The other day I ran through the hard-mode of Dawn of the Infinite, the mega-dungeon from Dragonflight, to see how the infinite-themed color schemes for the various customizable drake mounts looked (sadly, not really that great. I think I'll stick with my Infinite Timereaver, or maybe the Chrono Corsair if I'm feeling silly).
Anyway, Iridikron plays a clever trick - while we defeat him there, doing so allows Nozdormu to become Murozond, and so Chromie is forced to rewind time and basically have us do the dungeon again with different bosses (I mean, really, it's just the second half of the dungeon). While we do stop Murozond (and kind of resolve the Bronze/Infinite conflict to the point that the various Remix experiences can now happen in canon and we have friendly Infinite dragons) doing so then lets Iridikron escape with the Dark Heart, which of course plays a major role in War Within and Midnight.
Iridikron obviously made a deal with Xal'atath - we even see her within the void portal through which he escapes distant-past Dragonblight. But what's his endgame?
Well, we might not actually need to wonder, because he basically tells us: the world is going to be thrown into such chaos that he thinks the Titans are going to have to come and intervene, and he's going to be waiting for them.
The Primal Incarnates are powerful - I think we can confidently put them on the same "power tier" as the dragon aspects (though I maintain that Alexstrasza's fight with Razageth would have left the latter dead if the Red Aspect weren't so omnibenevolent that she couldn't follow through with breaking Razageth's neck). But compared to the Titans?
I mean, look, power levels in fantasy are kind of a silly idea that is born, I honestly think, from video game logic. I don't think that Isildur was supernaturally stronger than any other human - he just got a lucky strike against Sauron to cut his fingers off. And the Titans are clearly not omnipotent - their spirits were being held captive by some admittedly powerful demons in Antorus.
But especially with two of his siblings dead and one having turned against him (though notably not to the Titans) you really have to wonder what Iridikron has up his sleeve.
So far, it's felt as if Xal'atath is the primary villain of the Worldsoul Saga, and has certainly been the headliner throughout War Within and Midnight. On K'aresh, sure, she briefly allied with us thanks to shared goals, but our reason for stopping Dimensius (saving what's left of K'aresh) and hers (pokemoning up Dimensius' essence to have an absurd amount of void energy) obviously meant a betrayal was coming - one that we were just slightly too slow to anticipate (RIP Locus Walker).
But if Iridikron's primary beef is with the Titans, doesn't it seem like he's going to play a major role in the expansion called The Last Titan?
See, I have a suspicion that Xal'atath might not survive Midnight. I think we might be heading to her as final boss territory. Sure, maybe it's not a permanent death - maybe we cram her back into that knife.
Xal'atath has been a refreshingly effective villain, one who actually seems to be making some smart moves instead of being just implied to have done so (Jailer, ahem). It's not my favorite trope to establish the threat of one villain by having them off another (I'm still a little salty about something from the last Dark Tower novel,) but Iridikron has been dutifully cooking in the "established villain" oven for the better part of two expansions now, studiously absent.
I don't think we're going to see Irdikron betraying Xal'atath, but I think it's more likely that he's calculated that she will fail for one reason or another, and that will open up an opportunity for him to kick into gear.
Indeed, I suspect that Xal'atath's entire assault on the World Soul is part of Iridikron's game - letting her get to the point where the Titans are forced to intervene. Is he being a little cocky to assume her plans will fail? Perhaps.
I think that if and when we see Iridirkon again, I'd really like to see him put his "avoid being a raid boss at all costs" strategy into practice. Maybe he tries to persuade us to his side, and maybe he keeps setting up others to threaten us (like Fyrrak) and cover his exit.
Again, I think that Iridikron strikes me as one of the smartest villains we've seen in WoW simply because he seems to actually respect the player characters' power. There's no "pathetic mortal" talk here. Xal'atath, mind you, is another one of the better villains we've ever had, but as her plan gets closer to fruition (it doesn't seem like anything we've actually done this expansion has set back her plans) she becomes more vulnerable.
The nature of the game, of course, is that we're going to fight and defeat the bad guys in the end. But I really like the way that, narratively at least, these ones seem to be making us earn it.
Indeed, I think one of the most satisfying things about Arthas as a bad guy back in Wrath of the Lich King is that everything up to the last 10% of his boss fight is actually his plan working as intended. It takes a literal miracle to break Tirion Fordring out of the ice to destroy Frostmourne, and as the king of the Scourge, Arthas was capable of absorbing countless losses if it meant turning the greatest heroes of Azeroth into his mind-controlled minions (note that if you didn't do this boss fight back in the day, you might not realize that at 10% he automatically killed everyone in the raid group. He then starts raising us as Scourge until Tirion intervenes, and then the last 10% was basically a victory lap in which the raid gets resurrected by the ghost of Terenas Menethil, now freed from Frostmourne, and gets to just beat on Arthas as he's held by the spirits that have escaped. It was a hugely cathartic moment, though my guild didn't actually down him during Wrath, only getting him after being like level 83 in Cataclysm).
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