void intended to corrupt world-souls and concluded that a corrupted Titan would pose an unimaginable threat to all existence. His solution—the destruction of all life before the Void could claim it—was horrific, but logical considering the danger he felt the Void posed.
With the Midnight expansion placing the Void’s attention directly upon Azeroth, the heroes (us) may finally discover exactly what Sargeras saw.
This could possibility change how his final act at the end of Legion might be interpreted.
You have to remember that it was our actions that triggered Sargeras to perform his final act. When the Pantheon began pulling him away from Azeroth, Sargeras shouted “No,” then summoned his sword, and drove it into the planet. We have generally assumed that this was an angry final attempt to destroy Azeroth after his defeat.
But The War Within cinematic deliberately asks us to reconsider that assumption. Standing beneath the blade, Thrall observes:
“That sword was aimed at something.”
That wording suggests precision. Sargeras may not have stabbed Azeroth randomly or purely out of spite. He may have been targeting something specific within her: a source of Void corruption, Titan machinery, a containment system, or even the world-soul itself.
With an unconfirmed leak of information about the next expansion, The Last Titan, stating that Azeroth must somehow be “killed to be restored”, it adds even more weight to his final action. We can assume Sargeras may have already known that fact. His original intention, therefore, may have been to simply destroy Azeroth’s current form before the Void could fully claim her.
This wouldn't be the first time we witnessed a well-intentioned character performing horrendous acts because they thought it was the only way to save their people/world. We've already encountered this with Illidan Stormrage and Sylvanas Windrunner.
It could have even been our intervention which may have forced Sargeras into the crude, desperate action we witnessed. That would not make him innocent. The Burning Legion still destroyed countless worlds, and his certainty allowed him to justify atrocities on a cosmic scale. But it could make him a misunderstood pragmatic anti-hero: someone who correctly identified the threat and then became monstrous because he believed no other solution existed.
His redemption would simply come from everyone realizing that he had been right about the threat all along. Sargeras believed Azeroth must either fall to the Void or be destroyed. The heroes (us) may prove, in this final expansion, that Azeroth can actually be freed from both Void corruption and Titan control while preserving the lives upon her surface.
While Sargeras would never be forgiven for his actions, the redemption would be the fact that we could at least understand why he did what he did. That said, unlike what others may believe, I don't actually see his return occurring in the final closure of this story.
My Prediction
When I think about the title of the final chapter in this story, "The Last Titan", it brings me to other media that had the same form of title.
- The Last Starfighter
- The Last Jedi
- The Last of the Mohicans
- The Last Samurai
In all of these examples, the "The Last" was used more as a romanticized title rather than actual fact. It pointed to a specific character and, often, raised controversy as to who it pointed to.
- Alex Rogan was not the last Starfighter, he had Grig.
- Rey was not the last Jedi, Leia and others still existed.
- Chingachgook was not the last Mohican, they exist today.
- Tom Cruise was not the last Samurai, we saw others survive.
Taking this into account, it's my firm belief that The Last Titan simply refers to the sleeping titan spirit at the core of the planet. Azeroth. This last expansion is, more than likely, going to focus on both the future of the planet as well as the existence of this spirit.
We already know, from leaked knowledge, that time travel is going to be a key factor in this final expansion. We've got Chronormu (Chromie) and Nozdormu in the middle of the current WoW experience, and we've have previous dealings messing with time via Azachronous and Kairozdormu (Kairoz).
We also know, through other leaked knowledge, that Azeroth will have to be destroyed in order to be saved. This could simply be another way of saying that we have to destroy the future to save the past.... Much like Marty did in the original Back to the Future when his actions led to his Dad punching out Biff.
We also know that there is going to be a focus on Northrend, where the shattering of the world happened to allow the Jailer's release, as it's been advertised that the entire area is going to be revamped for The Last Titan.
Thus, my thought here, is that we're going to experience a severe rewind that takes us all the way back to the days of Wrath of the Lich King.
From a business standpoint it would be the perfect plan as it could lead to further expansions, which see us prevent the Cataclysm before it happens as well as confronting the Legion before it invades. Basically, almost everything that's happened since Wrath could be rewritten as an even better experience.
