Dead characters should stay dead (spoilers?)

[MrThinker]

Urianger gave Hydaelyn the strength to manifest Minfilia independently of Her and forge her into an Emissary of Light to counter Elidibus, but we have no idea how that's going. We'll have to figure out why she's a kid in the trailer and an adult on the poster, first. But I'm sure Thancred seeing her at an Ascilia-esque age is going to be quite the motivation multiplier.

IS she an adult in the poster? I'm pretty sure that she retains those younger traits as seen in the trailer, if she does look older then its just because they have her enlarged compared to other characters near her like Solus, Thancred and Mr Obviously-Not-G'raha. Otherwise the twins heads are HUGE. Agree with the rest of your opinion though.

[Mansion]

Yeah the problem is not the number of deads vs not deads, it's more about the purpose.

I can forgive Yotsuyu (and thus Gosetsu) because it builds into one of the better parts of Stormblood's storyline.
I can forgive Gaius, because his death did not mean much. We beat him, we stopped Ultima. He could have escaped and got back to Garlemald telling us "we'll see each other again!" and the storyline would not have changed much. And since 4.3 he has a new role that seems fair enough to the bigger picture.
Having Haurchefant, Ysayle, Moenbryda and Papalymo dead and staying dead make as much sense, it left a deep imprint in the storyline.

But Nanamo yeah, it feels weird although the justification makes sense.
A few situations like these are okay if they make sense, but rising the deads for plot convenience is a symptom of laziness to some degree.

[Bright-Flower]

Lousoix: We had no idea what actually happened to him, only that he vanished, so I don't mind him being in the Coils raid. And he's gone for good now I think.
Minfillia: Never had any reason to think she was dead.
Gosetsu & Tsukuyomi: Agreed, they should have just died in Doma Castle. Would have spared us from the 4.2/4.3 Tsuyu arc too.
Zenos: I agree but if they do something interesting with him in 5.0 I can forgive it.
Nanamo: Agreed, I hated how they reset the status quo of UL'dah in 3.0. Even if I did like her development in 4.1.
Gaius: Agreed. SUre we didn't see his corpse but he should have died in that explosion. Maybe I'll forgive it if Shadowhunter does interesting stuff in 5.0.
Sokoban: Sorry I'm having a 'literally who' moment, who is this?
Papalymo (TBD): Agreed should stay dead.
and the Warrior of Light: When has the WoL ever died?

So I agree in principle but I don't think all of these really count as 'deaths.'

[ChaoticCrimson]

In terms of Gaius, I did entertain the thought that he could have survived and escaped the events of the Praetorium. I also felt that his story still had plenty of room to carry on. Gosestsu and Tsuyu surviving wasn't too much of a surprise to me, honestly. It seemed barely a minute after the fall of Doma Castle that we were informed that both their bodies were suspiciously missing, and that they could have been carried away by the river. With no bodies to confirm the death, that already sent the alarm bells ringing. Minfillia was, of course, never in doubt that she'd reappear in some capacity as she was never really considered dead to begin with. Furthermore, Solus coming back was something I never expected, but given what we've learned it certainly makes sense. Louisoix was really only still around due to Bahamut's influence, and he was laid to rest for good shortly after. It was a fitting conclusion to his story, passing on the future of Eorzea to his grandchildren and the WoL.

