Ok I talked abt this a lil before in another post but THE RUTHARI DESIGN LANGUAGE
Ethari outwardly has changed, but that design reflects more of his grief, the passage of time, and his inability to let go of his husband. It’s also all external—his hair is longer, his Moonshadow markings are now asymmetric/unbalanced, his earrings are gay as hell and really show how he is not over his marriage at all. Most importantly, his armor/shoulder things. He looks prickly, closed off, and that’s exactly how he acts when he thinks runaan is a stranger, which is very un-Ethari.
On the other end, Runaan’s design is hugely the same as season one, with the only two changes being A) his weird ass cutout sleeve is missing on his right, and B) his horn. Unlike Ethari, runaan’s biggest character design change is losing a part of his actual body. Hair can grow, clothes can change, but Runaan’s horn is part of him. His being has been fundamentally altered in a small way, and he’s going to carry that change for ever. Both figuratively, with how he’s seen the true outcome of his assassin work, and literally.
Ethari has a design that communicates his relationship with runaan, he always has. In bloodmoon huntress, runaan calls Ethari his guiding light, but in reality I think it’s the other way around. Because Ethari is the most out of character without runaan. He ghosts Rayla out of grief, which is very out of character, because runaan is gone. But after two years, runaan still comes home to an Ethari who is grieving and hopeless, but not broken.
And after they reunite, Ethari returns to the same state we’ve seen him in for pretty much the entire show. And I get why. He’s a minor character, the plot doesn’t need him to have a paradigm shift like runaan, but I like to read into it as Ethari being the moonfam anchor. He’s the home they all come back to, he’s the warm hug they all need, he’s soft and he’s kind and he’s defined by his love for them. So when he loses his family, he loses himself. He’s and anchor with no ship. Runaan is his heart, without runaan, there is no point for there to be an Ethari, and it makes him lash out and ghost Rayla.
So. Here’s why I’m thinking about all this: Ethari making Runaan a prosthetic horn. Ethari, runaan’s anchor, helping him reforge this part of himself and shine truth onto the great lie of assassin-hood that runaan held so close to his persona. Runaan choosing to replace his belief in precision violence with his belief in love. Most importantly to me, Ethari confronting the lie he helped reinforce for runaan. Ethari seeing that he’s been making weapons to fuel the cycle of violence that in turn took his entire family and his heart from him. And Ethari and runaan deciding to help build the new world, Everkynd, where the lie and the cycle don’t have to dictate their lives.