Darth Malgus – Will he return?





[Warning: Spoilers Abound] Darth Malgus is easily one of the most popular characters in SWTOR. Heck, the Collectors Edition even came with a statue of him. If you haven’t completed SWTOR’s 1.0 storyline, well, here’s what happens. Darth Malgus tries to take over by declaring himself Emperor of a new Empire. The storyline then forces you to go beat the hell out of him.

This all leads to the question, “Why?” What was the point of making this guy so badass (for Empire players at least) only to force us to defeat him? The folks at Bioware are arguably the best storytellers in the business, so why would they be so heavy handed? If you look at the overarching story though, it becomes apparent that this must be the beginning of a much bigger story arch. Will Darth Malgus be back? Yes. Count on it. And I have a pretty good guess for how and why.

Let’s just cut to the obvious. We don’t kill Darth Malgus; we shove him off a platform. He falls out of sight, and falling has never been a reliable way to kill lead characters in the Star Wars mythos. So when will Darth Malgus show up again? It’s possible we’ll have some cameos, but there’s one big moment when I think he’ll appear. First though, we need some context.

Bioware makes it clear that the Empire has some intrinsic flaws holding it back. How does it expect to not be grossly outnumbered with nearly every alien race joining the Republic, so they won’t be enslaved? Heck, the Empire’s racism is laughable from the start when you consider the fact that the Sith species are aliens. The Empire is an entire culture based on human-alien crossbreeding. Couple that with the constant infighting, a multitude of other issues, and hey… how do these Empire guys expect to win?

With that in mind, the whole Darth Malgus fight struck me as weird. Bioware sets up all these flaws within the Empire. Then they have Darth Malgus show up and proclaim, “I’m taking over. I’m fixing all the BS holding us back, and we’re going to mop the floors with the Republic!” Awesome. Then Bioware forces us to fight him. It was the one point in the game where I gagged on the linear storyline. I didn’t want to fight Malgus… I wanted to join him. So did everyone else in my Empire guild. Heck, this was worse than having to destroy HK-47… twice!

But enough ranting. Bioware knows what they’re doing, so they must be up to something. Darth Malgus is obviously the ideal Emperor, so why have us fight him? The answer lies in the current Sith Emperor.

If you’ve played the Jedi Knight storyline then you know what’s really up with the Sith Emperor. He wants to destroy all life in the galaxy. Literally. Republic, Sith, the wamprats on Tatooine, the Emperor wants it all dead. The Sith Emperor is so obsessed with living forever, he has decided to kill everything in the universe so nothing will exist to kill him later. (The Empire doesn’t know this yet.)

So in terms of lore, who is the Emperor? Excuse the WoW comparison, but he’s Sargeras. He’s going to be SWTOR’s ultimate boss. Count on it. The Sith may revel in the dark side, but they enjoy living just as much as the Jedi.

So there you have it. The end of SWTOR. The Emperor’s true intentions are revealed to everyone. The Empire turns on him, and we all kill him.

But if the Sith Emperor turns into a villain, who will take his place? Enter Darth Malgus. When the Emperor betrays the Empire, Malgus will show up in time to hold it all together and lead the charge. This is what I think the over-arching story of SWTOR will be.

There’s something even bigger here though. Take a look at the movies. The Sith ultimately failed in establishing their own Empire, so they slowly took over the Republic and evolved it into their own image. Darth Malgus failed in establishing his own New Empire, so now he’ll slowly take over the Sith Empire and evolve it into his own image. Keep your eye out for this in the coming patches and expansions. That’s Malgus’ influence you’re seeing. By the time Darth Malgus takes over, the Empire will already look like the New Empire we destroyed in SWTOR vanilla.

How soon will this happen? We’ll just have to wait and see.

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