Nanamo is the one "apparent" death that particularly bugged me. We had this entire building plot point at the end of ARR with the civil unrest beginning to reach a boiling point in Ul'Dah, Nanamo meant to do something about it (for better or worse), but then we were led to believe that she was killed off to preserve the status quo as opposed to potentially making things worse. Furthermore, this leads to a shift in power in Ul'Dah: Without Nanamo, Raubahn, and Teledji in the way, Lolorito has apparent power, meanwhile the turncoat Crystal Braves have taken up posts in the city under Ilberd's command. Nanamo's death seemed to have not only emotional stakes but also significant political implications as well, never mind what it meant for the WoL and the remaining Scions at that time. However, in a brief series of quests we find out that her death was nothing more than a farce. Nanamo is restored, and... The majority of everything that occurred at the end of ARR becomes more or less defused. I feel like this was mainly just a sloppy way to sweep everything under the rug. Actual Zenos still kicking around as EleZenos is... Well, questionable, to say the least. I'm mostly intrigued about where they're going with him at this point. I'm still half-jokingly expecting him to pull something similar to the whole Shinryu thing and become a primal again, using the Resonance the same way Ysayle used the Echo to maintain herself after becoming the focal point for Shiva. (We never did get an Amaterasu primal...) To what end this would accomplish though, I couldn't guess.

For all that, as others mentioned, we have had plenty of actual deaths that have stuck and probably will remain that way. While it's possible Papalymo could come back, I feel this time it's likely that he will not. When the Scion tattoo he bestowed upon Lyse dissipated, showing that the last of his aether had faded away, I feel like that was pretty definitive. There's not much reason to bring him back. If anything, I'd more likely suspect that we could run into some alternative dwarf version of him on the first shard, assuming there even are alternate versions of the characters we know from the source. Even if this does end up being the case, he would be far from the exact same Papalymo we knew, and this would apply for any alt versions of characters we know to be dead on the source that may yet live on the first. Regardless, the versions from our world that we did know are gone. Moenbryda's not coming back. Haurchefant is not coming back. Ysayle is not coming back. Lest we forget the various supporting characters who lost their lives, such as Wilred, Conrad, etc. I doubt we'll see Nabriales, Lahabrea, Igeyorhm, nor Imperials like Livia, Rhitahtyn, and Regula come back either. So yes, while they've kind of abused the "not quite dead yet" tropes a bit, there's still plenty of permanence in a lot of other cases as well. Still, I don't think we need any more miraculous returns from here on.

[Bright-Flower]

Lahabrea I almost wonder about because they keep bringing him up in the MSQ so it makes me wonder if they're trying to subtly remind people that he exists or something, considering he's just one of three ascians we're helped kill and the one of the three that we're only indirectly responsible for killing off.

Lahabrea was also hinted to have his own agenda during a cutscene with Elidibus once where it was implied he wasn't actually loyal to Zodiark, but maybe I read too much into that being important.

[YianKutku]

Sokoban: Sorry I'm having a 'literally who' moment, who is this?

Presumably Soroban, first of the MSQ, then of the Four Lords sidequests. He apparently sacrificed himself to give his body to Genbu, and then afterwards was revealed to still be perfectly healthy, just with Genbu living in his head for now (and by "for now", Genbu means for the next couple of centuries). Personally I don't really mind this one, because the story didn't draw it out too long, and it was very obvious during the "everyone is sad" cutscene that Genbu was trying to tell everyone that Soroban was fine.

[Bright-Flower]

Presumably Soroban, first of the MSQ, then of the Four Lords sidequests. He apparently sacrificed himself to give his body to Genbu, and then afterwards was revealed to still be perfectly healthy, just with Genbu living in his head for now (and by "for now", Genbu means for the next couple of centuries). Personally I don't really mind this one, because the story didn't draw it out too long, and it was very obvious during the "everyone is sad" cutscene that Genbu was trying to tell everyone that Soroban was fine.

Ah yeah. Mostly that one irked me because it just kind of sapped any sense of weight out of the finale. I guess there was some humor in the other quests but it felt almost like the gag ending of a hildebrand quest.

[Anonymoose]

Lahabrea I almost wonder about because they keep bringing him up in the MSQ

If they intended for him to still be alive, they missed a grand opportunity to make it convincing: he could have been absorbed into the Eye of Nidhogg powering Ascalon, where he could have ridden out the torrent a la Y'shtola in the Lifestream long enough to ride out while the Eye was summoning/powering Shinryu. They even could have had him hang in Shinryu until side-jacking Zenos when he merged with the primal. (We had this theory as an alternative to the more obvious case of Elidibus possessing Zenos himself.)

