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Alleria's Choices - 'Light and Shadow' Cinematic Analysis
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Blizzard has released an animated short titled 'Light and Shadow', detailing Alleria's life leading up to
The War Within
. Here we analyze the choices she made that led her to the path she is on now.
Alleria's Reflection
From the opening shot, the framing of this cinematic is one of Alleria reflecting on the choices she has made throughout her life. We see her slowly shedding her armor in between each flashback, staring into the fire in front of her and being reminded of the losses she has endured throughout her life as a result of her choices.
While many characters in Warcraft often have tragic circumstances thrust upon them, like Anduin, what defines Alleria first and foremost is that she is actively making these choices. As she sheds each piece of her armor, Alleria reflects on a choice, and ponders on whether or not she regrets making it.
The First Choice: Sylvanas
The first major choice of Alleria's life was her decision to leave Quel'thalas. Born to the Windrunner family, Alleria is the eldest of four siblings, and heir to the position of Ranger-General of Silvermoon. Passed down from parent to child for almost three thousand years, the hereditary position originated during the Troll Wars when the ranger Talanas Windrunner proved his skills in the fight against the Amani trolls.
Along with the position granted to his family, Talanas was granted the bow Thas'dorah, crafted from a sacred tree and blessed with a connection to the winds. The day he was gifted the bow, Talanas promised that so long as the weapon protected Highborne lands, Silvermoon would never fall.
Concept art of the hunter artifact, Thas'dorah.
As the eldest daughter, Alleria bore the burdens of expectations her entire childhood. Though her two younger sisters were also trained as rangers, it was Alleria who was groomed for the position, and she carried doubts about that burden as her sister Sylvanas began to grow and show a prodigal talent with a bow -- skills beyond Alleria's own. Even during Alleria's rite of passage to join the Farstriders, she nearly lost her life to the target she was sworn to hunt, and her life was only saved by the intervention of Sylvanas, who saved her sister's life at the cost of the hunt's supposed honor.
Those doubts came to a head amidst the onset of the Second War between the Orcish Horde and the Alliance of Lordaeron. Though the conflict had not yet reached Quel'thalas, Alleria wished to leave behind the burden of leadership and ride out to aid the Alliance, much to the chagrin of her mother Lireesa. After much argument, Alleria offered up Sylvanas to take her place as the future Ranger-General, a decision her sister had no part in making. While she made amends with her mother in the end, Alleria left her kingdom and her family behind to aid in saving the world, and took Thas'dorah with her away from Highborne lands.
That decision would quickly bear fruit for the sisters, unfortunately, as their parents were slain by the Horde on a mission at the borders of their lands. Now thrust into the position of Ranger-General, Sylvanas led the elven Farstriders against the Horde as they encroached on Quel'thalas and brokered an alliance with the Amani. Though Alleria would join her in repelling the assault, she ultimately makes the choice to pursue the fleeing Horde and ensuring the conflict is ended.
We see here Alleria's reflection on the choice she made. For her, it was a sacrifice of her remaining family and her homeland, one she was willing to pay to ensure Azeroth's salvation. For Sylvanas, however, the choice was denied her. Although she eventually accepted its burdens, the position of Ranger-General was thrust onto her without choice, and when Arthas Menethil and the undead Scourge invaded their lands, it was Sylvanas at the helm who attempted in vain to repel the assault. For her actions, she was killed and raised as a banshee, enslaved to the will of the Lich King.
The results of Sylvanas' torment would have some of the most loudly echoing effects Azeroth has seen. While she would soon manage to carve out a place for herself as Queen of the Forsaken after freeing herself from the Lich King's grasp, Sylvanas' repeated loss of agency eventually led her into the clutches of the Jailer, urging her to aid him in remaking the cosmos to grant everyone the free will she believed herself to be denied. That alliance would lead to the disastrous events of the Fourth War, and nearly plunge the cosmos into annihilation as Sylvanas aided the Jailer in reforming the afterlife.
The three sisters prior to Sylvanas' sentencing.
Sylvanas would eventually see the error of her ways, and willingly accept the price of atonement for her actions, but Alleria's part in setting her on that path is one that the void ranger seems uninterested in addressing. When they first reunited on Azeroth in the wake of the Legion invasion, the two nearly came to blows arguing about the choices they had in their ultimate fates. While Sylvanas had her dark nature forced upon her, Alleria's was by choice. She chose to leave her family behind, just as she chose to embrace the Void and become what she is now.
