(1) Image of Demon Hunter. Screenshot. Activision-Blizzard. (n.d.). Picture of Demon Hunter. Retrieved from https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/game/classes/demon-hunter

Demon hunters are relatively new to WoW as a playable class, but they’ve been around since the days of Warcraft 3. After all, Illidan was already a demon hunter back then. One of the things we know about demon hunters is that they ingest the hearts (yeah it’s gross) of demons and essentially fuse their beings with the soul of a demon of the Burning Legion.

When Demon Hunters first stepped on to the scene in Legion, I remember listening to a podcast called Lore Watch (check out the podcast) hosted by Anne Stickney (Twitter: @Shadesogrey), Matt Rossi (Twitter: @MatthewWRossi), and Joe Perez (Twitter: @LodurZJ) and they discussed this particular issue. Demon Hunters have living demon souls of the Burning Legion within their bodies. They postulated a conundrum in that as long as the Demon Hunters are alive, the Burning Legion can never be 100% defeated. We also know that the Legion is essentially done at this point thanks to the end of Legion. Sargeras is imprisoned and over the course of Warlords of Draenor and Legion, we killed Archimonde (again) and Kil’Jaeden. Both kills were arguably done within the realm of the Twisting Nether, meaning they are perma-dead. The Legion is basically defeated. Sure, some demons are still out there and many of them might make appearances, but the Legion as an organized force is essentially done unless some other figure organizes them, and let’s be honest: anyone left who can do that is certainly not as powerful as what we’ve already defeated, so they aren’t really much of a threat at this point.

As Illidan said in his farewell cinematic, “The hunter is nothing without the hunt.” As a demon hunter, our hunt is over…so what do we do now?

The Future of Demon Hunters

Battle For Azeroth has been in full swing for quite some time now, but there’s really not much of the Legion making an appearance given that we pretty much sent them running home. Since we don’t have them to hunt down, we are falling in line with our corresponding factions. Yes, we’re involved with the war, but how much of it is really a concern for us? Our entire purpose as demon hunters is the Legion. Compared to them, who cares about a war between moral races on one random planet in the cosmos? We may be semi-welcome now, but make no mistake, the night elves were never fond of demon hunters. They imprisoned us for several years and only let us out because we were arguably better at killing their enemies than they were, but there was never any love between us and the night elves. Given the orcs’ history with the Legion, I can’t imagine they are too fond of us either. In reality, I think we exist as part of the factions simply because it’s a game. In a true narrative of free will, I don’t think the demon hunters would rejoin the factions, and more to that point, they certainly wouldn’t fight each other.

So what do we really do now? I think the only narrative answer is to simply sit and wait. I don’t think any demon hunter believes the Legion is gone forever. We are at a point where we interact with the world as is necessary to survive. The legion is defeated, but not gone forever, and whenever they return, we’ll be ready.