On the other hand, back in 2.5, Nabriales spoke of the difference between the Originals and what I've been calling the "Transmigrationists." Nabriales said that he was a Transmigrationist while there were two Originals, Lahabrea and Elidibus.

DIGRESSION: The way he talked about it at the time, I assumed the Ascian overlords were raised within the worlds on which they were meant to oversee the Ascian presence, and that Nabriales was weaker on the Source because he was on a world he wasn't born in or assigned to. Shadowhunter suggested that this was not true, implying that all of the overlords were raised on the Source and that the Transmigrationists are those whose connection to it was severed so that they could invade the shards.

4.5 reframed the Ascian power structure, revealing that the Source had three Originals (at least), including the enigmatic and well-hidden Emet-selch. I've been suspicious that this "new revelation" was specifically because they wanted an Original to be part of the story, but couldn't bear the idea of undoing yet another death and using Lahabrea himself, lol.

[Cilia]

Sometimes, dead is better. Don't turn your kids into undead monsters with a cursed Indian burial ground, folks! Zombies are bad news bears!

Uhu. Let's go down the line.

Lousoix
-Ultimate fate left unclear. Presumed dead, but nobody was really sure what happened to him until T... T11, is it? (I never got that far in the Coils, lol.)

Minfillia
-Fate left unclear. Ran back into Flow - though we didn't know it at the time, once we learned Y'shtola's spell was a teleportation magick and not just some destructive blast, her survival was all but certain.

Gosetsu & Tsukuyomi
-This one I'll give you. We had no reason to believe they'd survived the collapse of Doma Castle, and nothing suggested their survival until 4.0's stinger showed us and 4.1 just told us the floor collapsed.

Zenos
-With his Resonance (fake Echo), the ability to cheat death isn't unexpected. That he survived suicide is a bit odd, but doing what he did isn't outside the realm of possibility (in-universe).

Nanamo
-They suckered us with this one hard. We never got to check her vitals, so survival, however unlikely based on what we knew, remained possible.

Gaius
-This one is probably the one I have the biggest gripe with. Stuck with no escape in an exploding military fortification. How he survived is beyond me (and the man himself doesn't mention exactly how he did it, just that he did), but given we didn't ever have the opportunity to tie his corpse to the bumper of our airship, it was still possible.

Sokoban [sic]
-They didn't clarify the rules governing what he did before it was revealed that Soroban had survived channeling Genbu. Ergo...

Papalymo (TBD)
-As far as we know, he's gone and dead (until he's not). We may not have a corpse to tie to the bumper of our airship, but between characters saying things like "his aether faded / was all used up in Shinryu's seal" and his appearance in the last image of 4.0's credits alongside the real Yda, his expiration is (currently) all but certain. I wouldn't tie his corpse to the bumper of my airship anyway. Or Gaius'. It's a figure of speech, y'know?

and the Warrior of Light
-Hasn't been killed yet in-story. Zenos-Elidibus came close, but Estinien's interference led to them (us?) getting the medical treatment they (we?) needed to survive.

[Anonymoose]

<Snip>

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you.

But, I'm super interested to hear your thoughts on Louisoix vs. Gaius when you juxtapose their objective positions versus your subjective analysis of them. We're told Bahamut virtually annihilated the VIIth Legion and most of the forces that didn't get to retreat. Louisoix was the last man in Carteneau. The last we saw of Bahamut, he was mid-cast-bar on his largest flare yet. A moment later, we see Louisoix, engulfed by blinding light. How is that any more or less unclear than the camera cutting away from Gaius still standing as a castrum collapsed around him? (Especially after he'd already exhibited that his armor could withstand an explosion which ejected him from the Ultima Weapon's cockpit, and the Ultima Weapon exploding again directly over his face a moment later.) Movie pyrotechnics alone tell us that you can't always trust a fireball to be an adequate indicator of concussive force or sustained temperature.