Diablo’s dark world finally gets the villain it deserves

Diablo IV is the first game in the franchise that, to me, embraced its more thoughtful, vaguely theologically nihilistic roots. That is made manifest in the main villain, Lilith, who departs from the smirking and roaring of her predecessors to articulate a cosmically maternal pain. Aside from everything the game does right in terms of gameplay, I was finally deeply drawn into the franchise’s lore — which, despite its depth, has often been overlooked or downplayed in the previous games.

Diablo has never been one to complicate its prewritten characters, who were more often fleshed-out archetypes than layered levels of self-conscious deliberations. The big bads of the series were out of a teenager’s idea of “hardcore,” dripping off the covers of cheesy metal band albums. With claws and horns and fire, villains smirked and roared their way through the plot, crying out only when players managed to slaughter them.

But what has always fascinated me since I played the original Diablo was the attention to detail, vast worldbuilding, theological contemplation, and cosmic nihilism that made up the world Blizzard created. With Diablo IV, that more mature — as opposed to violently adult — nature is given flesh in the game’s main villain.

Note: this article includes spoilers for Diablo IV.

Lilith is shrouded in somber contemplation. She speaks delicately, softly, always with an undercurrent of maternal concern. This makes sense given she is, in a very real sense, the mother of all humans in this universe: she literally made the world (as in it is a planet with a moon) of Sanctuary. When you finally face her, she isn’t angry at your hampering her goal. She’s disappointed: a gift rejected to play a game we, as humans, do not even understand. Her last words are not pain but regret at failure, animosity you would not see beyond imagined mists of morality.

Diablo is a universe without benevolent gods but with many monsters, including those who operate in the High Heavens called “angels.” These are heavens with no throne, let alone one to occupy it. Yet, it is a universe with Burning Hells and three main gods atop, who all personify the worst aspects of existence: destruction, hatred, and terror. It is a universe where angels and demons have raged so long it is called the Eternal Conflict.

Even on this scale, the morals are easily bisected: black and white; dark and light; hell and heaven; demons and angels. But from this cosmic, antagonistic amalgam seeps a new strain of gray, no longer wanting to be subsumed as part of relentless bloodshed. Instead, this moral strain seeks to drip itself out of the vein of conflict into a new place of relative peace, disassociated from the beatings and bloodshed of its moral origin. It slithers through the veins of both Lilith and Inarius, a now exiled angel, over whom Lilith had some control.

Throughout my time with the game, I was struck by my own reluctance to pursue Lilith. She sought not to destroy the world but sever it from the bonds of blood that tied it to an eternal war beyond human comprehension. Hated in her own home of Hell and despised in Heaven, her displacement echoed through all generations of her children. Humans are neither pure evil nor pure good; yet, for Lilith, that made them stronger than the mindless embodiments of bifurcated morality that slashed and slew in the Eternal Conflict.   

I cannot say I was completely behind my powerful witch character, despite my adoration for her power, loyalty to her new friends, and stunning voice. Aided by a cast of allies devoted to saving the world, I felt pulled by their blind faith rather than guided by articulated morality. Indeed, Lilith’s second-in-command, a man named Elias, sought to summon her back to the world precisely because she was the only figure powerful enough to withstand and do away with both Heaven and Hell. His goal was protection. If the Hells were coming, would we not want its own exiled daughter to be on our side preparing us for the battle?

Whatever one’s opinion, I was having moral deliberations in a bloody Diablo game! The game seems to eschew itself from the dark fantasy of the third entry. Very little is mentioned of it, despite the universe-altering stakes of that game’s story. Instead of dark fantasy, this is, well, morbid, sad, and existential. This is not the darker parts of The Lord of the Rings but diving headfirst into a Zdzisław Beksiński painting. Every story and sidestory is wreathed in sadness, where even the grave is no solace.

One sidequest told the story of a girl with uncontrollable magic who wanted nothing but love from a sick mother who would not give it — eventually forcing the girl into exile, killing her townspeople and her own mother. Another woman asked me to find her beloved husband, who ended up not only cheating on her but doing so with a succubus who introduced him to Hellraiser-type agony.

There is little joy here. It is a world lathered in a morose reflection that our creators are gone or hate us, that beings truly exist who would want us dead that we could never hope to stop.

It is often said that what’s worse than a universe that actively hates us because of, say, evil gods, is one that is indifferent. At least with hatred, there is intentionality, with a small hope that we could turn those gods in our favor. But a universe with no such power, that folds its arms as we die and scream and perish, echoing into the black nothing for eternity, seems worse.

Here, that opposition is embodied in Lilith: she is precisely the kind of cosmic being we would hope to turn in our favor, which is what Elias wanted when summoning her. It’s interesting to me that the goals of the main characters seem to be to fight for a world without these powerful beings, without angels or demons. To be cast off into the sea of the cosmos, to drift on an island of banal mortality, and die uneventfully in a fit of meaninglessness. That’s how I see current existence — perhaps that is why I find myself supportive of Lilith, rather than my allies who would stop her.

After decades of nearly mindless clicking, I can’t believe a Diablo game actually made me contemplate its universe on a deeper level — and question whether the large demon lady really was wrong.