following luna IV and going on from this comment that struck me with some inspo, thought i'd write out some ideas of alternative routes i think hoyo could've gone with dottore having an antagonistic appearance somewhere
he's an absolute goldmine for a villain and with so many people who he'd been set up against in the past, i feel like there's more options than what we received. and if the dude magically is alive, it's paths i hope are gone down !! ideas under the cut & like 2 luna IV references/spoilers
all of these ideas obviously follow the premise he's somehow still alive and hoyo really did do a fakeout, but hey, fun speculation my base would be that the dottore we killed was the omega dottore we met in sumeru, and omega being the last segment as per the name, perhaps there was still an alpha or first dottore who was kept as a sort of backup, maybe he just straight up lied, or perhaps the original dottore is somehow still alive and was not destroyed with the rest of the segments because nahida only told him to destroy the segments — 1, a full circle return to mondstadt, aka the place where most of dottore's og opps have connections to or actively reside. while i think him fucking up columbina's life was an alright addition, there's SO many people with very existing beef and hatred for this man that could provide amazing storylines. placing it in windblume easily allows collei to be present, perhaps even nahida, and wanderer already had a good reason to visit mondstadt (durin and albedo) so he doesn't really need the windblume premise but its a bonus there's a lot dottore could do here; start messing around in the thousand winds temple, interfere with decarabian's tower, actively try and subdue or kidnap someone because clearly he likes to do that durin would be a prime candidate for this given he has actively changed his fate, and this would get wanderer (alongside albedo and collei) even more personally involved. with diluc's infinite hatred for the fatui, amber and kaeya who have directly witnessed the impacts the fatui have had in collei, collei herself, wanderer being his arch-nemesis, two archons done with his shit, i think a mondstadt cast against dottore would be fucking grand and get him to go out with an absolute bang of meaningful, emotional events and fights — 2, a reappearance in sumeru, taking back to his own origin, and perhaps now returning for resources or information; the fatui certainly won't be keeping him around after this, so he has to head off somewhere. there could be a solid story quest around dottore posing as someone else, much like he did as escher in tatarasuna (fuck that guy), and getting close to the traveller in this way in an attempt to gain their trust and eventually sideline them, since trying to get them to cooperate hadn't worked dottore stays on the outskirts of sumeru for a time, gaining the traveller's trust first and foremost, as both nahida and wanderer have a good chance to clock him quickly. it could be cool if it turned into some sort of 'whodunnit' with some of the sumeru cast we haven't seen in a bit (tighnari, cyno, alhaitham, kaveh, dehya, collei) collei's presence would once again offer some amazing scene opportunities given her history with dottore eventually he'd be found out, and a fight scene consisting of wanderer, nahida, tighnari, cyno and collei would go hard as hell — 3, the barbatos route. effectively, the alpha/first/original dottore escapes and is now on the run from the fatui, who will absolutely murk him on sight. so he flees to the one place absolutely nobody is going to be chasing after him in; mare jivari. this finally gives us further chance to explore that place or get an actual location of it. the hexenzirkel could easily be involved in getting information about this, given alice, nicole and barbie all have easy eyes on teyvat, and word gets to venti perhaps dottore found some form of power source in there, and venti takes us there, alongside the little alchemical family trio present on behalf of the hexenzirkel. im not sure how to execute it, but getting most of them down and prompting venti to bring out some more barbatos would be awesome as hell. and then wanderer beats the shit out of him and he dies ❤️ the ending we need
