Hot take - none of the dead primarchs should come back.
Doing so would ruin their story and the meaning of their lives and deaths
I know we all love them and want them alive forever but their characters had a full, round arc and a place in the story which is now over and beautifully finished. They are tragedies with super sad endings but that’s the beauty of these characters.
The death of Konrad was essential and meaningful to his whole tragedy character arc. If you bring him back to life you undo everything his death symbolizes and means. Also, what do you do with him at this point in the story? His story is finished, well thought out, etc etc - his time in the story is finished.
The reason Guilliman out of all primarchs was brought back is because he had very little character development or challenges in 30k. He’s the most privileged primarch who lived life with a silver spoon, and now, he faces hardship for the first time in his life, and goes thru character development. He’s an otherwise fairly neural character who can just vibe in the background.
Sanguinius’s death was deeply symbolic. It symbolized the cost of the Heresy, Horus’s fall and corruption, Sanguinius’s relationship with fate and his vision of death, etc. Bringing him back to life makes these moments pointless and weightless. The reason his story is so impactful, the reason the story of the Heresy hits as hard as it does is because there is real cost and consequences.
That’s one of the things that makes Warhammer / The Horus Heresy such a good story (wether you realize this or not), is that it’s not a fairytale format. Actions have consequences, people die, there is no magic rescue or magic saving of anyone. There is weight to everything.
Bringing Ferrus back to life would undo and make meaningless everything about Fulgrim’s arc. His death is what sent Fulgrim down his dark spiral and still keeps him there. The finality of murder, that what he’s done can’t be undone, his belief in being irredeemable. Bringing Ferrus back would make all this shallow and meaningless.
See I was a huge Supernatural fan when it aired and I can tell you ALL about the trap of constantly bringing back beloved characters for the sake of fan service: by the end nothing meant anything anymore. No death, no sacrifice, no danger meant anything anymore nor had any weight because we all knew that they will come back anyway. All the emotional moment surrounding past deaths, sacrifice, mourning, tragedy, etc were rendered meaningless because they came back. If that wasn’t bad enough, these resurrected characters had no place in the story anymore. The whole show become “unrealistic” (in terms of storytelling) fanfiction where characters did things and everyone was always around, there were little to no challenges, If there were any there was no risk on the line, everyone always came back - what even was the point in watching that? It was like watching reality tv with fictional characters. I simply didn’t care anymore. All these beloved characters I loved for years become meaningless and empty because despite their arcs having ended, arcs which had lessons, meanings, etc., they were still around, with no purpose, no arc, no character development that wasn’t just “became a good guy” or “became a bad guy” - they were just standing around.
I also don’t want to see a therapy process for all the characters where they get fixed and turned happy and healthy, and everyone resolves all the problems and they all hug under the Christmas tree. If I want that I read fanfiction. That’s what fics are for, and I’m not being snarky, I’m serious.
Please for the love of god, beware of the “fanficifying” of the source media. Fanfics are where ppl go to indulge certain fantasies or headcanons, wether they make sense in the bigger picture or not. Comfort, fix-its, au’s, etc. That’s why they were invented.
The source media is not meant to be fan service, it’s not meant to make you happy, it’s meant to tell a story with a message and a meaning, all the characters are written to convey something and their character arcs. What makes Warhammer so great as a story is its brutal cold realism. It’s what makes it so impactful and these characters so great. Turning the source material into a fix-it fanfiction would cheapen and ruin the story.
The reason these fix-it fantasies and scenarios are so popular and we want them so badly is because they aren’t in the canon. Do you guys get what I’m saying? The yearning for it makes them so great and beloved. If you were handed all of this in the story as fan service it would suddenly become cheap and boring.
Some characters like Curze are not meant to be fixed narratively. His story is a cautionary tale, a story of untreated mental illness, of a downward spiral, trauma, pessimism, etc - something that reflects reality in a LOT of people. Same for the stories of all the traitor primarchs.
I’m also against bringing Clonegrim back as Fulgrim. Him being collected by Trazyn is literally a message from the authors to the fans: Fulgrim belongs in our memories. There is no place in the story for him anymore. His arc is over, his story is over. Just like Trazyn collection, we remember him as his original uncorrupted self in our hearts and cherish him, but he isn’t a part of the story anymore. Placing a perfect uncorrupted version of Fulgrim in a collection of valuable historical artifacts is literally a metaphor by black library authors to the fans. It’s closure on Fulgrim as a character, a farewell and a lesson that you need to let things go.
