An arrogant, self-serving -blam!- in whom the entire Vex Collective and us share a common enemy.

I really dislike her as an antagonist. I just don't find her threatening at all or her motivation compelling. Her episode felt more about saints identity crisis than her plans beyond messing with vex. Then Saint and Ikora just decide not to be compelled anymore and pop their supers and lay her out before we just let her float away. Then next thing we know, she's compelling a deity to kill itself and gets some power boost I[i] really really [/i]hope shes not the "witness" of this new saga

I feel that Maya is a psychopath. She murders every chioma that isn't hers. She has a lot of issues. She should just embrace what 3 said to her and succumb to extinction. She will be her with chioma sooner rather later this way. In doing all of this it makes me wonder if the other Maya sundaresh out there that had their chioma taken by this Maya are seeking revenge against this Maya. In which case Maya just screws herself over because she is selfish and cannot accept Fate. Imo I've seen this type of story beat played out many times since the 90s it only ever ends with that selfish person finally finding peace eventually. My thoughts on Maya as a character, and the plot behind her objectives 🍻🫡

I feel Maya’s story is quite relevant to the times we find ourselves in. Her single-minded pursuit of a nostalgic day-gone-by in which she retrospectively believes she was her happiest blinds her the fact that she is viewing the past through rose-tinted lenses while numbing her to the very real damage she has and will continue to cause others in trying to forcibly return everyone to that era. I would imagine that as her story progresses her need for control will cause her to increasingly micro-manage those under her command, as demonstrated by the fact that you can see her face staring down at you from the skies in certain [b]Reclaim[/b] Activities, which we may end up turning against her by flooding her with information overload, paralyzing her decision making ability. (΄◉◞౪◟◉｀)

Between her Deus ex super power and her accidental threatening of the cosmos, it’s just a bad joke. She is basically a female version of Clovis Bray at this point.

She's annoying in a good way

I cannot get over how ridiculous her whole gimmick with the echo is, it is something out of a bad Saturday morning cartoon

She is an engaging villain, and a lot of it has to do with the consequences of her trying to get what she wants. So far, her desperation to restore the Golden Age has driven her to extreme lengths, and it is rather ironic how much her behavior mirrors Clovis Bray, a man she despised when they knew each other. After all, Maya Sundaresh found the Chioma from our timeline, but she degaussed her mind when she refused to see things her way, killing her. In the [url=https://www.ishtar-collective.net/records/clovis-brays-logbook-missing-pages]Missing Logbooks[/url], Clovis has this to say after he killed Elsie Bray before she could wipe out the Deep Stone Crypt and Volantis Vex: [i]ENTRY 15 Everything is fine. Elisabeth is not dead. [b]The person I struck down out there was an error. An anomalous offshoot, deranged by outside influence into paranoia and confusion. Like a cancer cell. And like cancer, I had to target and remove her.[/b] Savaging. She betrayed me. I invited her into the greatest scientific and existential discovery in human history as a trusted partner. A participant in my living and immortal legacy. And she tried to blow it all up. Can there be any betrayal more intimate? My own granddaughter, child of my pattern, issue of my logic—a serpent, a worm in the apple, an enemy of eternal life. [b]That version of Elisabeth Bray was no granddaughter of mine. She was a stranger to me. I would kill her if she hadn’t already done it herself.[/b][/i] Then, when he reuploaded Elsie's stored consciousness into a new Exo Frame, he lied to Elsie about the circumstances of how Elsie-1 died. It's strikingly similar to how Maya Sundaresh treated all the versions of Chioma Esi she trapped and degaussed. It makes me wonder how Maya would react if someone were to finally confront her with that fact. Now, she has kicked off a chain of events that could lead to our extinction after she murdered III, and overtaxed the Echo of Command's power to such an extent that Vex are starting to peel off from her control and become individuals, like the Tharsis Reformation, and now she's in the Plaguelands looking for Golden Age tech to boost her Echo's influence and connection to her Vex. She has fallen far, and the Desert Perpetual actually gives us a look at who Maya used to be before the Collapse and before the Veil, even if Maya 87 has gone through a lot of her own experiences since setting off into the Vex Network. Her plans are an existential threat. She plans to swap our Earth's place with a Golden Age Earth from another timeline, leaving us in the path of the Collapse itself, while she hopes to rule over the Golden Age Earth that won't be ruined by the Collapse. On the other hand, III is dead, and an extinction-level event is on the horizon. Maya likely does not know about the coming extinction, and we do not know whether III's death affects other timelines. For all we know, the Nine are singular entities across timelines due to existing as 4-dimensional beings above even the time-line travelling Vex, and killing III in one has killed them across all timelines. That's how much Maya Sundaresh has screwed up in her pursuit of a returned Golden Age. Even in the event she succeeds in the swap, a potential cosmic cataclysm would wipe it out anyway. Never mind the Lord of Every Nothing lurking within the Ascendant Plane, so Maya's plan could also end up dropping a Golden Age Earth without Guardians into the jaws of a newborn Taken God. She's left a path of destruction in her pursuit of her goal, and she is not done with that yet. --------------------------------------------- One final note, going back to the Missing Logbook, it was Maya Sundaresh who first warned Elsie Bray of the dangers of the Vex and their goals: [i]The Vex are a threat to your lineage. Not just to the Brays or BrayTech, but to the existence of any human in any possible future. I tracked down Maya Sundaresh—the real Maya, not the Vex parasite in your bone marrow. She confirmed my worst fears. The Vex will not rest until every star has been crushed into a black hole and every newborn cosmos filled with more Vex. And in the unending array of their enslaved cosmos, they will simulate all possible pasts, and fill those with Vex, so that all things that have ever lived or might ever live will experience infestation and consumption and torment by the silica nightmare. And in those devoured simulations, the simulated Vex will use our flesh as hosts for yet more nested universes full of yet more nested copies of us eternally tormented by yet more Vex. An infinite regression of pain and madness inflicted upon every possible version of us in every possible world. Not because they hate us, or fear us, or want to punish us. But because they are indifferent and curious, and they will do every possible thing to us in every possible way.[/i] Now, she is taking control of the Vex with the Echo of Command, and she has Vex studying how to utilize dark matter and quantum entanglement to manipulate timelines in the Desert Perpetual raid. If that research is able to progress beyond the events of the raid, trying to control the Vex will not end well for her.

One of my favorite characters in the franchise... In the lore topic I recently posted I showed the connection between SiVA and Maya... beginning with Lightfall through Echoes until now. During the experiments that Chioma logged about during Veil Containment, she talked about the ICoV looking to find a way to shield SiVA Nanites from radiation using disabled Vex, exo & warmind tech. Maya dies (the Conductor)... it happened every time, that was part of their experiments too, preparing Chioma for that moment.

Maya feels more like a catalyst to the saga rather than a major antagonist, she will probably have a big role in the saga later on but not on the level of what the outer Nine will be. The outer Nine will probably be more antagonistic than Maya. Speaking of, I have seen people say that Maya should have died in Echoes, however I think it was good that she survived ignoring the execution of the ending. This led to not only a new saga about humanity’s fated extinction, but also made the Vex more interesting. The TFS episodes are not great in execution, but I like how they set up the featured races and their evolution. The Choral Vex have gained sentience and individuality while becoming more strategic, Skolas can still revive himself and is will most likely lead the Revenant Scorn from now on, and a new entity is creating new Dire Taken.