They would both be talked down by their youngest sister Vereesa, but the two were unable to reconcile their differences. Alleria professed her lack of regrets to the two, and the three ultimately departed back to their respective new families, only becoming more hardened in accepting the choices both had made. Sylvanas embraced her role in aiding the Jailer, eschewing her past and her family in the name of what she saw as the greater good -- a position not unlike where Alleria finds herself now.
The Second Choice: Arator
While the impact her choices had on Sylvanas were certainly the most notable, they were not the only family members that Alleria sacrificed a connection to for the sake of her duty.
After leaving Quel'thalas to fight the Horde, Alleria met Turalyon, a former noble of Lordaeron and one of the first Paladins of the Silver Hand. Amidst the conflict, the two rather quickly became close, but Alleria's outlook turned to grief and vengeance after she received news of the death of her parents as well as her brother Lirath. While she had joined the conflict with altruistic intentions, her views of the Horde caused her to see the orcs as vermin worthy only of extermination, and joined the newly formed Alliance Expedition in pursuing the orcs back to their homeland of Draenor.
During that time, Alleria and Turalyon fell in love, and together bore a half-elf child named Arator. Given the nature of her duty, however, Alleria made the choice to give up Arator, handing her off to her sister Vereesa before entering the portal to Draenor. Ultimately, the choice to enter Draenor would not only see the Alliance Expedition cut off from Azeroth for twenty years, but also see Alleria and Turalyon lost in the Twisting Nether as Draenor collapsed into Outland.
Though she would eventually gain motivations beyond vengeance in her time on Draenor, Alleria's desire for blood and the duty she saw in ensuring the orcs were removed as a threat caused her to leave her son without parents as they pursued the failing Horde. Arator would be raised by Vereesa from childhood, and his parents would come to be known as renowned heroes lost to time.
We eventually meet Arator during our escapades to Outland during
The Burning Crusade
, but he would not truly become relevant until
Legion
, where he not only joined the Silver Hand like his father before him, but finally reunited with his parents when the portal to Argus opened in the sky.
Despite the expectations of their reunion on both sides, the relationship between the half-elven paladin and his parents was a strained one. While he was glad to meet his parents and save Azeroth alongside them, he struggled to reconcile the people they were with the image the world had built of them for him, and the lingering spite of being left behind. He had found the Light in absence of his parents, but that same Light now stood opposed to Alleria's dark nature, and his relationship to his father was no less tense.
A grown Arator.
Despite that tension, when Alleria visited him in recent times, Arator had come to accept the nature of their family. He knew that they were people sworn to duty, and that they had difficult choices to make as soldiers on the front lines of Azeroth's many conflicts. It is that same duty that again causes a rift between the two, as Alleria asked Arator to shirk his duty and stay out of the coming conflict against Xal'atath.
The two find common ground in their own shared stubbornness; neither of them are the type to reject their calling, and Arator denies Alleria's request to stay out of the fight. Having gone so long without Alleria already, Arator no longer saw himself as someone for Alleria to lose, and she had no control over the choices he would make in the future any more than he did over hers.
Ultimately, the two leave on amicable terms, and despite the lingering tension and the voices in her head, Alleria walks away from her son without regrets. Despite the consequences her choice to leave Arator behind had on her son, the boy had grown into an accomplished man, and they would both accept the choices the other made despite the pain it might cause them.
The Third Choice: Turalyon
Alleria and Turalyon made the choice to leave their son behind together, but in the conflicts that followed, Turalyon too would eventually be left behind by Alleria thanks to the choices she made.
After the collapse of Draenor into Outland, Alleria and Turalyon were forced to flee through one of the portals tearing the planet apart, and ended up in the Twisting Nether. Quickly onset by demons, the pair were found and rescued by the Army of the Light, a force of light-bound soldiers under the service of the naaru, Xe'ra. After their salvation, they are told of the Army's purpose: to eradicate the Legion and bring salvation to the cosmos.
The two were then told of their prophetic place in the future Xe'ra foresaw, and were given the choice to join the Army in aiding their cause. Both accept, and are given visions from the Light as they are infused with it. For a brief moment, Alleria sees a young Arator in the Valley of Heroes in Stormwind, and gains surety in her choices. Turalyon, meanwhile, is Lightforged, granting him immortality and irrevocably tying him to the Light.
