#no it can still be canon-adjacent since we only ever see her in flashbacks and memories

[antirepurp]

maria whose influence made shadow the way he is. maria who was bitter and mean and who held a gun with a firmer grip than she should have. maria whose legacy was altered by her loved ones for you can't speak ill of the dead. can anyone hear me

[carryoncastiel]

I'm not sure if you know this or not, but I ran into an old video from early access for wyll where they used mods to make the companions accessible origin picks (pre ea patch 5 since if I remember correctly that one stopped people from being able to access other origins via mods), and it's so interesting because he had a "talk to mizora" free action button, which makes sense considering ea implied that's how he and mizora communicated, and there was actually recorded dialogue that would play.

Mizora seems to have been also rewritten a little. She's much more chill compared to current Mizora, and they were definitely going to lean into the relationship angle (although that was obvious from ea romance). Her pet name for him was also sweetheart instead of pet (less dehumanizing and more condescending it seems).

The other interesting tidbit is that it seems like the wyll arc had a lot more to do with his trauma, since mid convo at the mention of spike he starts to flashback (it seems the didn't have the narrator dialogue recorded by then, but it is written) and Mizora yells at him to snap him out of it.

Anyway sorry if you knew all this already I just never knew that scene was ever a thing and was excited lmao

No, I didn't know this so thank you for the info! I don't know that much about ea tbh. I was kinda interested in it when the game had just released and it was more relevant, especially in regards to how Wyll's character/story had changed. But not enough that I went and looked for videos of it, though I have seen the Wyll romance scene at some point.

I know there definitely exists a way the Wyll and Mizora relationship could've been written without making me queasy and irritated at all of the bad implications of it - but sadly Larian has not written it in ea and they certainly have not written it for the final canon of the game. Maybe, had Mizora stayed a mysterious character that Wyll secretly communicates via sending stone and we only get to see in Act 3, and she wasn't some sexy devil lady tehe who sexually harasses and demeans Wyll and annoys the fuck out of me but actually a scary and powerful devil who poses an actual threat to not only Wyll but maybe the player character themselves and one of Wyll's personal quests would've been to deal with her one way or another... But no - it's not what we got.

Adjacent to that point though: One of the many baffling choices in the final canon of the game is the complete irrelevance of the sending stone for Wyll's story. I guess because they made Mizora already show up and be annoying in Act 1 it didn't make much sense to have Wyll also talk to her via sending stone (They could've obviously still incorporated in another way had they wanted to but, well...) It irks me that since they changed that aspect from ea we don't get to know how this communication works exactly. I remember some people even thinking Mizora could straight up look through the eye to spy on Wyll (which ewww) but I'm pretty sure that's not actually the case. One DnD explanation I read said you can send a short message via the stone and the recipient will hear it in their mind and can respond in the same manner. So it's more like text messaging and not direct like a phone call. But do you have to hear the message immediately? Or could you ignore it for a while? Could Wyll be assaulted by Mizora's voice just popping into his head at any moment or could he ignore her for a time until the sensation(?)/notification noise(??) got too annoying or she showed up in person? It's wild that something like this is in the game and they just do nothing with it!