God I have so much feelings for his character. He's such a tragic antagonist (A tragic hero?) Dude tries to do good in his own way but he had too much power, and we know how that does people, abuses that power regardless of his intentions even if they're good, the way he went about them hurt everyone he loved, and eventually he got in too deep and couldn't go back.
Honestly there's this review by Tennelle and Roselin on YT that explains better how that ending could've been done. Which I will need to scream again because of how the arc BUTCHERED IT'S OWN MESSAGE by doing what it did canonically. God that could've been SO much better and I'm so frustrated and now I can't help but see Darkstalker in this child's body that he DID NOT CONSENT TO and... it's kinda horrifying when you think about it. They could've just... waited... let Hope SUCCESSFULLY convince him, god they were SO CLOSE too. Let him just have a proper epiphany and see that the only way for him to be saved and CAN have a good happy future now is to just... actually start over, no powers, no bad memories to burden him because it's driving him insane (and they ARE, even without the animus majic!), and that can be where him turning to Peacemaker comes in.
Let him CHOOSE to be saved instead of being tricked, because of him realizing he truly lost, everything he loved he lost because of himself and he lost his happy ending he had been striving for for so long (And the only way he could have even somewhat a happy ending is enslaving everyone IG but even then it's not the one he wanted) wanting to start over and simply try again. How often do we have villains who later admit they lost and embrace that instead of losing their cool and doubling down? Idk, but it would've been nice to see in the arc even if he didn't do the latter, and the books could've kept their message had they just let had that happen. He's as much of a victim to his magic as everyone he hurt, let him use one more spell on his own accord, this time it's a big one that does NOT hurt those around him, and never again.
The fact that it happened from MOTHER FRICKING KINKAJOU TOO. As a JOKE. And she did NOT see that what she was doing was wrong and NOBODY did. Even just having the other dragons be like "Oh god Kinkajou what the FRICK have you done?!" would've been... SOMETHING but no, no self-awareness at all.
When I yabbered to how much I loved Darkstalker's character until then to
vectoring34 he actually sent me this fun little meme thing that in all honestly I feel fits.
(The text says "There are fates worse than death")