[All The Spoilers] Can we talk about Zodiark?

[Rosenstrauch]

So, uh - shouldn't there still be 5 more Zodiarks out there, on the moons of the 5 remaining sundered shards?

If not, why not?

That's actually a really good question. The same is true for Hydaelyn—there could potentially be five more of Her hiding out in the remaining shards' aetherial seas. Or they could all be dead because Source!Hydaelyn is dead. It's possible that this will be covered in patch content—Ryne seemed pretty concerned about Hydaelyn's imminent death when we visited her, at least.

[Melorie]

I felt that it was extremely rushed. I was looking forward to meet Zodiark and see another layer of the melancholy that this primal most likely had, given the history behind their creation, and explore the moon in an actual interesting way. But Fandaniel explanations were pretty meh, there was 0 emotional connection to the whole thing and the moon-bunny-base was way more time-consuming than it should have been. The moon was probably the worst map of the expansions, easily, even though it was the most hyped.

Also Zenos hanging around after the scene felt sooo out of place.

[Floortank]

(TL;DR AT THE END)
We had a perfect villain! We had Zodiark! Why? Why!? WHY?!?!

By 5.55 we literally knew nothing about Zodiark besides that he was a Primal summoned to stop the Final Days. Where was the villainy? Where was the greatness?

Emet-Selch and Lahabrea never characterized Zodiark as a villain, and the 6.0 story bears out that depiction. It was simply a thing that happened. It got no personality or motive of its own, that we ever got to see anywhere at any point.

I think once the writer(s) decided that Emet-Selch's ambition should have some emotional depth and resonance, Zodiark then could not be whatever it was implied to be. It became subordinate to the sense that the Ascians were victims of something else.

And that something else was Meteion.

[Elleia]

I will say, we also know from Shadowbringers that the Final Days came and then Zodiark was summoned in response. So the whole time the question of "who or what caused the Final Days" was always lurking in the back of our minds.

It was never going to be Zodiark, because he didn't exist at that point.

[NegativeS]

I will say, we also know from Shadowbringers that the Final Days came and then Zodiark was summoned in response. So the whole time the question of "who or what caused the Final Days" was always lurking in the back of our minds.

It was never going to be Zodiark, because he didn't exist at that point.

Sure, but the cause could potentially have been sundered along with the star. The ancients had no idea that the cause of the Final Days was coming from off-world.

All we knew before the events in Elpis were that Zodiark was bad and ate babies, but his existence stopped the end of days from happening.

It would have made more sense to me if we addressed the root cause of the star's cancer before taking it off life support, but that's just me...

[Rokke]

Zodiark was effectively declawed the moment we killed Elidibus. There was no way he'd be the final boss after SHB.

[Elleia]

It would have made more sense to me if we addressed the root cause of the star's cancer before taking it off life support, but that's just me...

Well yeah, that would have been ideal, but Fandaniel's plan was to kill Zodiark all along and he kind of forced our hand. If we had left him and the towers be to go search for the cause of the Final Days, he probably would have found a way to end Zodiark all the same.

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

All we knew before the events in Elpis were that Zodiark was bad and ate babies, but his existence stopped the end of days from happening.

That's not exactly true. We knew he was summoned to stop the Final Days, we knew that Elidabus was his heart the same as Venat was the heart of Hydaelyn. But nowhere was it ever stated that Zodiark was "evil".

In fact I'd go to say that the entire point of Shadowbringers was to show us that the conventional terms of "darkness" and "light" aren't evil and good, they are grey. It's how they are used, indulged, etc.

Zodiark was merely a tool. His personality we already knew, it was Elidebus. Once he left the core of Zodiark, Zodiark sat empty. Just a force of nature, like you said in the original post.

If anything this makes us relate to Emet, Laha and Elidabus even more. They were merely doing what they thought was right. Granted, sacrificing the lives of everyone on the shards to restore the sundered ancients and allow Zodiark to bring back those were used to summon him, we see as genocide. But the crux of the matter that we learn through Emet was how the Ancients didn't consider the sundered, lesser beings "beings". It's like how we look at an ant. We don't even concern ourselves with one that's crawling around our shoes, and we accidently step on them without realizing it.

From their point of view, they were trying to save their people. That's why Emet's line at the very end of EW was so impactful. His ideals were invincible. To be fair, they kind of were. Zodiark was a shield against the final days. As long as Zodiark existed, our star was safe.

But he concedes that our ideals have even more merit, by saying that their methods wouldn't have brought them this far. Zodiark was a stall tactic, a way to protect their people. We showed that with balance, both aetherial and dynamis, we could go further than they could, and prevented the final days.

We gave him hope. That was the entire point of the expansion, to show that hope is a powerful force.

[Haruka_R]

What bothers me more than anything is not knowing who I was before waking up in a carriage with the twins. I know lots of people want that open to interpretation but I am not one of them. I would like a bit more background on myself. Was I born? Conjured? Created? How did I get on that carriage? Then I will be ready to move on.

Is that actually a thing to think about? I assumed we were just traveling to a city to make some coin.

[van_arn]

The more you learn about an antagonistic force, the weaker it seems. That's just what happened to Zodiark.

Your mind fills in the gaps with spooky scary bad.

Fear of the unknown and unknowable is why horror works, and why explaining the unexplainable causes horror to lose its edge.

I don't think Zodiark was ever "evil" in Shadowbringers, though. Maybe an antagonist to our mom, but stopping the final days is a very beneficial thing-- even if that were accomplished by self-sacrifice. Emet's plan was certainly evil, but Zodiark itself just spent Shadowbringers chilling in the moon doing its job.

If anything, Zodiark's creation was far more noble than Hydaelyn's sundering: Zodiark was made from willing self-sacrifice, but the Sundering was forced upon everyone and everything.