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

[Layte_Aeon]

That probably won't be a bad idea. 3.0 and 4.0 both had extremely unsympathetic main villains, with some secondary villains with deeper nuance. Naturally, for 5.0 they took a chance with Emet-Selch and it paid off, but then they tried the same thing in 6.0 to questionable results.

The only question is if SE accepts that and stops trying to recapture the Emet-Selch lightning.

I mean even then Thordan and Zenos weren't without some degree of depth: Thordan was right in that Nidhogg would never accept any apology or attempt at restitution, to the point that even Midgardsormr had to admit he needed to be put down, and Zenos was, if I remember rightly, our first look at a non Cid Garlean who didn't actually have much good to say about Garlemald, outright declaring what moved them wasn't a sense of justice or righteousness but fear.

[Theodric]

Zenos was originally intended to be completely without redeeming qualities. The writers just backtracked on that and tried to awkwardly tack on a sob story and push him as a 'mirror' to the player character.

In itself both likely done to make up for the fact that even the outright unhinged bad guys are never really allowed to do anything truly messed up unless it affects minor, meaningless characters or other antagonists.

The solo duty in Garlemald was an excellent opportunity to have Zenos eliminate a Scion or at least severely maim them. The one sided trauma trains are wearing rather thin.

[aveyond-dreams]

Zenos was originally intended to be completely without redeeming qualities. The writers just backtracked on that and tried to awkwardly tack on a sob story and push him as a 'mirror' to the player character.

In itself both likely done to make up for the fact that even the outright unhinged bad guys are never really allowed to do anything truly messed up unless it affects minor, meaningless characters or other antagonists.

The solo duty in Garlemald was an excellent opportunity to have Zenos eliminate a Scion or at least severely maim them. The one sided trauma trains are wearing rather thin.

Thancred fulfilling his role as protector by giving his life to shield the party from Zenos would have made for a far more impactful sacrifice than turning into the atmosphere in Ultima Thule. There was so much anticipation and buildup in the Shadowbringers patches surrounding Zenos but almost all of it amounted to nothing. I'm not sure who deserves the crown of worst villain in the entire Final Fantasy franchise. Him, Hermes, or Venat.

[Jagick]

Zenos was originally intended to be completely without redeeming qualities. The writers just backtracked on that and tried to awkwardly tack on a sob story and push him as a 'mirror' to the player character.

In itself both likely done to make up for the fact that even the outright unhinged bad guys are never really allowed to do anything truly messed up unless it affects minor, meaningless characters or other antagonists.

The solo duty in Garlemald was an excellent opportunity to have Zenos eliminate a Scion or at least severely maim them. The one sided trauma trains are wearing rather thin.

I despised Zenos as a character and as a villain (not in a good way) ever since our long haired, three gorillion times folded katana wielding friend stepped onto the screen, defeated everyone with his pinky finger, and then uttered the word "Pathetic..." without any hint of irony.

But I am also a person who can't stand shonen anime villain tropes like that. Micah from RDR2 is an example of a villain with no redeeming qualities that I loved but Zenos? God I wish he'd just go and stay go. At the very least let him do something of value while he's here. Otherwise, why did they bother resurrecting him at all? I was so happy when we "killed" him in Stormblood.

[Sarkany]

Zenos is a case of a villain who I can understand without redeeming. I kind of put him in the same category as Emet - given what we know about how they got here, I can understand why they do what they do, but I still think it's not okay. We know, at least to some extent, why Zenos does what he does. I can understand that feeling of emptiness, and being willing to do anything that makes you feel something again. They were trying to make him more sympathetic; I don't think they were actually trying to redeem him. I didn't really view him as a mirror to WoL, though - I can see how he was meant to be one, but Zenos's reason for what he does is the thrill of the fight, whereas WoL is generally actually trying to help people.

[Rulakir]

Zenos was one of the few things I liked about EW (despite not liking him in SB or ShB). His crashing in on Endsinger was one of the highlights of the entire, awful experience for me. I also probably would've loved "In from the Cold" had it resulted in more than trolling.

