It looks like it is at least over.
Sylvanas is gonna do the Maw soul-saving quest until there are no more souls or she suicides again over the tedium. Anyways, looks like we don’t have to deal with her again any time soon. Might not be worth a celebration, but at least it’s one less thing to be negative about in the next years.
(Well, 3 times an undead is dead enough)
So, what can we expect in the next expansion?
My money is on:
As a Witch (well, Warlock) I take offense to that song…especially the Goblin line 
Something that I don’t really get from the judgment, does Sylvanas have to find and rescue every single soul that was sent to the Maw from the whole universe since the machine of Death broke, or just from her own victims whom she personally killed?
Because it’s going to make a big difference…in the former case, it’s probably billions of souls…in the latter, it’s probably in the order of the tens/hundreds of thousands of souls (mainly depending of how many truly died in the burning of Teldrassil).
And if it’s only Night Elf souls, it’s even less I guess… 
regardless of that, time flows differently in the Shadowlands…so they can use this justification to bring her back sooner as she could be able to complete her task and punishment after only a few years have passed on Azeroth.
I also recall Danuser recently said in an interview that Sylvanas fans should not worry, for “next time we will meet her, she will have not lost her snarky and arrogant attitude at all”. So in my opinion I think she will not be gone for more than 1-2 expansions anyway. In the worst case she could even be back before the second half of the next expansion, as she could need her help, or we could need hers, against the Void or a new enemy.
Especially considering that we will still interact with the Covenants and the Shadowlands as a whole even in the close future, as evidenced by the Blood Elves seeking help there against a new (and hopefully, final) major Scourge invasion in Quel’thalas led by a San’layn in the second part of their heritage questline… (finally Salandria shows up too!)
I like it when people take offense.
If they want to bring her back they don’t even need to wait for the task to finish, they can do this whenever they want. But that they did give her some task to complete before is at least a signal that they’ll very, very likely keep her there for at least one addon. That’s 2 years and still an absolute win in my book. And considering how shoddily planned out stuff is before it happens… yeah, I don’t think that the devs have any idea if and when she will be back, they just left the door open.
Well yeah, 9.2.5 is part of the Shadowlands addon, so considering we’re still based there, the quests will still go through it. I wouldn’t have expected that to go away until the 10.0 prepatch, and that’s not 9.2.5. But after that? I think the Shadowlands will take a breather…
Never thought I’d say this, but I’m surprisingly satisfied with this outcome.
It makes sense as a punishment, gives her fans reason to hope that she might return one day, and the rest of us the peace of mind that it will most likely not be anytime soon.
Of all possible ways to end this train wreck of a story, I think they chose the least offensive one.
I still think it’s a waste not to include the redemption experts of Revendreth in her redemption arc…
Probably because this task she has to do now isn’t actually her true redemption arc, that would come later after she completes it and when she dies “for real”, then her destination would be Revendreth just like Kael’thas (and she could have some nice interactions with him there about the past and how they both ended there despite their different paths) but we all know she will never really truly die…
At least with the Jailer gone, the Maw isn’t nearly as scary as it was and she won’t be actively tortured (which is what originally she wanted to avoid anyway before making the pact with the Jailer). So despite she’s there now again she actually avoided that fate successfully with her choices anyway, which is kind of ironic… so, “mission partially accomplished” for her I guess…
So what? She is still in the Shadowlands, and the redemption experts are still there. Just strike the bird and give the Accuser a line that she will watch over Sylvanas’ progress, done. Revendreth was set up for redemptions, not to set it off when a redemption arc is at hand is structually confusing to me.
Yeah, but not for the living -or undead, in that case. Of course they could have Tyrande just kill her instead ( and let’s be honest, that wasn’t very likely after the whole soul split nonsense ) but then her fate would no longer be for her to decide. That’s just how the system works.
I don’t see how that is a different skillset. But no, don’t answer that. I’m sure we can think of an explanation, that’s not the point. I’m baffled by the narrative structure. The redemption experts were introduced, to make an redemption arc and not use them is what is strange to me. It’s not that they can’t find an explanation for it. Of course there can be plot reasons to use a gun different from chekhov’s gun. It’s just not necessary and less of a rounded narrative.
But sure, that’s rather smallscale criticism.
