Why Did Sylvanas Do That?

Sylvanas has been up to something.

In fact, it really feels like ever since she saw Bolvar frozen into the Frozen Throne, wearing the Helm of Domination, and she jumped to her death off of Icecrown Citadel, she has not been the same.

Sure, she was ruthless and not above murdering those who were no longer useful to her. But her ultimate goals seemed simple: revenge on Arthas, and protecting her people.

When she returned after her second death (she's had a third, so Ilgynoth's prophecy probably doesn't refer to her) she claimed to be motivated to keep the Forsaken alive. She wanted to find a way to keep each individual from dying again but also to add more to her ranks and thus preserve the Forsaken as a people. She had seen a terrible darkness when she died the second time, and wanted to save her people from that fate.

Unless that was a lie.

We're told that the Maw is the part of the Shadowlands where the irredeemable go. Even unpleasant places like Revendreth or Maldraxxus are built on the idea of sort of rehabilitating or making use of souls that might not be so pleasant, but the Maw is a hell prison where one is not supposed to escape.

It seems very likely to me that when Arthas claimed he saw only darkness before him, that's where he was going. And it's where Sylvanas had probably found herself.

But was she totally irredeemable at that point? I actually doubt that.

Instead, maybe the entity that rules over that realm - the Jailer - found someone that could be useful to him.

For the record, I'm leaning toward thinking the Jailer is Mueh'zalla, and even possibly that he's the dead soul of Y'shaarj. But that's tin-foil hat territory.

Since that time, Sylvanas has been racking up a body count. Indeed, she has seemed to aim for maximum carnage - the Burning of Teldrassil, the Blighting of Undercity. She even implies to loyalists that she's just happy for us to fight N'zoth because all the death caused on both sides is going to feed death. (Coldly, the developers have said that, given that the loyalist story choice doesn't carry over into Shadowlands, she's basically like "thanks, dude. Not going to save you, but thanks for the help anyway!")

And the way she has broken the balance has left the Shadowlands broken - every soul is getting sent to the Maw, and not to their appropriate afterlives.

Why? What does she hope to accomplish? She's evil, sure, but she's still a person, and she can't be such a total nihilist that she wants a worse fate for the cosmos than even the Old Gods, right?

I think the key is what she tells Bolvar. She says the world is a prison, and she is freeing everyone.

Death is, really, the most horrible thing to imagine if you aren't confident that there's some kind of afterlife. And Sylvanas has clearly taken on a philosophy that the best remedy for this is to simply make everyone undead.

What does it mean to be undead? Well, it means that that bold line that separates the living and the dead is cast aside. You are dead and alive at the same time. You are still active, but the fear of eventual obliteration is gone, because you've already died.

In a way, that makes undeath sort of a comforting notion. It's why Liches seek it out, after all.

But rather than actually plaguing everyone with undeath, perhaps there's a more efficient way to convert the world into one in which death does not mean anything. By shattering the barrier to the Shadowlands, the dead are not bound to their afterlives, and can come to the world once more.

The thing is, something has gone wrong. Sylvanas might see this as the way to keep her people around forever, to keep everyone in the world around. Indeed, she might feel zero guilt about the thousands she has murdered because, after all, she has just opened the way for them to return. No harm no foul, right?

I don't want to completely hop on the "Sylvanas was just trying to do something good" side of things - I think she's a straight-up villain - but I do wonder about the power relationship between her and this "Jailer."

I find it very interesting that this figure, who, I suspect, will be the primary villain of the expansion if it's not Sylvanas, is called the Jailer. It was Bolvar who referred his job as Lich King as "Jailer of the Damned." (By the way, I've definitely written "Jailer" enough that it is starting to look like it's misspelled. Maybe I could go back to Jailor?) What is the Jailer's purpose? And what has changed?

I suspect the following: that we'll discover that it was the Jailer who told Vol'jin to name Sylvanas Warchief. I also think we'll find that he was the one who taught Odyn how to turn Helya into a Val'kyr. Other revelations (like his origins or other identities *cough*Mueh'zalla*cough*) I'll just have to wait and see.

Oh! I think that we might also discover that Bwonsamdi's boss is not, in fact, Mueh'zalla, but might be "The Arbiter," who is a more neutral figure.

We've got a deep-dive panel tomorrow that should shed some light on a number of things.