As you might be aware if you're a WoW player, Shadowlands' second raid (what would traditionally be its first "major raid," though that nomenclature is kind of meaningless these days) opened up today. And since Legion, these raid have ended with a major, plot-moving cinematic. In Legion, we ended Nighthold with the rebirth of Illidan Stormrage, then ended Tomb of Sargeras with Illidan's bonkers rift-tear, and then Antorus with the imprisonment of Sargeras and the sword-plunge.
Castle Nathria, with is "intro raid" status, didn't get a full-blown pre-rendered cinematic, but Sanctum of Domination sure does.
However, as I haven't actually seen what happens in the final fight, there's a lot of context missing. So let's go over the elements:
Spoilers Ahead:
Sylvanas is not dead at the end of the fight, and indeed doesn't even seem that hurt. The Jailer has made it to the Arbiter, and we witness him steal the orb thing from her heart, which he places in his big chest cavity. This seems to cover him in a very cool-looking skeletal armor set, and he opens a golden portal to... big question mark. (Maybe the "Sepulcher?")
Standing in for us heroes, we see Jaina, Bolvar, and Thrall dominated by the Jailer with glowing blue eyes and chains around their waists.
The Jailer gives a speech about how everyone will serve him in this new reality, and Sylvanas takes this opportunity to attack - only for the Jailer to catch the arrow and then "reward" her with something that was taken from her, just as she had helped him get someone that had been taken from him (presumably the weird chest-orb?)
He reaches into a portal similar to the one he got the crystal to corrupt Shalamane and Anduin with and gets a blue crystal that he then shoots at her, and she falls to the ground as a spectral version of her appears to fuse with her. As she falls to the ground, she looks up on the advancing Bolvar, Thrall, and Jaina, who are no longer chained, and her own eyes glow blue.
But... ok, we've got to deal with the whole blue eye thing. Blue eyes are often associated with death magic, as we see in player character Death Knights and Arthas, as well as Anduin being controlled by the Jailer and the bindings on the good guys in this cinematic. But blue eyes are also a natural thing for Draenei and High Elves (and I think some Night Elves - it's confusing because in theory gold eyes are really rare, but I think all male Night Elves had them until you could choose eye colors in 9.0).
Sylvanas had her first death before her people were renamed Blood Elves and started siphoning fel magic that turned their eyes green. Undeath weirdly gave her red eyes, but now they're blue again.
And I think that means that Sylvanas is no longer undead.
As people advance on her, she weakly says "He must not reach the..." but she can't finish the sentence.
So.
What to do with Sylvanas? She has committed unforgivable offenses. She's a tyrant and a war criminal.
I think a lot of players are wary that she is being set up for a redemption arc, which, tonally, looks like it could be the case.
Having only the cinematic and not quests that surround it, I really don't know exactly how we can expect the story for her to go forward. This is not a clean end for her character, but seems instead that we might need her to stop the Jailer's ultimate plans.
I think I feel a little underwhelmed, given how Blizzard had been saying that the end of the raid would be mind-blowingly game-changing. I suppose knowing that the Jailer wins is unexpected, but we're presumably still in the early acts of the Shadowlands story, which means that we couldn't just beat him now without some greater threat emerging, and all the build-up to the Jailer would see a huge waste if it turned out "Evil Steve" was the real boss of Shadowlands. (Legion, despite being probably my favorite expansion, felt a bit bait-and-switch-y to introduce the very concept of the Titan Argus only in the patch where we faced off against him. I wanted to fight Sargeras himself! If not now, when?)
I'd also like to know what, exactly, the Jailer is even doing. The stakes are clearly high, but while I think we're all aware of the scale of the stakes, we don't really understand what is happening. Was that the Arbiter's Sigil that he took? Is the Arbiter dead? And now that he has that, what's our angle of attack now?
Sylvanas' role moving forward is obviously a big deal, but unless we get some major lore drops from her soon, we're kind of out to sea.
I think it's fine for us to have a major raid end with us losing. The opening at the Broken Shore was a fantastic way to start Legion, making the Burning Legion feel like a truly dangerous threat and one that would tax us in fighting it. But the Broken Shore had us fail to nip the problem in the bud. This has us fail to stop a very complicated and obscure plan.
We shall see. The patch has only just arrived, and I hope that 9.2 will come a lot sooner (maybe three or four months? Is that even reasonable?) I'm also hoping we'll get more detailed write-ups for those of us who don't have a guild that can blaze through a new raid on day one.
Thankfully, the structure of the covenant campaigns means we'll be getting more story coming out over the course of the next couple months, and the campaigns do cover story that occurs after the events of the raids, so there will presumably be more for us to learn.
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