Warrior of Darkness: alter ego or something completely different?

[myahele]

I also personally believe that derplander and co are the Warriors of Light of 1.0; after all, people mentioned a group of Warriors of Light pre-calamity and if you're a legacy player then you were one of them.

From 2.0 onwards our character ends up re-establishing the WoL status and eventually the rest were forgotten. Who knows, maybe WoD and his crew were intercepted by an Ascien (or Zodiark pulling a Hydaelin) and slowly convinced them to be on their side. There's a lot we don't know Echo and Hydaelin, but there are plenty of hints in game that the Ascien aren't that "bad"

Elidibus did say we'll join his side if we knew the truth. The Path of Knowing (Minfilia's group pre-scions) consisted of echo-users trying to find out more about the echo. Apparently, they go on journeys to learn more, but once they return they learn disturbing things that's best left unsaid. Then there's also the Archon/ echo wielder joining "cloaked mages"

I don't have the quote, but they did mention that the derplander and co are "real" character within the game and who knows if we'll "bump" into them.

Louisoix specifically time warps the WoLs in 1.0 .... maybe they were transported a little bit later into the game's timeline like after our character became the de facto WoL and gained Hydaelin's blessing? In other words, there was not much they could do since the we already defeated the primals/Garleans. All they could see was just the aftermath: threat was removed but things are still a mess

I think Darklander and WoD!Broegadyn are real, in-game characters, while DRG Derplander continues to take "our" place in the few scenes they showed.

Time will tell.

My thoughts exactly! There's the character-insert derplander used for promos and then there's the WoD Derplander. Thematically, it kinda shows (to us) the 2 sides of the same coin type of thing since they're using the same model for promo WoL and WoD