It's not that I don't think he's a terrible person, it's that he seemed to be motivated more by personal amusement than any sort of philosophical commitment to "chaos". As far as I can tell, he's never even mentioned "chaos" before. It feels like they had a villain in mind and then just looked into their roster of planeswalkers to see whom they could most easily fit into the mold. And it's weird to see them trying to turn a Hannibal Lecter style small-scale villain into a comic book scale world-ending threat.


I was referring more to the Dark Knight era recent Joker where he has some weird philosophical ramblings about wanting to cause chaos and take over the entire city or something. Which I guess is interesting because they kinda did the same thing there that WotC is doing here, and turned a small-scale crook into a human embodiment of "chaos" and an existential threat to society.

I think he did in one of the Arena quotes, but regardless its clear that he's out for some "fun". He isn't Xenagos or Oko, he has no ideology to spice his sadism.

Oko seemed like the obvious option here. He even looks kind of Kaldheimian.

Iko is too big a fop to be believable as a serious antagonist.
Without something like Garruk to show up and wreck for him, he's a weasley dandy in leather pants.

Of course, I'm speaking purely from my opinion because I dislike him intensely.

He's the most terrifying being in the multiverse, the lord of antlers.

Elks as far as the eye can see

Oko's arc felt super contrived to me. Like, his big motivation is fighting against tyranny or something, but as far as I can tell, the humans on Eldraine weren't actually doing any tyrannizing and just minded their own business. Like they wanted to give him an understandable motive, but they didn't want to give the good guys any kind of flawed or morally grey character that it would be understandable to hate, so he just goes around trying to start **** while all the Eldraine elves are just confused as to what his deal is.

It doesn't help that "tyranny" in this definition is anything stopping him from being an unaccountable **** that literally gets to do whatever he wants because it's important to his personal identity.

That actually sounds like a good fit for what I expect from Kaldheim's plot. He's basically stealing a magical sword to cause people to fight for his amusement, right?

Oko's deal is that he sees all manner of civilised behaviour as hypocrisy. He's like that guy in the comic about participating in society.

He wouldn't fit well in Kaldheim unless he'd specifically rag on on their views of honor.

Shouldn't have killed Xenagos then, he wore it better.

And Xenagos actually had a point. The gods were actually tyrannical despots who engaged in petty acts of punitive cruelty to the mortals of Theros. We spent the last Theros set watching Elspeth justifiably murder one of them. But I'm not sure what King Kenrith was supposed to have done to get Oko so hot and bothered. As far as I can tell, he wasn't even doing anything to the fairy tale creatures, he was just minding his own business.

I think Oko is not meant to be sympathetic, he's just a truther, conspiracy theory villain without the barest minimum points Xenagos had. I like that, it helps distinguish between the two.

Actually, there would be an amazing sort of poetry if Xenagos had shown up on the Norse plane with a totally separate set of Gods.

His plan of becoming a god would actually be part of the natural order. Love to see how he'd react to that.

You can do unsympathetic villains, but Oko isn't just unsympathetic (in fact, he kinda is sympathetic because his home plane basically sent him to allegorical conversion therapy for fairy folk). The problem is that his motives just don't seem to be very applicable to Eldraine. Like his backstory and motives are basically the same as Chandra's, but more coherent: he comes from a plane where he's different in a way that threatens those in power so they tried to break him into conformity, and comes away with a resentment of those who try to enforce order through oppression. This is his alleged motivation against King Kenrith, which would make perfect sense except for the fact that King Kenrith doesn't seem to be doing that whatsoever. There's not even a misunderstanding, the elves just straight-up tell him that things are fine but he keeps going ahead with it anyways.

He's there because well, he's a fair folk. But themes wise I think it says a lot when his idea of "oppression" is basically polite behaviour

That actually sounds like an amazing story. I imagine he'd either get very sad or very angry. The latter probably has more storytelling potential. Monored Xenagos, World-Wrecker?
Actually, he could just be super happy to see his dream realized elsewhere. That would work alright.
All that said I understand he's probably best off staying dead. We have to have one villain at least who can stay that way.

I'm alright with Oko having a totally juvenile philosophy(, I mean lots of real world villains do). It might actually be the best way to make a villain people can love to hate. I just don't want WOTC to try and push Oko's views as deeply meaningful or sympathetic; it's not and both WOTC and their other characters should act that way. I don't want to feel insulted as a member of the audience.

Also I'm speaking as somebody who doesn't really follow the story anymore so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

That said we could use genuinely sympathetic villains. Nahiri is the current go to example but they went all the way to excuse her genocidal crimes.

I think this how he supports to be read. A few communities I flutter around said talked on how Okos (or his backstory) said he was mind controlled in the allegorical conversion therapy and then his first act in lore is to do a similar thing to Garruk in an unnecessary and humiliating way, becoming the sad but often true story of how people who been abused will often become a similar kind of abuser.

For Eldraine I got that while claims (to others and likely himself) that he say against tyranny, but I think any kind of authority bugs him as its reminds him of his home plane and he does for personal reasons and not really altruistic. In the Eldraine novel he "connected" with Rowan when she talked about being frustrated about how restrictive her and Wills parents where and Oko said how he wasn't happiest with his parents, so think that also spurred him as he saw Kenrith as his own parents.