Originally Posted by
Rytingur
Spoiler warning: Broken shore knowledge required.
I hereby predict that by the end of Legion, we'll get a deformed fel infused person either thrown at us to fight, or revealed to be in their captivity. That someone is Varian.
Why do I think that? Well I'm glad you asked, you see, when I did the broken shores event back in alpha the curiosity ate at me for ages how Varian actually died, since no one knew, unlike vol'jin. So I started wondering "what if he's just assumed dead?" since those seem to be frequent in WoW. I had a few theories but after the cinematic finally being revealed this is the one i'm... at least 30, maybe even 35% sure about.
There's a chance that explosion was around him instead of him actually exploding, caused by the fel energies transforming him to any variation of Fel-Varian you can think of, and Gul'dan got whispers in his ears from Kil'Jaeden to keep him, he could still provide useful because fan service plot twists are great.
It's a long shot but after seeing Bolvar and saurfang jr get their asses fried by dragons and still make a return I think it's possible
It's my prediction and I'm gonna stick to it till the day I... get disproven i suppose by the last patch rolling around and next expansion being announced.