Ah but you forget, she will be in the Shadowlands where time moves faster than Azeroth, 10 000 years could be mere days in our realm so I do thing we will be getting more Sylvanas in the future (unfortunetly) maybe she would even find her boy toy Nathanos and we could thirdwheel our way into cringe.
Sidenote: At the start of SL SL Jaina claimed she has been in the Maw for hundreds or thousands of years when she was kidnaped only yesterday on Azeroth, later in when we find her in Toorghast so much time had past that she had become lucid and could’t recognize us her best friends the champions, this leads me to believe that all the covenant zones or at least the maws timeline is unsincked. So my question is how is Jaina and the others who were taken from Azeroth not dead from old age ? I mean like us, they are still mortal and if they are secretly dead from old age how are they getting back to Azeroth for the next wacky adventure ?
Tbh the last two expansions can be summed up with “But why?” and not just in regards to Sylvanas, as the whole structure of it was scuffed. (A lot of it kinda feels like “Read the novel to find out!”)
There is just so much stuff they either didn’t follow up on or tried to justify post-humously. We kinda got the soul split instead of actual character development or the ravendreth thing, which is just… eh
Oh yeah another thing I don’t understand is the soul split. They never really explained what the split soul thing even actually means. I mean they explained it mechanically how it works via Uthers. Half your soul remains in the moment of your death and the other continues to move, ok fine but how does that exactly impact ones morality. Also they are very inconsistent with the “does it impact your memories” thing, apparently Uther did suffer memory loss (that part was BS for different reasons and are a topic on itself) but it really doesn’t look like Sylvanas suffered any, in fact throughout her portrayal over the years since her creation the fact that she remembers her life before being undead and hating not actually being alive has been a big driving force for her actions… But hey 10.0 is going to be Denusers baby.
Which is exactly why I’m going beyond the story devs with the blame at this point. Sure, if there is a bad plot they are the obvious culprit. But if the plot just seems incomplete on oh so, so many sides, I feel that there are bigger production issues behind it. Starting with the obvious that at least one patch was cut, no matter how they try to be gaslighty about it.
I mean… they certainly didn’t skip the HQ-videos because there was no need for them…
To my understanding it’s like getting to meet themselves from the moment they got stabbed by Frostmourne. For Uther it was a hateful and bitter moment contrasting to the, at this point relatively well adjusted Kyrian, while Sylvanas was the Ranger General, who got stabbed, blanked and then got hit by everything she did and had done to her simultaneously.
It’s a wierd creative choice, which kind of serves to skip over the meat and potatoes of the whole storyarch.
She was miserable stuck in a rotting carcass perpetually feeling pain, before the Val’kyr upgrades and even tried to commit suicide, when her singular goal of killing Arthas was accomplished. After that she got a perspective adjustment, where the afterlife wasn’t really an option anymore for her and as far as she knew the Forsaken too so it shifted toward building up infrastructure, securing borders and trying to find solutions to the unique problems the Forsaken face. The Jailer thing is wierd and doesn’t really fit her pre-Shadowlands characterisation, even throughout majority of the BfA
The company is a mess there are so many reasons exasperating one another it’s not even funny anymore. C13, the lawsuit, HR being wierd, Hazzikostas&Danuser not being up to the task, etc.
The HD cinematics take them something like a calendar year to fully produce according to Ion so… yeah.
Which is why I feel their absence points to substancial rewrites/cuts. I’m not willing to believe that they hadn’t planned some, considering they actually created quite a lot of models for the expenasion trailer. But it seems like what they had set in motion wasn’t usable with the product they actually delivered.
pretty fitting, but I also think as many others here, this is not the last time we se her, I got a feeling, while she wanders the maw rescuing souls, I think she will stumble up on the true reason on why the jailer did what he did, and it most likely gona be nasty, and she comes back to warn us or she gone mad again.
I suspect that we will be the Trautman to her Rambo 3, when we go and fetch her, when Alleria goes off the deep end or somesuch story, which could use her, after the spite toward her overexposure and misuse cools off.
Like Jaina is the lead female on the Alliance side, Sylvannas is the lead female on the Horde side, so I could never see Blizzard killing her off. Leaving her in the Maw for future usage, is just a plot device in case they want or need to bring her back in the future. I doubt she will stay there long, perhaps an expansion or two or even shorter than this.