Today, Funko announced two figures of Eivor, the main character from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Except, both figures are male, which isn’t even canon.
While it is true you can pick either male or female Eivors in Vallhalla and are free to switch between them whenever you want, Ubisoft does have a canon option. Female Eivor is the canonical version of the character. You might be confused by this, considering Ubisoft essentially hid the female Eivor, keeping her out of most marketing materials like trailers and screenshots. However, in comics and books starring Eivor, Ubisoft uses the female version of the viking.
There are some narrative reasons for why there are two Eivors and why the game offers an option to players that lets them switch between male and female automatically depending on where they are in the story. I don’t want to spoil it here because the purpose of this blog is to dunk on a Funko Pop. But if you let the game choose when you are male and when you are female, you’ll play a vast majority of the game as a woman. Only certain sections, that are different and special, have you play as a male. The short version is that Eivor, the viking who lived in the late 800s, was a woman.
But if Funko wanted to create a male figure of Eivor, that would be fine. Some folks chose him as their main character and might want to own a bit of plastic that looks roughly like him. That’s totally understandable. But why create two figures both based on the non-canon male version of the character? Seems silly. Almost as silly as creating two nearly identical figures and giving one of them two axes to make them more special. (The figure with two axes is a Gamestop exclusive. So while you might be unable to find any PS5 consoles there, at least you can get this Funko Pop.)
My guess: Funko isn’t a real fan of Assassin’s Creed. I can prove it too. Look how they spelled Eivor’s name in that tweet revealing the figures. I rest my case.