Games Workshop just threw a grenade at the Warhammer 40,000 community with a stunning cinematic that shows the Emperor of the Imperium sitting on the Golden Throne — the first official look at the Master of Mankind in the current setting for years.
The Warhammer 40,000 setting is built upon a galaxy-shaking civil war that took place 10,000 years earlier, called the Horus Heresy. It ended with the Emperor finally defeating his Chaos-fueled Primarch son, Horus Lupercal, and save the Imperium of Man from destruction, but at a terrible cost: the near-death Master of Mankind was interred upon the Golden Throne as a carrion Emperor sustained by the daily sacrifice of thousands of psykers.
The iconic art of the God-Emperor by John Blanche, below, is seared into every Warhammer 40,000 lore fan’s mind. This is how the Emperor looks in the 41st millennium: grim, dark, and barely there at all.
But is this actually how the Emperor looks? We rarely see official art of the Emperor in the current setting from Games Workshop, and he’s never been depicted in an official cinematic before. Well, over the weekend, in a new trailer confirming a June 20, 2026 release date for the 11th Edition of Warhammer 40,000, that all changed.
The stunning new Warhammer 40,000 cinematic sets up the grim darkness of the far future, depicting a pilgrim’s journey from Golden Throne on Terra (called Earth in the trailer) to inevitable death on some war-torn battlefield. Throughout, we see the Emperor actually sat on the Golden Throne in various forms, or, perhaps more accurately, three faces of the Emperor: the Emperor in all his glory, the Emperor being sucked dry as he sustains Humanity even now, and the Emperor as little more than a skeleton.
These brief looks at the Emperor flash on screen, so it’s hard to make them out initially. I went through the trailer frame by frame and picked out the best shots of the Big E so you can see him for yourself in the slideshow, below.
We see the Emperor riddled with wires that resemble intestines, as a husk of a man with mere shreds of humanity left. One image shows the Emperor with flesh on his face, teeth in his skill, and an eyeball that appears to be looking directly at us, the viewer. He almost… almost… looks alive.
It’s important to note that, with pretty much everything Warhammer 40,000, there is an unreliable narrator element to this cinematic. While these are official images of the Emperor, are we simply seeing what the Emperor wants us to see? Are we seeing manifestations of the Emperor’s will? Are we even seeing the Emperor here at all? Is it all just propaganda?
In Era of Ruin, a Horus Heresy book released last year, it is suggested that the image of the God-Emperor we see in John Blanche’s art and, ergo, the images of the Carrion Emperor we see in this cinematic, are misleading. Some fans believe the book describes a very early piece of Warhammer 40,000 art found within the 1987 Rogue Trader rulebook (the 1st Edition of the Warhammer 40,000 core rulebook), which shows the Emperor in a different light, complete with blood bag, mist, wires that resemble intestines, and Custodes with black helms. That is to say, the actual Emperor is hidden behind the Emperor we see sat on what we think of as the Golden Throne, and he looks like this:
An accompanying post on the Warhammer Community website reaffirms the idea that the Emperor is everything and nothing all at once.
“The exact health and fate of the Emperor by the 41st Millennium is both vague and hotly debated,” Games Workshop said. “Is he alive? A god? Or just a rotting corpse on a throne acting as the bulb for a glorified psychic lighthouse? The trailer artfully skirts this problem by showing all of these possibilities. You’ll just have to decide for yourself.”
There have been rumblings about the Emperor being “alive,” at least in a metaphysical sense, in the current setting, based on various events that have happened either in novels or tabletop books. For example, Ultramaines boss Roboute Guilliman was saved from certain death at the hands of his Primarch brother Mortarion, the Daemon Primarch of the Death Guard Chaos Space Marines, by what most consider to be an intervention from the Emperor himself. Some fans believe Games Workshop might be setting up the Emperor’s dramatic return, however unlikely that feels.
Personally, I don’t think this cinematic is anything other than a spectacular teaser for 11th Edition, and a primer for the Warhammer 40,000 setting itself. I don’t think it suggests anything further, and certainly not the return of the Emperor. In many ways it muddies the waters further. The precise status of the Emperor is one of the biggest and most discussed ongoing mysteries in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and this cinematic is smart in that is doubles down on the idea that this mysery can never be unraveled, as if the Emperor’s true status is unknowable. I quite like it like that.
And let’s remember that Games Workshop hasn’t even got round to Roboute Guilliman and his loyalist Primarch brother Lion El’Jonson finally meeting up after the latter returned to the current setting. One step at a time, eh?
Still, the cinematic has certainly got Warhammer 40,000 lore fans talking, and there is much debate about what the images may signify, not just of the Emperor but across the cinematic. From that perspective, it’s mission accomplished.
Image credit: Games Workshop.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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