u/kaazal_

A certain group of people (leakers) are going around spreading info that the third person shooter travelers use playable ids, meaning we don’t have as many new characters this patch and that with everything considered there is only one unknown/new character slot that could be him.

While this may be true on a technical level, is it true on a spiritual level?

pause to allow applause to stop, dramatic effect and such

That’s right. It’s all manipulation.

chills, john hoyo casts anxious looks around the room. he knows he’s done.

If we give up hope, who are we? QUITTERS. They can say all they want about who’s coming. How many slots there are. You know what i think? I think…

I DO NOT CARE.

audience gasps, some cheer, the post falls silent. john hoyo gets complacent, smirking as he leans back into his chair.

He IS coming. I don’t care about SLOTS. I don’t care about IDs. He IS coming. They’re trying to manipulate us into NOT believing that by spreading some info that sounds scary. Well guess what. IM NOT SCARED. As far as I’m concerned, there is NO Tsaritsa. There is NO Mitya. NO ONE but him. HE is coming. I’ll look back at this post with pure PRIDE when he shows up in all his glory, all his aura, all his POWER. I’ll be the first one there because I BELIEVED.

They could REMOVE HIM FROM THE GAME AND HE WOULD STILL COME.

But he needs our help.

In the Elf movie, the one with Will Ferrell, we see that Santa’s sleigh struggles to fly in New York City for a moment because he doesn’t have the power of Belief. No one BELIEVED.

But I believe.

I believe in Capitano. That he is coming regardless of whatever the leakers and the plan is for him at Hoyoverse. They CANNOT stop the power of Belief.

Will you believe too?

everybody stands up, in awe. they cheer, clapping and appraising me as they begin chanting “I believe!” as I walk away. They’ll try to prove me wrong but I CANNOT be proven wrong. john hoyo makes a call to the cia. “call it off, he’s already won.” i smile, passing the cia agent confidently knowing he can’t stop the movement now. i hop in my limo, rolling down the window as the press surrounds me. i look at the cameras, adjusting my tie before i say my one liner.

“Believe.”

i point to a stop sign just ahead.

CHILLS.

camera pans back. will ferrell is in the limo with me. he says it too as the window rolls back up and we drive off. capitano stands up and is on the banner the next day. zibai never gets her rerun.

Hi all. I know you’re probably disappointed to hear but the stop sign theory won’t be used here. Bummer.

Capitano took his seat in 5.3, at the very beginning of 2025. Because of this, we can count that entire first year of 2025 as the “first day.”

Capitano has now been entirely absent for all of 2026 it’s looking like. That marks the second day.

Then on the third day, Jesus rose. Or more aptly, on the third year, Capitano became playable. Not AFTER the third year/day, but ON the third year/day. Him releasing in 2027 would line up with him returning on the third day (year) when you reeeeally think about it.

Not saying you should trust patterns from Hoyo, but this does work out pretty well.

Also, i’ll have more stop sign content coming soon.

Before I get into this, I want to put a big “unless” in front of this. Unless he comes back and his return is a top 5 moment in all of genshin in all aspects, I think putting him in the chair was one of the lamest uses of Capitano. It feels like they sidelined him to focus on other characters, and I’m not talking about playable aspects but rather storywise.

I cannot help but wish that in a lot of scenes with Childe and Sandrone, he could’ve taken Childes spot and it would’ve made a lot more sense. Talking about stuzha whilst attempting to get the voices of the fatui soldiers heard? In my opinion, it sounds like a very capitano thing to do and them replacing him with childe? It almost feels like they’re literally giving childe everything capitano had whilst leaving capitano on the chair.

My thing is it just really feels like they wasted him now. Like they sidelined him just because. I would’ve loved to have seen him in the parts where sandrone and childe are in the AQ, but we probably won’t get that because they sat him down and he probably won’t come back until everything regarding these aspects of the fatui is done with. I doubt we’ll see the first harbinger being a fatui member like how the others are. And this doesn’t even consider the possibility that he may be sidelined until Khaenri’ah. I’m not a personal believer there, i’m holding hope for 7.4, but it is a possibility i can’t ignore.