Characters die and get corrupted and there is no going back. It sucks, it’s heartbreaking and we want it undone but doing so would ruin the story and deem this character hollow and meaningless. If everyone is back, happy and everything’s always great, what’s the story? That works for a 4000 word fic you read one and done for a feel-good moment but not as an addition to this huge story spanning 10.000 years.
If you get everything you want as fanservice spoon fed to you, that’s when you get Marvel movies and the last few seasons of Supernatural.
Remember how impactful Infinity War was? Then how hollow everything afterwards felt? That’s what I’m talking about.
The arcs of these primarchs ended. The arc of the primarchs in general.
I know GW will always be up for a cash grab and they have to keep the story going perpetually so they will be forced to bring back some of the lost primarchs like Russ, Vulkan, Dorn etc. but I hope to god they won’t touch the ones who are dead and who’s death meant something and their character arc is well rounded and finished.
Part of a good story and a good character is accepting when it’s over. A good story has to end. A good character has to die.
Every good storytelling has a beginning, an end and an arc, all carefully planned and written, all with a purpose of conveying a story, a lesson and meaning.
If a story or a character gets dragged out or resurrected past their natural end point, the story goes to shit.
It’s the reason reboots and sequels of popular movies made just for a cash grab when the original story has been finished feel hollow and unneeded.
Part of being a good fan is knowing when to let go. Mourn, yearn, write fics, what ifs, au’s - but know when a good story is over and let it be over.
If Warhammer turns into a “everyone is alive and they all get along or have petty conflicts for no reason leading up to no bigger goal”, it will be boring and worst of all, these powerful amazing character will be hollowed out
And before you start typing, no, there is no “good proper meaningful way” to bring them back. Their stories are OVER. Their character arc is FINISHED. Trying to tinker with it is unneeded.
We don’t need a “somehow, Palpatine returned”.
I know you want to see your faves back in action but be careful what you wish for because it never ends well. I don’t know if a single example where it did.
This urge in you is a Slaaneshi temptation of it never being enough. You want more, more, more, you’re never satisfied when a story is over, until your insistence of dragging a story and characters on and on forever ruins everything and turns it to slop. I’m being serious, this is such a good example of the actual meaning of Slaanesh
Stop being Slaaneshi, be an actual enjoyer of literature which involves knowing when a story is over, clap and let the curtains close.
You have to know what a tragedy is and accept it as such. Tragedies don’t need happy endings or fixing. You have to know that tragic characters are a part of literature. Not everything needs to be smoothed over and fixed. Not everything needs to return to how it was before - it is ok, in fact desired, to show that actions have consequences, the world changes, characters change and the idea of “everything going back to the way it was before” is stupid because it’s not how the world works - and this is what makes a good, deep story.
Inability to accept such is a sign that you’re not media literate or mature enough to consume these stories. In that case, go consume Marvel movies, not Warhammer.
It’s a sad stupid consequence of the cash grab media environment when the audience sees a character die or disappear and the first thing they say is “how will they be back?”. You can’t even sit and mourn the finality of characters without leaving a door open in your head of “they may be brought back”. This is literally ruining your enjoyment of media and you don’t even realize it.
It’s actually ok for characters to have an open ending. It’s ok for you to not know everything. This is once again a consequence of the “movie theory video” environment where you need to know every detail of everything, otherwise you throw a tantrum (the whole “who is Snoke” crap).
It’s ok for primarchs to be lost. It would’ve been ok for the Lion to be asleep, trapped in ruins forever. It would’ve made for a perfect tragedy of the story of the primarchs. The primarchs being this chapter of Imperial history, an experiment that turned wrong, a civil war and it’s remnants. Like relics of a bygone age. Them being around but scattered or sleeping, their whereabouts unknown, the universe having swallowed them without a uniting force. It’s like conspiracy theories about aliens or mythological beings having been on earth millennia ago. It makes the universe even more grand and beautiful. Their open endings are unsatisfying but interesting. These lost primarchs could pop up here and there. But as said before, their times are over. The place for primarchs in the story of humanity is over.
Ps: this is NOT directed towards ppl who make au’s and fics where they resurrect, fix or bring back dead or lost primarchs. You keep doing that, that’s literally what the medium of fics is for.
This is directed to ppl who want GW to bring back and resurrect primarchs in the official story “because they want xy back”.
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