It is my point of view that Xal’atath is the best Warcraft villain since Garrosh and easily up there with both Hellscream and Arthas as defining franchise villains.
Her scheming, personality, the fact she has suffered setbacks and not been portrayed as a 4D tactical chess master who has foreseen everything we would do has left her as the polar opposite of the Jailer. I am a little worried though that Blizzard will be tempted to give us a final battle against her in THIS expansion, which I believe would be a mistake (though of course if she is to be defeated here, then that decision has already been made and cannot be undone).
It is my hope she goes the full way and is in fact the final boss of The Last Titan, yes, even above Iridikron, Odyn and even Aman’Thul. Iridikron feels like he is being prepped as a mid-expansion season 2 final boss in Harrowsdeep, and I think Odyn is likeliest as the season 1 finale (I feel he will try and retake Ulduar and we’ve had an axe with his name on it for quite a while).
Aman’Thul maybe a cosmic being who could substitute as final boss, but he is too distant and his crimes are things we have read about or whose results we have felt millenia after he committed them. He lacks the personal connection we have forged with Xal’atath, though I wouldn’t object to Aman’Thul being the penultimate boss of the final raid (likely inside the Manifold at Azeroth’s heart). Xal’atath deserves to be faced at the very end though, with a litany of crimes to her name that we are all eager to avenge, on the cusp of devouring the world soul of Azeroth and achieving ultimate power.
Perhaps they could even take a leaf out of the nemesis system and create a special delve wherein we the player face her one on one (or two on one with Alleria as a special companion) that unlocks after the raid to make certain she stays down for good?
I just really don’t want them to waste the first decent bad guy they’ve had in ages and to give her her proper due, rather than switch her out early so we can fight another big guy with a booming voice talking about the cosmic order of things (which I guarantee you Aman’Thul will be).