Eventually, the Army comes into contact with the Void amidst their conflict with the Legion, and Alleria is granted erratic visions after being briefly struck by a void attack. While her curiosity was not sated in that moment, the Void lingered within her, and she and Turalyon would eventually embark on a mission that resulted in the discovery of Argus and the crucial role it played in maintaining the demonic armies.
During their mission to Argus, the two were onset by demons, and as Turalyon was overwhelmed, Alleria makes the choice to embrace the Void for the first time, carving a path through the demons and delivering Turalyon to safety. Despite his salvation, Turalyon is immensely hurt during his travel through Alleria's void rift, and when he tries to reach out to her, the two are left unable to touch. Turalyon declared that he "would rather have died than see fall to evil", an inflexibly binary description of her Void powers that reinforced the divide between the cosmic forces each of them now wield.
In that moment, Alleria realized that she could not accomplish the task ahead alongside the Army of the Light. Choosing to leave Turalyon behind, she ventured into the Nether and eventually met the ethereal named Locus-Walker, with whom she began to learn how to properly master her connection to the Void. He showed her the duality between Light and Shadow -- where one saw a singular, definitive future, the other saw endless possibilities, and the truth lay somewhere in the middle.
The lessons that Locus-Walker taught her would eventually lead to the elf we know today, but the choice she made to leave Turalyon behind and embrace her newfound powers caused a rift to form in their relationship. Though the two still feel immense love for each other, the opposition of their dichotomy leaves a tense pace to their dynamic, and that dynamic remains a constant in their relationship to this day.
Though Xe'ra would eventually be destroyed by Illidan Stormrage, Turalyon's devotion to the Light remained at the center of his being, it is likely that the rift that has formed between his faith and his love will prove to be a choice he himself will have to make in the coming days, as we head into the final conflict between the Light and the Void in
Midnight
.
The Fourth Choice: Darkness
Though not covered in this cinematic, Alleria's full embrace of the Void did not occur until her first appearance in World of Warcraft during
Legion
. In the wake of leaving Turalyon behind, she ends up returning to the Army of the Light after seeing a vision of Turalyon being attacked. For a brief moment, she rejected her embrace of the Void and left Locus-Walker's lessons, using her powers only to return to Turalyon and save his life from his demonic pursuer. Despite this, she is imprisoned by Xe'ra, only making her escape thanks to the ship's crash into Argus at the start of patch 7.3.
After gaining her freedom, the players join Alleria on Eredath, a shattered remnant of the former capital city of the Eredar on Argus, now home to a void infestation. There she reunited with Locus-Walker, and after some hesitation, ultimately embraces the void in full, consuming the void-corrupted naaru L'ura to end the void's incursion and gain a more complete connection to the void with her voidform.
Alleria's actions, both in saving Turalyon and ending the distractions of the void during their campaign on Argus, aided the Army of the Light and the people of Azeroth in claiming a final victory against the Legion, once again granting her world salvation. Returning home did not bear the most welcoming fruit however, as she faced tribulations from both her family and her nation.
While her failed reconciliation with Sylvanas came down to personal struggles, her attempt to reunite with Quel'thalas ended in a more political failure. Alleria returned to Silvermoon with a rather single-minded pursuit in her mind: to return Quel'thalas to the Alliance. Having been away for decades (centuries, from her perspective), Alleria was woefully unaware of the changes and sacrifices her people had made since her departure, gleaning knowledge only from the rather biased perspective of Vereesa. While her political blundering was met with denial, she did request a chance to gaze upon the Sunwell once more after a thousand years, a request that was granted to her by Lor'themar -- and a request that nearly damned her people once again.
Upon reaching the Sunwell, a font of power once extinguished by the Scourge and now renewed by the Light, Alleria's dark nature reacted violently to it, allowing the entry of an ethereal Nether-Prince named Durzaan, who would have claimed the Sunwell for himself and corrupted it once more if not for the combined efforts of the blood elves, the nightborne, and Alleria herself. Though they staved off the incursion, Alleria's actions in nearly destroying the blood elves' restored power earn her the prize of banishment, but not before she gleaned knowledge of another group of elves also exiled for their research into the void.
The forces of the Horde fighting alongside Alleria to cleanse the Sunwell.
