While I've gone back and forth on the Protean over the years, as the story has progressed and we've seen more and more weird-looking monsters (Sunny, Lancer,
Serini's froghemoth,
Zz'dtri's piscodaemon,
an otyugh) which provoke little to no reaction from the cast, it has become hard for me to accept simply a freaky-looking monster as an explanation for the circus scene and Xykon's reaction to MITD (this also plays a big role in why the Glabrezu is not in my top 3 choices anymore). I think I can I really only accept something really out-there like a constant shapeshifter or something completely out of the comic's art style. And as time has gone on, I find it less and less likely that we will see the latter (for a long time I half-expected the Snarl to be depicted in a crayon art style to emphasize both how alien it is to the vector-based setting
and give it a more primordial vibe). Since that didn't happen
and Rich hasn't used the billion worlds twist to show off past settings having different art styles, it would be very weird to introduce that concept now for anything beyond a one-panel gag. Now you could say Mimi's hands are doing just that right now, but eh, that's more a joke about AI art than it is about different art styles looking abominable to the stick figure characters.
I've always leaned heavily toward the MITD being either an aberration or magical beast; it just feels right to me. The introduction of a Beast Heart Adept as a character heavily connected to him and offering a future at her side has only reaffirmed this feeling.
Rich confidently saying that the MITD's identity will be satisfying in 2016 makes me think it has to be a really good punchline and/or really significant character-wise. While I can see the humor in MITD being a pitch-black creature like a Black Slaad or Zodar when it steps out of the darkness...without getting into forbidden topics, I also kinda see how that could potentially be seen as offensive. And a pop culture reference, regardless of how clever, just doesn't seem like something "Modern Rich" would be so confident in saying has been worth the anticipation. So I lean toward the MITD's identity being a big deal character-wise, which to me points toward either "a fiendish creature managed to turn Good" or basically exactly what Ruck said about "you can be whatever you set out to be."
However, I can also see some potential comedy in the Protean: a constant shapeshifter with no defined shape does kinda feel like a decent punchline to a mystery monster. It would be like "Who's that Pokemon?" with the silhouette changing to reveal it was just a Ditto. I could even imagine 2004 Rich snickering to himself envisioning future scenes that would give contradictory details about the MITD's shape, but perhaps as time went on and he realized that given the time left until the reveal and how analytical his fans are, such scenes would end up spoiling it too early so we never really got moments like that beyond possibly the climax of Book 1 where his eyes seem to be strangely lower to the ground. There's also potential for someone like the demon-roaches to crack a joke about how the author kept him in the shadows as an excuse to not have to draw a creature whose design changes every panel. (As an aside, I can see Modern Rich welcoming this challenge, given all he has said about the Book 6 art shift).
I also think that, compared to most viable candidates, a Protean would be easy for people completely unfamiliar with the monster to get the basic idea of the creature's capabilities without having to cram in awkward dialogue where Redcloak/Oona/O-Chul/Serini/whoever tells us what it can do. Although it just occurred to me as I was typing this that the roaches could provide the audience explanations for the monster without it feeling forced--they're already sort of treated as "out of the story" to a certain extent.
The "My gods, is it talking? In Common, no less!" line has always been a big deal in my book and I'm kinda split on whether or not a Protean satisfies it. Yes, you'd be surprised that a Protean is choosing to speak in an ordinary language, but would you really be surprised that it
can speak in the first place? The line has always made me look toward creatures with a similar descriptor as the
yeth hound--"[creatures] cannot speak, but understand [language(s) other than Common]." It's been like a decade since I did anything resembling a deep dive into such monsters, but from what I recall there was nothing that came close to satisfying the MITD's other major scenes.
I've also never fully sat well with the Protean with regards to the Escape scene. It's not that I have a problem with a timely shapeshift or even the "Psionic Greater Teleport via conversaion as per Expanded Psionics" idea. It's just that I don't think Teleport works with the scene all that well. It really does feel like a Wish to me.
However, I am starting to warm up to the idea that the MITD's box is dimensionally anchored/locked. In a setting like this, of course Stereotypical Big Game Hunters would have to account for the various creatures that can teleport, so the box being a magic item with that kind of property honestly doesn't feel like a big stretch.
Now when
#1042 first came out, I sort of got off the Protean train after O-Chul's comment to Lien about how she wouldn't believe his theory if he told her (since, going by the rules of this universe, I assume O-Chul is 100% correct in his guess). I don't really see what Lien would find so unbelievable about Xykon having an Epic monster follow him around. The line pushed me more towards a fiend (Lien wouldn't believe that a creature literally made of Evil managed to join the Good Guys; also goes well with
the running bit about O-Chul out-paladining Lien) or a pop culture gag (i.e. you wouldn't believe that all this is building up to what some regard as the lowest form of comedy). But in my most recent reread, it occurred to me that O-Chul could simply be saying that the MITD's other character traits would be hard for Lien to envision a Protean doing (having a tea party, being polite/well-behaved/following orders, letting Redcloak push him around despite how much stronger he is, etc.).
And finally, I personally just think the Protean is really cool and I can imagine 1 panel where it looks near-identical to the
official drawing minus the leftmost eye and with the other 2 eyes being replaced with the iconic :mitd: yellows eyes.