Who is the next champion you'd like to see get a Gangplank style rework?
For those of you who don't know, back in 2015 Gangplank was overhauled from the jolly old evil pirate to the hardened survivor of betrayal we see today. He was seemingly reworked into Captain Gangplank, only to be killed in the lore subsequently and then turned into the Gangplank we currently have with his metal arm and scarred face. Everyone who participated in the relaunch got Captain Gangplank as a skin for free, which is basically a Traditional skin but with lore intact.
Riot's rework team has really been going into overdrive so I'm surprised we haven't really seen a crazy example with this yet (Akali is probably the closest so far) but I would love to see a rework in which we get comics or stories a few weeks in advance detailing the current champion as we know them in the game, with the grand finale being a massive climax in which they are changed forever. At this last climax, the new reworked version of the champion would be revealed. Now that a lot of the champions on the rework list have canon lore, I think this could be a great way to get a rework hyped a few weeks in advance and even the casual playerbase would take notice. I think Burning Tides was probably the pique of non-lore nerd story investment from people who just like the game but don't care about the story. During Burning Tides, EVERYONE was either up to date or extremely interested and watching lore videos.
With all that being said, I think the best candidate for a continuation of lore event in which the character is massively changed within the story itself would be Pantheon
. Pantheon currently lives within a human named Atreus who, as we have heard on the forums before, may be involved in future story threads and is not entirely dead despite Pantheon basically fully possessing him rather than imbuing him with power and insight like the other Targonians do. I would love a comic series or short story split into 4 or so parts in which we follow Atreus's journey to the mountain in the first chapter, flash forward to Pantheon's war with the Void in the second and third chapters, then in the final chapter Pantheon's vessel Atreus is killed and we see a new vessel chosen. The final chapter(s) will be split into being introduced to the new vessel as well as seeing Pantheon's response, and I'm sure we would be left with a big old exciting cliffhanger after learning something insightful about the lore as Riot tends to do.
Ezreal's VGU is up next and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Riot kept his current lore and continued his story on in an Akali-esque way as well. Maybe he'll find the long lost second gauntlet, maybe it will fast forward a few years and he isn't quite as bright eyed and hopeful of finding his parents. Whatever path they go with I'm sure it will be awesome, I do like continuing the story from previous incarnations of the character when possible. I just think another massive climactic reveal like "Gangplank is dead and cannot be played in games" would get so many new people into the lore. Even if people aren't reading the stories, they might watch some Necrit or ask their lore inclined friends what the hell all these X character stories are about.
but be disabled for a week due to gamebraking bugs and then be reborn with a nicely written code and no bugs.
Let some Zaunite scientists catch him again for experiments, which are forcefully changing his body. :^)