I understand Riot's been listening to fan theories for years.....but I thought Varus was already an archer who just got power from the Pit of Pallas corruption. Thinking that the corruption is what made the bow look like that....
All of a sudden we have Raast confirming he's a Darkin? How? Is Varus lore going to get retconned just like that?...
Just my take on this: Aatrox is a Darkin, Kayn is a human wielding a scythe with a Darkin inside of it, Varus is a human corrupted by a Darkin trapped inside of the well which Rhaast is addressing.
It allows for more connections which can make the world actually feel like a world rather than just a setting.
Think of it like how the Noxus capital is now Mordekaiser's original fortress. It wasn't like that before, but making that connection official adds a little depth and suspense into the situation.
With Varus's bow being a Darkin, we now have a better idea of what he's struggling with and what he may become if it isn't too late. We get a sense of the scale.
The pit was containing a Darkin which is now slowly corrupting Varus. Varus's Darkin is less talkative than Rhaast, though.
TLDR the pit was retconned into a Darkin, it seems.
I think this was ALWAYS the plan with Varus. Your post makes it sound like this is retcon, but that being that Varus interacts with has always been a mysterious part of his backstory. We're just now getting to the point that Riot is comfortable with unveiling some of that mystery with the champions, and I hope that's in preparation to dive a little deeper with many of them in extended lore, like they did with the Shurima event.
I've always known that whatever was taking over Varus is a Darkin. If you pay close attention to his animations there's an idle one where his bow is pulsating and he puts his right hand over it as if trying to keep it under control makes it seem as if he bow was alive.
I want to say either a rioter or Sharjo confirmed that the Darkin were spirits bound to weapons. That said, it's possible that the Pit of Pallas, or similar pits, are a/the key component in forging Darkin weapons, being the source of the spirit which is bound to the weapon. Perhaps, once upon a time, there was a Pit of Rhaast or a Pit of Aatrox, or "Pit of Pallas" is just the general term for the wellsprings where the malevolent spirits dwell.
If this is true, then yes, the corruption is what made the bow and Varus look like that, because the corruption was a Darkin spirit all along.
Varus is likely not the darkin,but merely the host.
There are honestly 2 rather easy solutions to this: 1.Make the bow the soruce of the corruption.The darkins are sentient weapons and Varus does have an organic bow.So it'd be easy to just replace "mysterious purple flame that corrupts him" with "mysterious purple bow that corrupts him"
2.Make it so that when the physical form of a darkin gets destroyed,their spirit is able to bind itself to another object.So in that case the purple flame would have been the spirit of the darkin,sealed away in the temple and when Varus broke the seal,the darkin bound itself to his bow.
It's not really detrimental noone is supposed to look into the pit so for all we know it could have been a bow or a bundle of arrows. It also could have been a case of a darkin being imprisoned in a pit instead of in a weapon. Finally you just have to add an extra a into Pallas. Paalas or Palaas, myabe even Paalaas.
New head-canon the people that imprisoned him asked him his name before they shoved him into the hole. As he fell he replied "Paalaas!" the Ionians thinking he was just yelling as he fell figured the extra a's weren't part of the name. Thus it's the pit of Palas.
what if the bow that he was guarding doesn't really want varus so instead of giving it its full potential, the bow just corrupted him. we all know that the darkin weapons find best successors like the aatrox and trynda story and assuming to say that the bow unwilling choose varus because in varus old lore it says that the palace was on corruption so in my knowledge the bow grudgingly choose varus as a vessel only to escape the ruins and as he is inside varus he can find a better successor. that's why the bow doesn't communicate with varus. Another wild guess is that some darkin is watching varus in the shadows like aatrox to trynda and the darkin is testing varus if he is worthy to be the successor of his power.
