What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Lauront]

I find Zenos preferable to the likes of G'raha or Alphinaud, but that isn't saying a great deal. Again, my enjoyment of him peaked in 4.0. His main use to me in 6.0 was a palate cleanser from all the syropy Alphirants (could be any Scion.) I really hope any future use of him is limited to his avatar, as I think his story has now had a fitting conclusion in EW.

Exactly. Everything that could have made the character interesting in game was relegated to side stories locked behind books that are never in print and Q&A questions that just happen to get answered. If you hadn't done the RPR questline you wouldn't even know that about an avatar and the soul. They handled his character terribly. But I still love my best friend.

I still can't believe they just casually explained him having dreams of the Final Days as "because he's Emet-Selch's great-grandson..." People were out here thinking he'd been experimented on in the womb and all kinds of wild stuff. But they never even bothered to put that information in the game, just matter-of-factly "duh, he's related to an Ascian". Imagine if no one had asked that question? We may never have known.

I never took that speculation too seriously, because Fandaniel was just spitballing at the end of the day. What did strike me as a possibility was that Emet-Selch may have ferried over a specific soul to become his. Some people actually think it's fact that he was experimented on, but I think they're misreading what Elidibus and Varis were discussing, certainly supported by the fact that the FR version has Elidibus attribute his use as a test subject to Varis and not the Ascians - a more logical reading of that, IMO, is that Elidibus was referring to being able to observe the outcome of Zenos's self-experimentation using the Resonance following Aulus's dismissal from the imperial court. Even if Varis thought his son was a madman, Aulus's research could (and did) prove valuable to the Empire.

Zenos would have felt threatening if he was actually doing bad guy stuff during the ShB patches, rather than just lounging around waiting for the next expac to happen (and even then, Zenos pretty much spends most of Endwalker doing nothing). Maybe he should have been trying to pursue the WoL to the First. Or maybe he would waltz into Mor Dhona or Ul'dah and start slaughtering people left and right until the WoL came. Or if the WoL was unreachable, maybe he would start hunting down Hraesvelgr and trying to derive entertainment from killing him. At least then there would have been tension from him. What Zenos did to the people of Garlemald is sad, but I literally met Jullus 10 minutes ago. For a villain so obsessed with trying to get a fight with the WoL, you'd think that he would try making the WoL extremely motivated to fight by killing the people or destroying places that the WoL cares about. But that ties back into nothing bad ever befalling heroes.

Yes, if he offed some of them and it stuck, I might've been more interested.

Zenos was a mistake. An uninteresting villain with only a mildly intriguing physical appearance. Most of his on screen time was linked to teases that went nowhere. Please do not waste my time like that again.

Aka the majority of SHB and a good chunk of EW.

As for Metetion, I had no interest in spending further time with her. Quite honestly, I'm annoyed we didn't put her down and allowed her to go free at the end to... sing more?! Cause that's not how we ended up in this mess in the first place or anything. :P Sure, she's cute and arguably innocent, but that doesn't make her not dangerous or suddenly forgiven for trying to wipe out all life in the universe. I'm particularly annoyed that she got a second chance, better antagonists than her never did.

Yeah, that's a good point. She does nothing for me as a character in all honesty. I'd rather that was the end of her.