Let's talk about Zenos *****Spoilers******

Zenos is simply looking for a good death and he believes the WoL can offer him that. It is implied and not directly said and comes to realization in his final moments.

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

I'm not going off of conjecture. He says as much in EW - he only has eyes for you because he found his match. The sparks wouldn't fly otherwise. He wanted a true battle with YOU because you were the only one who could give him a challenge. And that doesn't mean that others wouldn't have the same level of strength, but it's moreso about what YOU bring to the battle. He doesn't care for others because he wants to fight YOU to the death. What other motive SHOULD he have?

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I agree, it's how I thought before. I paid attention to what he said before we fought him. After we fought him though, there was no elation from Zenos. He wasn't happy about the thing we said he should be happy about. It's why I recommend watching his final scene again after the fight. He fought, but his state of mind was far from being happy he fought. He was lamenting his mental condition at the end. What battle maniac laments about the thing he wanted? Unless it wasn't what he honestly needed.

Let me add a little more. We know of popular battle maniacs, that are evil and selfish for a fight. Like Cell or Vegeta during their first appearance. Think about how each one would react if Goku just told them. "Hey, I got a bigger responsibility on the side right now to save the planet. Can we postpone out fight right now?" This just never happens. Goku fought Majin Vegeta when the world was on the line to settle their personal dispute. Cell put their fight on hold, "but" there was a time limit on that and you know cell would not delay that any longer. Nevermind that there was no other focus then Cell. Do you believe with Cells battle maniac character, similar on how we are trying to sell Zenos, that if something else came along Cell would postpone his tournament even longer? You know Cell wouldn't, so why did Zenos?

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Originally Posted by Quintessa

Zenos is simply looking for a good death and he believes the WoL can offer him that. It is implied and not directly said and comes to realization in his final moments.

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I agreed as well before. But like I said. Watch his final scene again after the fight. He wasn't happy. He was lamenting about his mental condition at the end. "If" he wanted a good death then he would be elated about his death like every other warrior who aims for a death in battle. Think about every single battle maniac or warrior who fought to the death. They were excited all the way to the moment of their death with no regrets to their choice. Zenos is contemplating his life decisions on his death bed. Why would someone do that unless they were a clinically depressed person.

Little funfact, in german Zenos last words were: "Your life was a wonder, so much better than mine...I..."

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

for me Zeno was more a reminder of what we are, we can hate his way, but in the end we are the same... the only difference is no one was here for him.... he is a monster that did kill tons of people.... we are a monster that did kill tons of monster and people. the part of garlemald is to show us the other side of the story. because in a war, you always have two side... ....

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I also thought he was there for the challenge. But if you remember, Zenos had no delusions that he would win at all. He kinda saw us as a wall he could never over come, so why fight us? The only reason he pushed out to our limits at the end was because we just came out of a severely strong boss fight. The WoL normally takes a rest after fights like that and in the Omega raid, Cid makes it clear we cannot face boss after boss without some form of rest. Then I remember everything he said before the fight began, as you did. But remember what he says after the fight. He's not full of joy from the fight as we assumed he was. I would recommend watching his final lines after the fight again. He's lamenting his life and a guy who pushes his limits does not lament his life, if that is what he was aiming for during his final fight.

Edit: Sorry for cutting quote, but character limit and all that. XD

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

If they weren't going to properly flesh out his story arc after the resurrection, they should have just left him dead

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The fundamental flaw in your logic is that you seem to think character development must take place in front of the player or as monologue/flashbacks from the character in question.

Zenos showed his development as a character through his actions, NOT his words.

People like to declare him a battle maniac who just wants to fight. In reality, he is simply a character who feels that life is only worth living when you are fighting for it.

His resurrection was a surprise to him. He didn't do it on purpose. His soul was kicked out of his corpse when Elidibus turned him into a meat puppet. This most likely reason this happened was due to his merging with Shinryu, a Primal.
We know from previous ARR Primal MSQ that a Primal isn't dead when we destroy its form, its Aether is simply dispersed until its followers Summon it again.
IIRC, this is why only 1 Ifrit etc can be summoned at once and why the Primals in general remember things between Summons.

This is where the next part of his development happens. He realizes that his body was most of the reason he was powerful and uses his new meatsuit to correct that flaw, Culminating in his decision to take back his real body after reaching the limits of his current one.
Ironically, When Zenos confronted Elidibus to take his body back, no one could quite work out why it was that Elidibus basically fled without putting up a fight, they actually gave us a hint about what Elidibus truly was (Which we discovered in ShB). A neat bit of foreshadowing IMO.

After he gets his body back, his goal was only to have the WoL fight him again. If he were a brainless fight maniac who just wanted to fight for the sake of fighting, he could have simply walked on over to the WoL and launched into an attack. Y'know, what he literally did the first time we fought him.

