Quote Originally Posted by Carin-Eri View Post
I actually really didn't like him at first. I mean, he committed the cardinal sin of defeating the Warrior of Light in a one-on-one fight! I remember thinking "how the hell..." when that happened. We'd fought, and beaten Primals and Dragons by that point.

It wasn't until later in the story I realised that said loss was a wake-up call that we kinda needed. All those victories - all the praise - the fact that the Warrior of Light had pretty much become a 'trump card' to point at the biggest problems. And then we finally meet a challenge that we couldn't overpower. A challenge that didn't have Primal powers or the Echo but kicked the Warrior of Light's ass anyway, easily, and walked off as if it were not worth a second thought. I've since always felt that this was character development that both Zenos AND our character needed, particularly in terms of demonstrating to the Alliance/the Scions that pointing the WoL at the Big Bad may not be the answer to everything.

This meant that I, personally, enjoyed his endgame and character development in Endwalker. I mean, its difficult to ignore the fact that, regardless of why he did it, he acknowledged that the WoL was too busy engaging in heroics to fight him and later on, once he was done assisting us against Endsinger, he waited patiently for us to finish talking with Meteion before addressing us and offered to let us walk away if we wanted to. And whilst it was, unfortunately, not an option anyway (which was a little irritating) I actually think that he probably would’ve let us go.

What we saw was that Zenos had learned, in his own unique way, what it means to care for someone. His former demands of “I WILL have my contest!") changed to sincerely offering the WoL to share in the only form of happiness he understood. And he was finally able to see WoL as their own person. The way he referred to the WoL as “Adventurer” demonstrated that he understood there is a part of WoL that's difficult for them to express in the midst of all the heroics that were, more often than not, forced upon them. And we directly, and indirectly, gave him a purpose to live. It's what makes him an intriguing character.
This. All of this. And I think that most recent scene in the MSQ was the WoL finally acknowledging that he saw us as a friend.

I didn't like him much until Endwalker but I get the reason why now. I did always appreciate how he treated us like a person. So many people around us don't. Even Estinien has kind of jumped on the starry eyed WoL worship. So I enjoy interactions with characters like him and Fordola who bring us back down to earth a bit. I wouldn't mind seeing him back, if only so we could fight *with* him this time. Would be like having a Nero to my Cid and I could enjoy that.