A certain someone isn't coming back [Spoilers]

[KageTokage]

The fact that they specifically went and said "Yes, he's really dead" comes across to me as them specifically wanting to shut down speculation and quell any hopes/fears from his fans/haters...though that's evidently been only partially successful.

[Brinne]

Pffft, Yoshida isn't the boss of me. I will hang out with my bestie. I will challenge him to Triple Triad and chocobo racing. I will listen to Luke Allen-Gale shout "HAVE YOU THE ACCELERATION, MY FRIEND?" as he pops Super Sprint in the last leg of the race.

(In seriousness, I thought EW was a fantastic arc and ending for Zenos, but I still think it would have been hysterically funny and entertaining, now that he's basically been trained on how to be a proper Friend to the WoL, to have him tag along on dumb fetch quests and mini-games. I shall indeed be waiting for you upon the Island Sanctuary, my friend...)

[Hainiryun]

-1: (What is "Big hot tacos" and why does it play for him at the end of EW?)

-2: What happened to Exarch-Timeline Zenos? Did he die to black rose? If not, to what lengths would he go to find the WoL again.
*2.5: Zenos became Shinry by absorbing his aether completely. What's to say he can't absorb Alexander and use the power of time. For him, something like this would be no less than expected.

-4: How did the Exarch-Timeline Umbral Calamity happen if Zenos Killed Varis to stop the black rose? Did this happen differently in the new timeline?
*4.5: The flood of light in the first wasn't responsible for Black Rose existing. It only increased the potency. But the Black Rose ended up not being used at all in our timeline. Why/How/What changed?

1 -The lyric is is "Beat the Heart of Sabik", from the Primals version of the Ultima Weapon theme. It plays there because the Final Day's phase 1 music is a medley of all the final boss themes across every expansion and doesn't have much to do with Zenos himself.

2/4 - It's implied from the SHB intro cinematic that in the original timeline we beat Elidibus in Zenos's body at Ghimlyt, whereas in our timeline the Exarch's summoning attempts caused us to lose and need rescuing. This is also likely why the Black Rose wasn't deployed. In the Original timeline we kept pushing the Garleans back to the point of desperation, in the new timeline we and the Scions were away on the First and couldn't press the Garleans as heavily, meaning Varis never got pushed to that point before he died. Essentially the Exarch's interference managed to remove both causes for the 8th Umbral Calamity by both preventing the First being primed for a rejoining and unintentionally removing the impetus for the Black Rose to be deployed so widely in the first place.

What happened to Zenos in this case isn't ever explicitly spelled out but given the light enhanced Rose's effect on Aether he probably wouldn't have been able to keep body hopping if he did get hit with it. Again his wereabouts in that timeline are unstated but it can be inferred that Zenos did not kill Varis in that timeline. He might have died/never regained his body/regained his body at Ghimlyt without the opportunity to return to Garlemald before the Rose was deployed or any number of other things. It's defintiely never been implied that the Zenos we deal with is from the other timeline and we have rough continuity on his movements from his first death through to regaining his body so that seems very unlikely all things considered.

[Iscah]

(In seriousness, I thought EW was a fantastic arc and ending for Zenos, but I still think it would have been hysterically funny and entertaining, now that he's basically been trained on how to be a proper Friend to the WoL, to have him tag along on dumb fetch quests and mini-games. I shall indeed be waiting for you upon the Island Sanctuary, my friend...)

As much as I am (A) sick of him and (B) not particularly wanting to see him redeemed, I have to ponder that outcome too. After he's spent all this time stomping after us going "we're both the same! So bloodthirsty! We both just love killing things, right?!" and yet I think this is actually the first time he's seen how we deal with a defeated enemy who isn't still trying to fight us, and that we show compassion to Meteion rather than pursuing her to the death.

Some part of me would like for that to have made an impression on him, and perhaps in a bizarre slightly-comic AU, he might hit a sort of is this the true source of strength?! revelation and start clumsily trying to be nice to people to work out where we're coming from.

[kaynide]

The fact that they specifically went and said "Yes, he's really dead" comes across to me as them specifically wanting to shut down speculation and quell any hopes/fears from his fans/haters...though that's evidently been only partially successful.

Agreed. I hope it’s honestly just put to bed.

[Aiden_Gardner]

The fact that they specifically went and said "Yes, he's really dead" comes across to me as them specifically wanting to shut down speculation and quell any hopes/fears from his fans/haters...though that's evidently been only partially successful.

But we know he can come back from death though? That's what has been tripping me up so much between this interview and the recent Q&A, that they focus so much on saying "See, he physically died, he's gone" like we didn't watch him slit his own throat at the end of Stormblood lmao.

He is for sure coming back, otherwise they would have said that he had burned up his corporeal and spiritual aether in the fight against the WoL. They gave that answer to explain that Hydaelyn was gone for good, but didn't use it on the one character that we would need that level of being "actually for reals dead this time".

Plus his avatar is a dangling thread that Yoshi-P said to focus on that never got resolved. He's coming back (or at least his body is anyway).

[KageTokage]

They came out and said that seemingly because people didn't get the impression from the Q&A that he was actually dead, so they needed to spell it out even more plainly...though at this point I don't think everyone will believe it unless we run into him in the Lifestream or something.

He literally said he wanted to die, and that was proof enough for me that he was actually gone, since it quite frankly would've been idiotic to defy his stated intent again after he had already cheated death once to get what he wanted.

[Aiden_Gardner]

They came out and said that seemingly because people didn't get the impression from the Q&A that he was actually dead, so they needed to spell it out even more plainly...though at this point I don't think everyone will believe it unless we run into him in the Lifestream or something.

