Is the newest update with [name retracted] justifiable? (SPOILERS!)

Hey everyone! This is a very long theory and discussion post. If you don’t wanna be spoiled I suggest don’t read it lol. This post and the video I made based on this post is basically my feelings on whether having Marluxia is justifiable or not. You can find the video under the spoiler tag if you'd rather listen then read:

Spoiler

Now that that's out of the way, let's get into it: For me the answer is yes, and I’ll explain the evidence I believe points to this happening all along, rather than the KHUX trying to add nonsense at the last minute. Whether you like the story choice or not, I believe that if it was previously foreshadowed as happening it has been built up enough to be believable and hence is “justified”. I can’t find a better word than justified other then “makes sense” but you guys get the idea: What is unjustified for me is them adding it because they felt like it and I don’t believe that’s what happened here. Even if I don’t like the inclusion of Marluxia here, I can respect it as it has been built up since RE:COM, and even if Nomura’s choice is bad, at least it was a concrete choice, it’s not random. I just wanted to clarify that.


I think it’s understandable to be shocked and or angry as as we haven’t gotten an explanation for why characters like him and Ventus are showing up in Kingdom Hearts UX. But, first in case you don’t know, in the new cutscenes, Sterlitzia, who’s supposed to be the 5th leader, is looking for our player to warn them about all the stuff going down, but storytelling wise it would be cooler if she had known Marluxia beforehand and was actually looking for him and HE killed her. It would have been a cool twist. But anyway she looks around town, and then goes into a building where a shadowed figure kills her in cold blood. She then dies without creating a Nobody or a Heartless, because the intention here wasn’t to extract her heart, and then Marluxia goes to pretend to be the 5th Union Leader. So there’s not too much to unpack here, but what I want to talk about whether or not this is a justifiable decision or not.


The first is that Marluxia is called the Graceful Assassin, but he actually didn’t kill anyone in RE:COM. His title was decided before his UX appearance, which always to me pointed that he had done something shady in his past like a lot of the other Organization 13 members.


The second is that Marluxia is the one to explain how Roxas can collect hearts. Now everyone in the organization should know this, obviously, but if Marluxia does have a Keyblade in KHUX, it makes sense he would know how since in the scene when he killed Sterlitzia, he choose not to extract her heart to create a heartless or nobody but instead kill them outright. Because if you remember in KH, anyone without a Keyblade can kill heartless but they just come back, meanwhile Sora can extract the hearts of a heartless, so it’s very fitting for him to be doing that in 358/2 Days and it makes the scene more meaningful whether he has a Keyblade or not.


However to counteract that point, Marluxia in RECOM says: "The Keyblade's power... How I've longed to make it my own!". This to me implies that Marluxia doesn’t have one and is going to go through KHUX bullshitting his way out of using a Keyblade. Now, this would explain Marluxia’s bloodthirsty attitude towards getting a Keyblade, because he’s been waiting what feels like an eternity to get one. The reason he killed Sterlitzia could have been for the same reason - that he hungers to make the Keyblade’s power his own. If you want both my last point and this point to stand however, you could argue that Marluxia could be talking about the Keyblade in Kingdom Hearts BBS that unlocks Kingdom Hearts, and that the only reason he was going after Sora was because he knew everything had to be “in place” for the events of the future to happen. Remember that we never catch Marluxia monologuing to himself about his true intentions, or are ever in his head, and so the idea of overthrowing the organization to use Sora could have been a ruse to make sure future events were set in stone. In addition, Xemnas knew of the plans to overthrow the organization, and so I believe sending Axel there to eliminate them was also a ruse, or a strategy. Because as we know from Saix, Axel was supposed to die there as well, or at least Saix wanted him to. Maybe this is because later Axel gets a Keyblade in DDD, and Axel says himself he doesn’t think anyone really accounted for him coming in to save the day. So maybe the reason why Xemnas knew is because without this event he knew it would be impossible to set all the events in motion for the other KH games, as explained in DDD.


Marluxia also has an obsession of being superior or in power, and no matter where my last point lands you could say the power from KHUX got to his head, and so even if he overthrew the organization truthfully without Xemnas being in on it to set up events in DDD, that could be why.


Then, there are the Marluxia Nobodies in the Tangled World, which should have given us a very large clue.


Finally, Marluxia is sent to Castle Oblivion and we know the real reason why people were sent there was to find the hidden chamber that held Ventus. As some of you may know, there’s a very solid theory because of the inclusion of the Dream Eaters that the KHUX world we are playing in is a Dream world, like the ones Sora and Riku visited, and the inhabitants of that world are stuck there in a timeless loop so to speak. Or that it is similar to Timeless River, where no one gets any older and are stuck in the timeline in which Disney Castle hasn’t been built yet. In any case, Marluxia could have been woken up along with Ventus, but now that Ventus is asleep again, I believe the concern is by Xehanort and Xemnas that if he is woken up, he could tell them the secrets of KHUX and warn everyone about what he remembers after diving into the dream world. He could also see his old self. With this theory it makes sense that Marluxia and Ventus were just trapped souls stuck in the constant loop of the timeline that were ripped out by Xehanort.


Even though some of these point are theory crafting or connecting the dots without it being entirely spelled out for us yet, this to me justifies the decision of including Marluxia into the game. Again, if I don’t agree with the choice I believe there’s enough material that could be now seen as foreshadowing to KHUX, instead of it just being a random choice Nomura made because of a weird KH acid trip.


So I wanna hear what you guys think: Do you think this was a random choice Nomura made, or do you think he actually has been planning this all along? And does it make a difference to you regardless? Again, personally for me even if I don’t agree with the story choice I personally can respect with the fact at least it was a concrete choice and not just random, but I wanna hear from the rest of you!