MTG Salvation

The most important flavour text in magic history.

Rivaled only by Vindicate's "Don't mourn for me. This is my destiny."

It's official: WotC is never going to kill off an important villain again. It sure would be a shame if being imprisoned for 'all of eternity' was part of Nicky's overly-elaborate scheme the whole time.

While I get where you're coming from, I would be more disappointed if they actually DID kill him. What, he's an immortal dragon he thinks of nearly EVERYTHING, and Gideon can just... stab him? THAT would be the bigger letdown, imo. This nicely ties in his failure to kill Ugin- the one mistake he's made- to ultimately be his downfall. Regardless how WotC does or does not treat it's villains... imprisonment fits Bolas better than death, in this case.

Hey, lots of franchises avoid killing off villains. Not just to keep them around in the future, but it allows for a way to put the good guys on a sliding scale of heroism from hero to antihero to the most evil variety of villain.

Then again, I can't see Liliana refusing to kill.

100% garuantee "eternity" is not so eternal
damnit wotc stop being such a p*ssy and kill off your villians already
guess who will be the laughing post if thanos dies in that endgame movie?
ITS YOU!

I have a hunch they were trying for "fate worse than death" here. Bolas dies, at worst, he gets reincarnated without his memories of "glory". Now, he doesn't even have that release.

I will admit that at the beginning, I expected his end to be sealed in the core of Ravnica, with Mat'Selesnya keeping him contained. Of course, I expected him to be planning to enslave the Utmungr (whom I think Mat'Selesnya is a renegade from).

Note, by the way, that Thanos didn't die in the original Infinity War comic. So whether he dies in the Endgame film is...uncertain.

Looks like they didn't want an Insect crawling into Bolas and casting Giant Growth enough times to rip him apart (even though they reprinted the damn card).

Oh well, still one more shot next week.

Quote from SkyknightGamma »

Note, by the way, that Thanos didn't die in the original Infinity War comic. So whether he dies in the Endgame film is...uncertain.

While that's true, they've strayed ridiculously far from the comic version of Thanos. In the MCU, he's a semi-benevolent god-king who just wants to make the universe better. In the comics, he's a genocidal madman who wants to kill every living thing in the universe.

Things have changed, then. Thanos in the comics softened, after more or less realizing he wasn't worthy of ultimate power. He wasn't a good guy, or even an antihero, but he was complicated and sometimes acted in ways that defended the universe.

I meant benevolent in the sense that he actually believes his actions are good and pretty much everyone would agree that his goal is a good one. It's only his method that is evil.

So, while I wouldn't call him a hero, he's most definitely not the pure evil that he is in the comics. That character would never describe his actions as "good". He's evil, he knows he's evil, and he's perfectly fine with that. It's not just his methods that are evil, his goal is pretty much the definition of evil - universal annihilation.

In the MCU, he's just a fanatic who is blinded by his own beliefs to the point that he has tunnel-vision on the one true way. Which makes him like real-world fanatics, of course, and thus a better character, but he's not what I'd call "benevolent." He's so blinded by his own fanaticism that he didn't stop to consider he could just create more resources, reorder worlds to have unlimited energy, etc. All that power and he sees only the one way he considered long before the power was within his grasp. Rather than killing half the population of the universe, which only postpones the problem, he could have just given them the resources to survive and not have to fight for them.

Thanos has tunnel-vision. He is so convinced of his own inherent infallibility that he can't conceive of another way to solve this issue with the unlimited power at his disposal. He's still a genocidal madman. What began as a noble, if flawed, desire to prevent conflict over resources has become a tyrannical crusade to inflict his will upon all others.

In the comics, he's a genocidal madman who's trying to get it on with Death.

All his plans for divinity, broken to bits. Courtesy Liliana, Oketra, and Bontu, can no longer planeswalk. Utterly alone in a void.

...

Now taking bets on how long it'll take for Bolas to stop thinking entirely. (Yes, it's that kind of reference.)

None other.

Are you referring to Kars from JOJO?

You know, I feel like if they aren’t going to make the plot-relevant cards mythic, they should at least set them apart by giving them decent art. A thing that keeps failing to happen on these kinds of cards.