But he doesn't. He's learned that we don't fight for ourselves, We fight in service to others.
So he reasons that if he takes out Varis, we would feel duty bound to go after him. But this is where Fancydan comes along and proposes something else entirely, to which Zenos basically agrees to but wont actually do anything himself.
His only crime since Fancydan came along was allowing Fancydan to do whatever he wanted, as long as the result was that the WoL would hunt him down.

When he spoke of Prey and Hunts, he meant that we were the hunter. He was the Prey, we just had to be convinced to go on the Hunt.

If a simple fight was all he wanted after all of that, he would have attacked after the 83 trial.
But he shows his development again here in recognising that we will not give him the contest he wants from us because we're not even looking at him.

When we next see him in Garlemald, That entire sequence was his attempt to show us what he learned from his own out of body experience.
We know he can teleport, so nothing was stopping him from simply teleporting directly into camp and slaughtering everyone in it.
Instead, he slowly strolled up the front door and threw his Avatar at Alisae. The attack was meant to annoy us, to make us hate him. It was stopped by a simple thrown sword from a near death garlean soldier, So how much damage could it possibly have done?

He knew full well that the bodyjack had a time limit and gave us ample time to get to him and stop him. He was testing us.
Probably the the most important showing of his development is during the exodus bit in Garlemald where he gives us the line:

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Your passion pales before mine, yet neither hate nor despair seem sufficient to recapture your misdrected bloodlust
So i hone my blade, and I wait.

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This shows us more than anything else that its more than a simple rematch that he wanted.
Everything he had done up till the Moon part was an attempt to recreate the sequence of events that led us to our previous showdown in the gardens.

He realizes after the 83 trial that he needs to try something different. In this sequence here, We find out that he has actually realized that we will never give him the fight he wants while we have more important matters than him to deal with.
Basically, his first attempts at a rematch was to convince us to abandon what we were doing to hunt him down. Now, he knows he will have to wait until we finish our business and have nothing more pressing to deal with, otherwise we'll keep brushing him off. So he is content to wait for that moment.

Later, most likely when he revisited the garden, he came to the conclusion that waiting wasn't enough. He would help us finish whatever was occupying us so that he can be absolutely certain that nothing else would get in the way of that final fight. Leading us to the events that culminated in the final quest.

Zenos was our rival that we never wanted or knew we had. What he wanted was to challenge himself to the absolute limit because it was the challenge itself that gave his life meaning. We just happened to be the only individual capable of giving him that challenge.
Consider that the only crimes he committed after death was slaying Varis and being an accomplace to Fancydans schemes.
Fancydan would have done what he did to Garlemald even without Zenos.

He could have gone on a murderous rampage to get our attention and force us to confront him, but he didn't. He chose instead to watch, wait and finally help us with our duties.

While Emet had the best written story, I feel like Zenos was the best written character because his goals were purely his own. He had no lofty motives. No grand duty that pushed him forward into conflict with us.
His entire arc is his pure desire to challenge himself to the max and push his rival forwards.
Thats why i like him. And why i hope he comes back. Wont be upset if he doesn't, I just liked his attitude.

Zenos is a raider.

Comedy aside, he felt like a leftover that just kept popping up... it became funny to me how he would just pop up and leave again.... it was kind of silly.

His body did not poof so no death confirmation. As much as I don’t want him to, there is a chance he will show up again.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

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this exactly. Zenos is one of the best characters in the game.

Looking back, I kinda feel like Zenos was three different characters in a trenchcoat.

In Stormblood, he's a bored tyrant. His only real interest is combat, and he's only really remotely animated when that's what the scene is about. It isn't even always a fight involving himself directly; hearing about Shinryu makes him smile, and his whole reaction to Grynewaht losing a prototype magitek weapon is to execute the unit commander for being too cowardly to be in the field with it himself. His whole grandiose speech about "the sport of kings", and his angry lectures at Yotsuyu about crushing the Domans so thoroughly that they won't fight back anymore, shows that he's searching for a purpose but only really knows fighting. Then he meets the Warrior of Light, the famous hero and champion who defeated Gaius van Baelsar, destroyed the Ultima Weapon, killed Nidhogg, and crushes primals underfoot for a lark.....and is disappointed. Until his sword breaks. This intrigues him enough to leave us alive, and when we break the horn off his helmet in Doma (symbolically bringing us closer to his level), he's gloating that he's finally found a worthwhile fight. Finally, we fight him for a third time in Ala Mhigo and push him into retreating from the throne room, and he's practically giddy about it. He finally runs for Shinryu like an addict looking for the next high, and when he outright loses, he's ecstatic at the rush and cuts his own throat just so he can die happy that he finally found some fulfillment.

And then he comes back.

And this is where the problems start.