I may be the only person who found the political parts of this AQ somewhat interesting, but seeing Childe not only inherit his troops and practically EVERYTHING capitano would be doing kinda bums me out because i doubt we’ll see him actually doing any of that. I just really feel like he’s been wasted, they could’ve had him still sit down but return later, holding off on a banner but still having him be present in these archon quests. But no, we’ve gotta have our number 1 guy just inactive, sitting there, specifically not dead so we can bring him back but we will hold him past some of the more interesting parts of the story.

Then again, I can’t see the future. Maybe they’ll bring him back and he has one of the best moments in the entire storyline and everything will be perfect. But as it stands, I really wish he was more involved because he’s sat down, done nothing but have vague implications for a distant future, have references every other day, and be referred to in present tense but NOT BE PRESENT. Just truly feels like a waste of a great character. They could’ve just waited to give us his banner like Baizhu, Skirk, etc without sidelining him and keeping him involved. But at this point, he needs to be at least one of the 3 most important characters for the snezh aq or else i am just gonna feel like they wasted him for seemingly no reason.

I don’t know if anyone will agree with me but i just feel like, as it currently stands, he’s been wasted.

All in all, we know that…

• He does NOT return this version (boooo 🍅🍅)
• He does have mentions, but ones that sound somewhat scary for us.
• Mistilteinn is sorta doomed it seems

BUT

• Pierro, Ronova, and Pulcinella appear to be unplayable, opening up more slots for Capitano.

My opinion is that, in general, this doesn’t really change much. The mentions don’t really matter much. They sound scary, but so did Sandrone’s during the archon quest and considering the continuous use of present tense in character lines, I would assume that they are intending to bring Capitano back DURING the Archon Quest or needing to have done the Snezhnaya AQ before doing whatever he returns in. It makes sense that an archon quest would refer to him in past tense in a scenario like this, and I could argue to inconsistency of presence use is itself evidence of a future return. I also am not really surprised Mistilteinn means nothing, the moment “Exaiphanes Blade” was leaked i kinda knew then and there that it was done for. I mean, they can prove me wrong still. I wish they would, actually. And yeah, to the dismay of everybody, HoYo lined up everything to seem like they were gonna bring him back with the eclipse lining up and everything but they did nothing. Oh well, saw it coming when we didn’t immediately hear of his return in the first leaks. But I do grieve the Pierro, Pulci, and Ronova playability hopes, even if that clears three potential banner candidates that capitano could take.

(marking as spoiler just cause it gets into leaks a bit? idk it feels appropriate here)

We all know about the eclipse theory and it’s supposed link to Capitano’s return and how it lined up PERFECTLY with Snezhnaya’s release but I haven’t heard ANY shred of hope for 7.0. Not a single thing. I know they’ve cracked down HARD on leaks recently, but I was a big believer in that theory, man. I heard more hope for Signora, which, no disrespect to Signora fans, is pretty crazy. 7.0 having more hope content for Signora than Capitano? I’m shocked, that’s all. So, i’ve gotta ask, does the eclipse lining up mean nothing and is 7.0 a dud for us?

For the record, I didn’t believe in playable Capitano in 7.0, just a return. I would’ve expected Hoyo to actually tie up their loose ends in the “tying up loose ends” version so we wouldn’t have to bounce back to previous nations in the middle of the climax of the entire genshin story but whatever.

(there is a TLDR if you don’t wanna read allat)

Before I say anything, I first and foremost want to say that I have zero clue what they’re planning. We have nowhere near enough info to make good estimates. We can only make theories on what the AQ may hold and then guess based on those theories, so this is MY PERSONAL THEORIES / OPINIONS AND IF YOU DISAGREE THAT DOESNT MAKE EITHER OF US WRONG. With this being said, I think it’s also decently safe to say that he will certainly be in Snezhnaya’s release.

