What if the Pharaoh was more like Season 0 Yami?
I honestly feel like a variation on that could have been an excellent story for the ‘name arc’ and I sort of wish they’d ran with that rather than ‘ooh darkness evil corruption over millennia’ or whatever I was supposed to see as the reason for Season Zero Atem, and that this is partly why he feels he has to move on, because he was terrible and feels like somehow this will help make amends.
Or alternatively let’s completely AU this bad boy. The version where Atem never gets any better, because this is just how he is.
A tale of screwed up morality, where getting Atem to the Afterlife is less of a joint endeavour and more a series of plans made against him.
Yugi half drawn to this incredibly deadly but protective being that varies between being gallant and being a monster, while recognising that while he most certainly won’t come to harm, many others do, and the things Atem does in his name, and in his body, completely terrify him.
Joey and Tristan not exactly reformed, but realising there is something massively wrong with this Yugi kid and having to work all of this out without ever alerting to Atem that they might understand something.
Kaiba becoming worse too, almost feeding off Atem’s actions, as they use people and each other in ever more dangerous games, the only time Atem seems to forget about Yugi and just be himself - and that is not a good thing.
Joey and Tristan finding out about all of this Egyptian stuff with no mystical help, meeting up with Bakura and finding out this isn’t just a one time deal.
Yami Bakura wants to destroy the Pharaoh with a hyperfocus like Atem’s, but with a cold sanity that Atem lacks. The relationship between him and Ryou also different. Ryou gets no care from his spirit, but Yami Bakura will step in if their body is in danger - unlike Atem who has bonded so close he seems to forget that it is not his own.
Yugi losing control over everything, even the ability to save himself, having to guard himself from thinking that Joey and Tristan are doing something, because if he knows, the spirit will know. Trapped in his own insular little story where the only thing he can have power over is his mind, and even that’s under siege.
Joey and Tristan recruiting Téa because they need help, and find that she’s surprisingly good at keeping secrets, figuring out the riddles they keep getting mired in, and working out when Yami Bakura has silently shifted over - as it becomes increasingly clear that he has plans for when the Pharaoh has gone.
The fight of mundane against magical. A version of reality that doesn’t care if they weren’t cut out to be the protagonists - they better learn. Them trying to plan and scheme and attempt to play one off against the other, while knowing that any second, the people they’re dealing with could creatively break their minds into pieces - or in Kaiba’s case, just dismember their bodies into pieces.
Could be fun.