Now, his body being used as a puppet by Elidibus could've been a fascinating plot turn. A chance to see him playing off of Varis, developing the Empire's well-intentioned extremist traits against the Ascians' all-consuming desires to pursue the Rejoining at any and all costs, could've made an incredible story......until Zenos comes in, kicks Elidibus out of his body (entirely off-screen, no less, as if even the writers gave up on trying to justify it), and kills Varis. And then stands around complaining about how he's bored. For the next several patches. The problems here are twofold. First, it marks the end of the Garlean Empire as an interesting enemy with complicated goals despite their often questionable methods, and begins their downward spiral into "brainwashed and crazy" generic bad guys. (Fandaniel does most of the heavy lifting, yes, but we'll get to him in a minute.) And second, having him slouching in a chair complaining about boredom without actually doing anything is weak writing, because if one of the ostensible Big Bads is bored, why should we be interested in whatever he's doing? Villains are supposed to be the big movers and shakers in the world, yet he's sitting around and snapping at his little hanger-on. His only motivation given here is that he.....wants another big fight with the WoL. He's like the worst parts of Sephiroth in post-FF7 stories. Nothing interesting, nothing important, just obsessed with that one person that beat him. It's pretty lame.

Then we get to Endwalker. Where he still isn't doing jack for a while. But when he finally does, it's actually kinda threatening. Stealing the WoL's body, promising to go kill all of their friends unless they can stop him. Except he doesn't. He's got our body, and is even within arm's reach of Alisae and G'raha before we catch up. If he'd actually been trying, he could've wreaked havoc on the Alliance, but that wasn't his point. He wanted to drive us to focus on him so he could get his big fight. He started a world-spanning calamity and conspired to restart the Final Days just to get our attention. And from there....it's all downhill for him.

First, he lures us to the moon, waits for us to catch up before breaking the final seal on Zodiark's prison, and starts a speech about how this will be such a big great fight.....only to be interrupted by Fandaniel stealing his thunder and hijacking Zodiark. The look on his face says that he's only just realized that Fandaniel's been playing him like a fiddle the whole time.

Then he tries again after we kill Zodiark......but realizes that we just don't have time for him right now, and takes his blue balls elsewhere.

Then he confronts us again in Garlemald......and everyone tells him off, because in the face of the Final Days, he's just irrelevant now. He made himself irrelevant and can't even figure out why. Alisase has to spell it out for him, and he's still kinda nonplussed about it.

The next we see, he's slipping into the Royal Menagerie, the sight of the only time he's felt alive....and the last time he actually really mattered to the plot. And the whole place is empty. Because he's still thinking only about himself in the past, while the rest of the world has moved on. This is where we see him actually considering Alisae telling him off before. It finally dawns on him that he won't get what he really wants because we just don't have time for him anymore.

Cut to Ultima Thule. He's about the last person any sane viewer would expect to pull a Big Damn Heroes moment. And the whole time, he's dismissive of the Endsinger. To him, it's just another false god in the WoL's way, to kill and move on (that he's in Shinryu's form while he says all of this is either doubly meaningful or just ironic, depending on your point of view). On the other hand, he's also subtly encouraging the WoL to keep fighting. He still wants his final showdown (his line at the beginning of the Endsinger fight "Our hunt ends today", is rather telling), but he's accepted that he won't get it until we're done saving the world first.

Afterwards, while we run to Meteion, he quietly stands back and watches. Butting into other scenes hasn't worked out so well for him so far, after all. Only once all distractions are gone, all pretense of saving the world or protecting anyone else, does he issue his final challenge. He even says that he'll accept if the WoL decides to turn and walk away, although the game doesn't actually let us. He's absolutely delighted if the player chooses the dialogue option indicating that they're just as challenge-hungry as him, and only slightly less joyful if you just say you're sick of him, but either way, it means he finally has your full and undivided attention. He even encourages you to get back up and keep fighting if you get knocked down (and the game gives you effectively seven lives to keep fighting) because he wants your full measure, with nothing held back. Finally getting the fight he's been after for the last two expansions, feeling like he's found a kindred soul at last, he manages to finally die content.

So I'm left a little.....conflicted about Zenos, overall. As a one-time villain for Stormblood, he was perfectly fine. He was a fine contrast to previous antagonists like Gaius and Thordan, who used horrible means towards (arguably) noble ends. I just didn't feel like there was much need for him beyond that, and nothing he did throughout the post-ST patches or all of Shadowbringers really changed my mind. But in Endwalker, he becomes an embodiment of the story's theme. He's unable to let go of his glory days, forever looking back towards that one good time, and only gets any closure when he realizes that he has to actually acknowledge the people moving around him as more than just a backdrop. He's kind of irrelevant to most of the plot, but that was kinda the point. And with the hostile elements of the Empire mostly neutralized now, his final duel is the capstone on the war that's been ongoing since Legacy.

Overall.....I dunno. I still don't really like Zenos. I can recognize his purposes in the plot, I can appreciate the work that went into his character, but I don't like him. I hope there's no plans to bring him back, because I'm tired of him; but also, because bringing him back again would undermine everything he represented in Endwalker. His final death is, in his own words, an ending to mark a new beginning. Let him rest.