Will Unikalhai be joining us? (Spoiler?)

[Iscah]

They're even bringing back Minfilia. Can't they just stay dead or gone?

I honestly do not understand the incessant need to bring people back alive... This is just bad writing.

There's an important thing here that a lot of people in different discussions have either forgotten or didn't realise in the first place.

Minfilia never died.

She was taken - alive, body and soul - by Y'shtola's Flow spell to Hydaelyn in the aetherial sea, where she became first incorporated into Hydaelyn as the "Word of the Mother", then a free emissary who would travel to the First Shard and prevent the Flood of Light from overtaking it. (In the conclusion to the Warriors of Darkness arc, she explains that Hydaelyn was able to 'set her free' again thanks to the energy returned to Her by bringing together the WoL's and WoDs' crystals.)

While suggested at the time that she might not be able to return from the First, it also didn't seem like 'the end'. It sounded like she would be returning to the story at some point, or at least I read it that way.



We never saw Gaius die either. The last we see of him in the Praetorium (not during the dungeon but in the cutscene after) he's alive and still monologuing. He didn't appear in the Palace of the Dead even though you can encounter Livia and Rhitahtyn there. His survival has been a long time coming.



Regula, on the other hand, certainly died. We saw it. He was even shown with visible wounds - 'crystalised' rather than bleeding, but that seems to be a thing in this setting. (Lorebook 1, p.10 says that a mortal wound - specifically death-inducing - can cause the body's aether to crystallise. I think that's what's supposed to be happening, and we saw it with Haurchefant as well, although that might have been from the light spear. And possibly a third instance but I can't remember where. Asahi, perhaps?)