Reviving Classic Seasonal Banners
I thought it was interesting that FEH not only brought back an old seasonal theme with the August yukata banner this year, but also basically duplicated its original lineup (aside from the Harmonic, which the original predated) -- Fates princes (Ryoma and Xander/Takumi and Leo) + Tellius girls (Micaiah and Elincia/Mia and Lucia). So I wanted to see what it may be like if they were to take a similar philosophy with some other lost banner concepts.
Starting with the oldest seasonal banner to have never returned -- the original Performing Arts banner, separate even from the other "dancer" banners we got (ballroom and the OG yukatas), focused on canon dancers and their sons in outfits inspired by Azura's Cyrkensian songstress outfit from Conquest. If we pivot from sons to other relatives, we get pretty easy candidates out of Tethys, Ewan, Ninian, Nils, Reyson, and Leanne, giving us a nice mixture of popular but underrepresented characters (+ Ninian). Pair off two of them as the duo -- my vote would be Nils + Ninian, keeping the most represented character on the banner on the sidelines, but Leanne + Reyson would at least keep Ewan, who is the closest in concept to the original banner's Inigo and Shigure as a non-dancer -- and you have a banner that I think would go over pretty well.
Duo Nils + Ninian
5-star Tethys
5-star Leanne
Demote Ewan
Tempest Reyson
Performing Arts's sister concept, Ballroom, got two runs before being deleted. While both focused on Jugdral, the first combined it with Valentia + one Tellius guest star while the second stuck to a full Genealogy line-up. Since copying the setup of the latter would probably land pretty similarly to the later Scions banner, we'll stick to the former. Take a canon Valentian couple (Berkut and Rinea become Clive and Mathilda) and a doomed romance from Thracia (Ishtar and Reinhardt become Linoan and Deen) and you've already got a strong list of characters. The advent of duos allows our random third wheel to get a dance partner of her own, so we switch out Nephenee for Sheena (in honor of her gorgeous Cipher card) and let Samson tag along. (Alternatively, sticking to Tellius, you could get Elincia + Geoffrey or Lucia, Ilyana + Zihark or Mia, Mia + Rhys, Mist + Boyd or Jill, or, God forbid, Astrid + Malakov. Personally, I like Sheena's Cipher card, lol.)
Duo Clive + Mathilda
5-star Linoan
5-star Sheena
Demote Deen
Tempest Samson
Next, we have the first of two experimental banners from 2019, and by far the more controversial: Hot Springs. This banner was lambasted for bringing in more alts of the Fates royals during a time when they had the monopoly on alts, having oversexualized younger(-looking) characters, skipping over male candidates aside from one, and slotting its most popular candidate into the Tempest Trial with bad art. With the strongest Fates candidates for a similar setup already covered, we pivot to the new overrepresented group and slot its most popular character in as a backpack (and for fun, let's say drawn by cuboon) for:
Duo F!Byleth + Edelgard
5-star Dimitri
5-star Sothis
Demote Flayn
Tempest Rhea
The second 2019 banner is Picnics, which was generally better received but whose weirdness couldn't compete with the following year's anniversary celebration of Archanea children. Picnics gave some much-needed representation to Valentia in addition to some underrepresented Fates characters (with Felicia and Flora's first alts and Leo's second, after he was left out from Hot Springs). A similar concept with the addition of a Harmonic gives us:
Harmonic Selkie + Delthea
5-star Clair
5-star Subaki
Demote Setsuna
Tempest Valbar
Pirates, the deceased sister to the ongoing Ninjas concept, also saw two runs before being unceremoniously killed off, making it difficult to perfectly recreate; however, it did have a few consistent elements: Heroes villains (Veronica followed by Surtr), Tellius birds (Tibarn followed by Naesala and Vika), Fates royals (Xander followed by Hinoka and Camilla), canon pirates (the original line-up in its entirety minus the Harmonic, but carried by Lifis in the second year), and a mostly mixed setup (year 2's duo and Tellius birds being the only duplication). We keep the Fates royal duo (Takumi and Leo over Xander/Hinoka and Camilla), keep going in chronological order for Heroes villains (Hel over Veronica/Surtr), bring along the last canon member of the Pirate class (Dart), and let Tibarn's boyfriend match him (Reyson over Tibarn/Naesala). The last slot is a wildcard that could go to another bird (probably Janaff, Ulki, or Nealuchi) or a random character (maybe Edain, Dew, or Patty to match Brigid?), but because this is a male-heavy banner already and there's not enough of a pattern to definitively recreate (though there is something to be said for Vika being another character with no base version, supporting Janaff/Ulki/Nealuchi), I'm going to double up on Heroes villains to give Eitri a spot. (Should probably go to Freyja, but she's gotten an alt before.)