From what we know, Capitano is most likely planned to be playable. He has the most amount of file evidence. We’ve gone over this a million times, we all know it’s “when” and not “if.” But with the addition of the other leaks that I believe are still 100% correct, we know Mare Jivari’s full map will be released in 7.0+ (which is pretty vague to be fair) but that does imply that it is certainly a snezhnaya thing. But we also need to look at the cast of Snezhnaya.

There’s a lot of room for him to come back, but something about this cast feels sort of odd? Like I feel like a good handful of the characters revealed are sorta boring at first glance and not really interesting, basically what I’m saying is there’s a lot of 4* energy going on with a lot of the cast. In Nod Krai, we had two harbingers revealed, two witches/an angel, Varka, Durin, etc. The Nod Krai cast was STACKED. But Snezhnaya has… who? Like we’re in SNEZHNAYA and we don’t really have a crazy cast like how Nod Krai did, it just feels sorta weird to me. No offense to them, but they just aren’t living up to the same hype that the Nod Krai cast had at all. It’s like if instead of Varka they showed off Illuga or something. Either theyre hiding something or this cast really is just kinda regular. And in regards to Pantalone and Pulcinella… I don’t see a world where both are playable unfortunately. And to add to the weirdness of the cast reveal, where’s Pierro? It feels like they’re showing some of the more regular characters they’re adding to hide more hype characters such as Capitano. This could be max tier copium but still.

So, we know he’s in Snezhnaya, but when? I’ve heard two main guesses, being late 7.x such as 7.7 or 7.4 alongside the Tsaritsa. This is where it gets difficult because we don’t know the story and therefore we don’t know when he will return in the story. I think there’s a few options they can go with this.

Option A. Capitano’s return is done before we do the first Snezhnaya AQ. This implies that in 7.0, we immediately get a quest in Natlan where he returns, likely with Mare Jivari. This immediately ties up the giant loose end that is Natlan with all its current issues (No gnosis, giant beast threatening to eat it, loom of fate, etc etc.) As someone who dabbles in storytelling, I would have that be tied up before we reach the climax of the story so that we don’t go to Snezhnaya and then have to come back later because we essentially forgot to turn off the stove. But also, we’re talking about Hoyo, so they could totally do that.

Option B. Capitano’s return is at the peak of the Snezhnaya arc. The war on celestia begins, he serves his purpose being the ley line master, etc. Maybe signora comes back, maybe dottore, who knows. But we know he’ll serve a key purpose in Project Stuzha, given the whole mistletoe stuff. I don’t know the lore, but essentially, he comes back at the climax of the archon quest.

Option C. This is easily the worst option because it would have Capitano not fully returning until late Snezhnaya. The first Harbinger of the Fatui is completely left out of the Fatui story resolution and is used as a plot device for some random reason, like Skirk. Exactly like Skirk, actually.

Each of these options have different implications for playability. If it’s option A, I would expect him to be playable at any time honestly, but would likely lean more towards a 7.4 release. In this case, he would match Varka, appearing early in the AQ and becoming playable shortly after it with his own story quest (which is where he would help with the Bakunawa.) As for Option B, I could see him releasing alongside the Tsaritsa. He could be the main DPS focus for the most hyped part of the story. He is the first harbinger after all. As for Option C, it would likely be 7.5-7.7. Again, worst possible option besides him just not returning.

What do I think? Honestly, I don’t know what to think because Hoyo just kinda sucks, but with everything I’ve talked about, two options point to a likely 7.4 while the other points to a late 7.x. Because the majority of possibilities point to that 7.4 release theory, I’m inclined to go with that. He could return in the main AQ and his story quest is the Mare Jivari issue. I honestly think any other option, unless his release is earlier than 7.4, is a misstep from Hoyo.

TLDR: I feel the current most likely scenario is that he serves an important purpose in the AQ, and therefore must return before/at the climax of it and will have a release in 7.4 to match Varka, but there is a possibility that I’m wrong and releases in late 7.x.