Following the lead into the Ghostlands, Alleria happened upon the writings of a magister named Umbric, who led the group of exiles in the wake of their banishment. Like Alleria, he pursued knowledge of the void for the sake of safeguarding Azeroth, and when Alleria eventually found him and his cohort in the void rift known as Telogrus, he welcomed her into their fold and encouraged her to witness a ritual they were performing. That ritual backfired, resulting in the return of Durzaan. While the Nether-Prince attempted to convert the blood elves around him into void ethereals, the player and Alleria stop his efforts and kill him, but not before Umbric and his elves are partially transformed.
Now calling themselves void elves, Umbric and his researchers are given an offer by Alleria -- join the Alliance and add their newfound might to its ranks, and in turn gain guidance from Alleria on how to control the whispers now populating their minds. Umbric eagerly agreed, and the void elves were seen frequently aiding the Alliance.
In time, however, Alleria would grow distant from the void elves, leaving Umbric and Locus-Walker to guide them as she continued to question her embrace of the void. Those questions would culminate in the recent Dark Heart questline, where Alleria's hesitation nearly resulted in the destruction of Telogrus at the hands of Xal'atath. Alleria is given an ultimatum at that point by Locus-Walker: let go of her fears and master her powers, or doom Azeroth to Xal'atath's plans due to her inaction.
As we see here, Alleria ultimately makes the choice to embrace her path. She does not show regret for the choices made in the wake of her return to Azeroth, and as she contemplates on her past, she begins to shed it. Rather symbolically, as she sheds her past and the thoughts of regret, she sheds her armor in turn. Gone is the iconic green and gold outfit that has defined Alleria's look for years now, and the blue markings on her face that have been a part of her look since her first appearance in Warcraft II nearly 30 years ago.
Shedding this armor is not just a reflection of Alleria shedding her high elven identity and embracing the Void; it is a reflection of Alleria taking on a new path in the years to come. The new Alleria is almost unrecognizable from her old look, sporting a contrasting white, black, and silver outfit, and losing her hood and cape for a practical braid instead. The mimicked version of Thas'dorah created for her by the Army of the Light is set aside as well, that core connection to her family legacy replaced with a cold silver bow. Even her quiver is set aside as she fully embraces the use of her powers, conjuring them from the Void itself now. In all respects, the high elf Alleria Windrunner is gone, and a wholly void-infused elf now stands in her place.
The Choices Ahead
For Alleria, the light of the fire before her reflects her connection to the Light as a force and a concept. When she stares into it, it illuminates all of who she is; her losses, her sacrifices, her choices. It is a painful act to bear, but it is one that every person must do to better understand themselves and accept their failings. Alleria, however, seems disinclined to do so, and in the same way she leaves her armor as she turns away from the fire, so too does she leave the possibility of regrets under the Light as she embraces the path of Darkness ahead of her.
Alleria's ultimate absence of regret has resulted in a very resolute hunter as we head into
The War Within
, but it may equally spell downfall for her in the future. At present, Alleria lacks the retrospection on the consequences of her actions needed to realize what may happen if she continues to delve into the Void.
We see pieces of her doubts and regrets seeping into her during moments like Xal'atath's echoes on Eredath during the Dark Heart questline, or her conversations with Arator during their brief time together in Silvermoon, but ultimately Alleria brushes those thoughts aside, and frames herself exactly as she does in this cinematic: a soldier with a duty to fulfill.
Alleria is aware of the people she has hurt, and the consequences her actions have caused -- and she ultimately seems fine with accepting them. At this moment, they all seem worth it for her for the defense of Azeroth, and that mentality may prove to be as much a curse as a boon as we delve into the Worldsoul Saga.
Alleria's sacrifices, of both herself and others, have borne positive results for Azeroth thus far, but what happens when she makes a mistake? What happens when her continued embrace of the Void lends to an outcome that works against Azeroth's favor instead of for it? Those are questions that Alleria seems unwilling to confront right now, and they leave ample room for intriguing story as we head into the arc of the next three expansions.
Alleria has more than just her role in
The War Within
ahead of her, with
Midnight
looming in the background as the culmination of our clash against the Void. Alleria and all the Windrunners shown in this cinematic are sure to play a role in the defense of their homeland as we return to Quel'thalas, but it remains to be seen what will be left of the eldest Windrunner sister after all the choices she's made to get there.
Only time will tell what will happen if Alleria comes across yet another chance to sacrifice herself in the name of Azeroth's defense as we progress through the Worldsoul Saga -- and who will pay the price for that choice.
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