Where is Nathanos Blightcaller in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands?

World of Warcraft’s newest patch includes cinematics that advance the story, and one of them features two of the game’s most famous elves duking it out. Tyrande Whisperwind and Sylvanas Windrunner meet in the death realm of Ardenweald and have an epic fight, and in the course of their battle, one interaction caught my interest.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Chains of Domination patch.]

Specifically, Sylvanas revealed she didn’t know we murdered her terrible boyfriend, which means his soul is probably stuck in some kind of weird cosmic limbo. I just think we need to be a little more concerned about that.

Back before Shadowlands was released, players (and Tyrande) rolled up to Nathanos’ house in the Plaguelands and murdered him. This was kind of a pyrrhic victory at the time, because we knew Nathanos would just go to the Shadowlands and the Jailer would unite him with Sylvanas. It’s actually been heavily implied that Sylvanas is doing these crimes at least partially for Nathanos.

But we haven’t seen him since his death, and Wednesday’s cutscene confirms that was intentional. The big bad of this expansion, the Jailer, seems to control where souls go now that everyone who dies is being funneled into his domain of the Maw. But Nathanos is still missing, and Sylvanas is a little shaken up over it.

The Shadowlands we’ve seen so far is just a tiny sliver of the existing heavens and hells out there, as well as the larger cosmos. Where could this terrible big boy be?

He might need saving from some terrible torture or powerful antagonist. This sounds like a challenge that only the champions of Azeroth could tackle — if absolutely anyone at all liked Nathanos. After all, he spent all of the Battle for Azeroth expansion sneering at us, calling us weak, and otherwise just kind of being a jerk. It’s like donating to a GoFundMe for the guy in high school who called everyone dorkuses and hit you with a skateboard.

“Hey, this is Nathanos Blightcaller, and I’m in a bit of a pickle. My soul got vacuumed up by the Void Lords in order to fuel an intergalactic war. Can you throw me five bucks to grab a magic taxi home?” OK, sure, you could donate to his cause, and some people might argue you should, but I’m still not going to do it!

It remains to be seen where Nathanos is and how he’ll end up playing into Sylvanas’ final story. A novel starring Sylvanas is planned for this February. Personally, I’m hoping that Nathanos accidentally got funneled into dog heaven and we don’t see him for another four expansions.