Don't mind me, I just got terminally distracted by that cap of the side profile of Shen Wei screaming as he's trying to keep Ye Zun from falling because that scene always gets me.
I do agree that Shen Wei let himself fall - I think in the hopes of following Ye Zun to wherever he was pulled - but I don't think he could've resisted the pull of the Hallows, even if he'd tried harder. The Hallows do like their parallelism, and given the time loop implications, Shen Wei needed to be there in the future.
If it is a decision, Shen Wei decides to leave his people behind rather quickly.
Another point here is that going by pure show canon, there's nothing tying him to his people beyond duty. He clearly cares about being a good leader and saving as many of them as possible, but he's not shown to have any personal relationship with anyone other than Kunlun. Now, I like to believe that that's a time constraint issue and it just wasn't shown because that would be terribly lonely and I don't generally subscribe to the idea that Shen Wei never sought out anyone else ever, but purely by what's on screen... there isn't much holding him there. Except duty, which tbf, Shen Wei does hold pretty sacrosanct, but he's had the absolute worst day after all.
If he'd stayed, if he'd led his people back to Dixing himself - would it have made a difference? Would the world be different, ten thousand years later? How would he be different?
Fascinating questions! We don't really have enough context to judge this, but going out on a limb, I'd say that unless Shen Wei is literally immortal, I can't see his presence then making that much difference to 10k years later. The first question that came to mind was what Shen Wei thinks of monarchy - the Dijun always felt a little incongruous to me in the show... Also, places of learning, I bet he'd have tried to establish some/more than there were and maybe that would've made a difference. Then again, we really don't know what Dixing did or didn't have in those 9.9k years.
Do they think he's dying? Do they expect him to eventually return?
I think you'd probably get two camps here - the realist 'look, he was literally buried under the earth, he's dead' camp and the 'but it's Heipaoshi! He's beaten terrible odds before' camp. Time then eventually seemed to prove the former right.
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I do agree that Shen Wei let himself fall - I think in the hopes of following Ye Zun to wherever he was pulled - but I don't think he could've resisted the pull of the Hallows, even if he'd tried harder. The Hallows do like their parallelism, and given the time loop implications, Shen Wei needed to be there in the future.
If it is a decision, Shen Wei decides to leave his people behind rather quickly.
Another point here is that going by pure show canon, there's nothing tying him to his people beyond duty. He clearly cares about being a good leader and saving as many of them as possible, but he's not shown to have any personal relationship with anyone other than Kunlun. Now, I like to believe that that's a time constraint issue and it just wasn't shown because that would be terribly lonely and I don't generally subscribe to the idea that Shen Wei never sought out anyone else ever, but purely by what's on screen... there isn't much holding him there. Except duty, which tbf, Shen Wei does hold pretty sacrosanct, but he's had the absolute worst day after all.
If he'd stayed, if he'd led his people back to Dixing himself - would it have made a difference? Would the world be different, ten thousand years later? How would he be different?
Fascinating questions! We don't really have enough context to judge this, but going out on a limb, I'd say that unless Shen Wei is literally immortal, I can't see his presence then making that much difference to 10k years later. The first question that came to mind was what Shen Wei thinks of monarchy - the Dijun always felt a little incongruous to me in the show... Also, places of learning, I bet he'd have tried to establish some/more than there were and maybe that would've made a difference. Then again, we really don't know what Dixing did or didn't have in those 9.9k years.
Do they think he's dying? Do they expect him to eventually return?
I think you'd probably get two camps here - the realist 'look, he was literally buried under the earth, he's dead' camp and the 'but it's Heipaoshi! He's beaten terrible odds before' camp. Time then eventually seemed to prove the former right.