Final Fantasy: 25 Greatest Summons

As a species we have a natural affinity to dogs, making it easy to develop attachments to canine characters to the extent that a death of a dog on screen is often more impactful than the death of a human character.

Despite actually being a wolf, based specifically on one from Norse mythology that was most recently villainised as Hela’s pet in Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok, Fenrir is the closest substitute to man’s best friend amongst the Final Fantasy series’ summons.

First appearing in VI as a summon that bestowed the Image status effect (one unique to that game), Fenrir returned in IX as wind elemental (appearing alongside the earth elemental Titan in one of his two possible animations) and in XI as dark elemental.

Given this inconsistency in his effects, it would appear that the developers cannot quite put a finger on what he should represent and it has often been easier to incorporate him into other games as a regular enemy or boss given that each usually boasts a plethora of canine palette swaps.

Given that Carbuncle’s recent redesign has made him more doglike, it would appear as if there’s no regular place for Fenrir going forwards, particularly as the number of summons has been drastically reduced in recent games, but he’ll always be a 14 out of 10.