I didn't find him to be sympathetic, so if that was the intent then chalk that up to another writing failure (similar to Hermes). I saw him as more akin to Vegeta in DBZ, which I personally loved. I wanted to say, "I'm constantly facing increasingly tougher challenges. Instead of you going off alone trying to become Super Saiyan in a vain effort to beat me, you should just come along for the ride." :P I know that's not a popular opinion, but I easily would've traded most of the Scions for him. He'd have made things a lot more interesting from my POV!

I did not like the mirror comparison though. Matter of fact, I hated all of the personality that EW tried to impose not only upon the WoL but Azem as well. No, my Azem is not a "chaos gremlin". No, my WoL is not in it because they're a murder hobo. Writers, get your headcanon off my characters.

As for Meteion/Endsinger, I agree she was a terrible 'final encounter'. I was completely unmoved by everything from her falling to her knees at the Elpis flowers to the lame hand holding with the WoL at the end. (Not to mention the forced narrative that the unsundered world wasn't capable of producing an answer to Hermes' question, but that's another rant.) I wonder how much of a translation issue this was too because Meteion seemed to care a lot more about Hermes than he did about her (or really anyone but himself).

[Katoar]

Thancred fulfilling his role as protector by giving his life to shield the party from Zenos would have made for a far more impactful sacrifice than turning into the atmosphere in Ultima Thule. There was so much anticipation and buildup in the Shadowbringers patches surrounding Zenos but almost all of it amounted to nothing. I'm not sure who deserves the crown of worst villain in the entire Final Fantasy franchise. Him, Hermes, or Venat.

Again, why is Venat a villain when she theoretically prevented the extinction of intelligent life?

[Silver-Strider]

Again, why is Venat a villain when she theoretically prevented the extinction of intelligent life?

Because she hid what she knew from her people and decided to cover it up entirely by sundering them instead of telling them what she knew so they could devise an actual counter measure to Meteion.

It's like a Scientist that covered their mistake in a project that ended up killing people and only years after the fact on their deathbed do they start to tell the truth of what happened.

[Jagick]

Again, why is Venat a villain when she theoretically prevented the extinction of intelligent life?

The reason the Reapers are the villains in Mass Effect when they genocide the galaxy because they can't possibly stop the imminent genocide (that they will supposedly bring upon themselves.) Venat committed genocide to avert genocide that may not actually happen because there may yet be other ways to prevent it.

Additional edit: It all really comes full circle. The Ascians are attempting to do exactly what Venat did but in reverse, and yet only one is a villain? In Shadowbringers I was pumped to stop Emet-Selch because his plan was madness. Kill EVERYONE to restore the true world that Venat destroyed. Only the ancients are fit to live and stop all the madness. Meanwhile Hydaelyn sunders the world, killing so many, because only the future people are fit to live and stop all the madness. Only they with far less resources, knowledge, and perspective (spread across several different worlds with no contact with one another) can possibly solve this problem. It reminds me of the "Cycle of Eternal Return" in Dragon's Dogma. There is no real happy ending.

It's basically just Ouroboros. The Ascians now are wrong. Venat back then was wrong. And now because of time travel BS the cycle just kind of repeats itself when it never had to happen (and may not have happened) to begin with.

Additional ADDITIONAL edit: You may not realize it, but you are inadvertently arguing in favor of a peculiar form of eugenics. Venat basically wiped out the ancient race to create new races she thought were better fit to survive and stop all of this rather than giving her own people a chance.

[Katoar]

Because she hid what she knew from her people and decided to cover it up entirely by sundering them instead of telling them what she knew so they could devise an actual counter measure to Meteion.

It's like a Scientist that covered their mistake in a project that ended up killing people and only years after the fact on their deathbed do they start to tell the truth of what happened.

If she tells them all that she knows about the Final Days and works with the Ancients to successfully avert the looming tragedy a time paradox is created. The Warrior of Light would have never existed. No one would have ever travelled back in time to inform her of the calamity that is yet to unfold. Venat will not have been able to avert the Final Days because she doesn't know anything about them. And we are at the place where the Ancients never survived through the Final Days and everyone either died out or sacrificed themselves to Zodiark because Venat didn't set the world asunder because she held to no hope for a brighter future since no Warrior of Light came from the future to her time to inform her of what lies ahead.

Venat having to stay silent and let the calamity unfold was the least illogical way of preventing or handling the Time Paradox created by our Time travel.