He literally said he wanted to die, and that was proof enough for me that he was actually gone, since it quite frankly would've been idiotic to defy his stated intent again after he had already cheated death once to get what he wanted.

Am I reading the same interview? None of the answers say that his role in the narrative is complete. There's a bunch of "He died" replies but again, that doesn't matter, we know he can come back from physical death. They could clear this up in an instant by saying that he consumed his spiritual aether in the battle, and that he's gone for real like they did with Hydaelyn. The fact that they keep insisting that he's gone because he died physically is probably the biggest hint that he's coming back lmao

That being said, I think we're mostly just gonna see his body down the road (controlled by his avatar) with Zenos himself showing up very rarely, perhaps only at the end.

[Enkidoh]

I'd definitely put Emet in the field of 'dark and edgy pretty men'. Even if he's more than just 'dark and edgy pretty man' by story, it really can't be discounted that a big part of his appeal really was that he's a charismatic villain with something resembling a point, who is also by objective measures an uber-war-criminal, and wizard of darkness, whose true name is from the god of the underworld. If you're into Zenos because of the 'dark and edgy factor', you're into Emet-Selch for the same reasons, even if there's other appeals there too.

For the record, my gut-vibe of characters competing with Zenos in the field of 'dark and edgy pretty man'...

-Estinien (the diet variant)
-Emet-Selch
-Gaius, but only post-Stormblood
-Elidibus (not dark palette-wise, but definitely tonally, and edgy enough to compensate)
-Mitron if you're into a fixer-upper job
-Fandaniel, in two different flavors
-Hesperos

And let's be honest, if you want to flex into headcanon, the only Ascians that can't fit into this are the ones that are canonically women (Igeyorhm, Loghrif, Emmerololth). Even then, there's an angle you can work.

But in Stormblood when Zenos was current, none of them were really a thing. Estinien existed, sure, but wasn't really a major player (or known as hot). Dark and edgy women were putting up good numbers at the time (Fordola, Yotsuyu, Ysayle was still semi-recent), but I think we all have to admit that they serve different fanbases without as massive an overlap as you might first think; Zenos and Yotsuyu appeal to different crowds. Zenos was the only 'edgy man' game in town around Stormblood; it's just that over time that market split.

Thank you for reading (or more likely skipping over) my pointless and semi-serious deliberation on FFXIV shipping/character-focused fanbases. I have put too much thought into this. I could do a whole presentation on this, but I don't really have much in the way of a thesis statement, and also nobody cares.

I'm sorry for jumping back to this (as I only just noticed your reply to me Cleretic) but, you're fine! I actually liked your deliberation! (And it wasn't pointless at all! )

My comment about Zenos being an edgy prettyboy was more just about his physical appearence (read: hair) that gave that stereotype than anything else as far as I was concerned (Emet after all had short hair, well, as his young Solus form - it was a little longer but still just above the shoulders shortish in his original form), I admit though, I guess that was more just because of my own preferences, as I'm not really into long-haired men, I tend to prefer mine more shorter haired and more intelligent (like Cid ), and unfortunately Zenos never really struck me as being intelligent (no, I'm not going to make blonde jokes here), he was just a bored, spoiled princeling whose entire existence was pure hedonism. Which probably did not help his descent into sociopathy.

Irony is, Emet (as Solus) probably did not help things either with his constant bellitlement of Zenos and his father for having "inferior bodies", not even understanding the context why Emet was like that.

I do agree Emet in hindsight did have a certain edgyness to him, but he tended to keep it cleverly concealled under his constant one-liners and monologuing, but you did see some of it slip out in the Capitol just before the Amaurot dungeon, and definetely after that (witness his outright rage when Alphinaud dared compare his suffering of losing the Ancient civilization to the suffering of the Sundered, it was like Alphy had not just pressed his buttons but outright smashed them). So I conceded on that too in hindsight.

And as for Emet apparently getting a pass for all the despicable acts he perpetuated over the years, he doesn't for me - I hate him with every fibre of my being for everything he did, every war-mongering empire he created from the Allag to Eulmore, and especially his own sociapathic manipulation of the WoL throughout ShB (culminating in the clearly sadistic pleasure he took seeing the WoL succumb to the corrupted light and the almost unabashed glee and anticipation of them turning into a sineater), he was an utter monster of the highest order.

And yet, unlike Zenos, who simply pursued the WoL for a single-minded purpose of just trying to regain that single moment he finally felt something, Emet redeemed himself by finally accepting he was wrong, finally allowing himself to rest, and, saving the WoL on several occassions (from Elidibus in the Seat of Sacrifice, and of course, the big climax in Ultima Thule), and for that, and his zany antics and one liners indeared him to me in a way Zenos never could. (Where as Zenos was never funny).

Ah well, I don't know, I guess Zenos was just a villian that was, by Yoshi's own addmitance, to be a hate sink, and thus doomed to always meant to be hated and well, they well and truely succeeded on that level as far as I'm concerned. I'm just glad he's now gone, as he just well and truely outstayed his welcome.

[kyzy]

I think it would be really cool if Zenos came back, but in a specific way;

We think hes dead but his avatar possesses his body the moment we teleport out and heals it, 'locking' his soul into the back-seat of said body. The voidsent then is fully in control. Could have for an interesting villain.

In the end we kill said villain, giving bestie his body back, but hes like completely changed because hes been in a prison effectively watching atrocities and we are the ones who free'd him.

He then becomes our rival like in Pokemon, occasionally battling us, sometimes helping us. LOL