Duo Takumi + Leo
5-star Hel
5-star Eitri
Demote Reyson
Tempest Dart
September's dancers became, for one year only, a celebration of all things Genealogy (+ a little Thracia), which would eventually morph into the "tribal" banners (I guess they're all celebrations of culture, but I wish they hadn't committed so hard to Fates... hopefully this year?) Unlike it's tribal counterparts, the Festival of the Twelve focused entirely on Jugdral's cast, with no characters invited along to experience the different culture, and also making it basically a Gen 2 equivalent to the Jugdral Ballroom banner (as I alluded to above). As such, a 1:1 recreation switching in Gen 1 equivalents would be pretty boring (duo Sigurd/Quan, 5-star Eldigan, 5-star Ayra, demote Deirdre, Tempest Ethlyn). So we'll stick just to the idea of Gen 2: bring in the last remaining son of the school trio (Ares over Seliph), a character who counts as both Thracia and Genealogy in the Harmonic (Ced over Leif), and a Gen 1 character who returns as a mentor (Finn over Lewyn), then fill in the rest with other Crusader descendants, and you get:
Harmonic Tine + Ced
5-star Ares
5-star Finn
Demote Altena
Tempest Saias
Next, Pirates' first replacement: Thieves. The Thieves banner was another pretty poorly-received banner because of its odd lineup, overly sexualized outfits, and most popular character getting a demote slot seemingly just because he was male (his only competition being the duo's backup). That said, the weirdness of it makes it pretty fun to recreate, lol. We've got a moderately (or at least relatively) popular unit who was a demote on her debut banner (switch Cath for Patty), an NPC outshining her playable counterpart[s] (switch Leila for Ursula), a male thief who generally outranks the females on the banner but gets demoted anyway (switch Sothe for Gaius), a male thief without a base version (switch Rickard for Astolfo), and a Duo with so little cohesion it might as well be a Harmonic including one arguably overrepresented character as the backpack (switch Nina/Kagero for Petra/Ingrid).
Duo Petra + Ingrid
5-star Patty
5-star Ursula
Demote Gaius
Tempest Astolfo
And lastly, our other Pirates replacement. Teatime has very similar energy to Picnics both in its character choices, reception, and overall feel, and I could see it coming back this year considering the Yukata banner didn't do great. It gave us alts from an underrepresented game (Genealogy) as well as underrepresented characters from an overrepresented game, much like Picnics did. We can pretty much do the exact same lineup by switching in a different CYL winner with surprisingly few alts (Marianne over Lysithea), a male Three Houses character closely associated with one of the lords (Dedue over Ferdinand), the poster child for Genealogy alts but Gen 2 version this time (Julia over Sigurd), a popular Genealogy character who's been treated pretty poorly (Seliph over Tailtiu), and a Genealogy character who is long overdue for their first alt paired with a tangentially similar Three Houses character (Finn and Rodrigue over Ayra and Mercedes). Personally, I'd rather see the hypothetical next Teatime lineup tackle a different pair of games (Valentia and Engage, please), but this feels more in the spirit of this post.
Harmonic Finn + Rodrigue
5-star Marianne
5-star Seliph
Demote Dedue
Tempest Julia
