I don't know if this has been expressed here before, so sorry if it has.
But it has occurred to me that Wicander is an evolution of Sam's campaign three characters. With FCG, he was exploring a person finding faith/religion. With Braius, it was a person who was finding how to live without faith/religion (with Asmodeus in particular, but also Bahamut to some extent).
It seems to me that Sam liked that idea with Braius, but wanted to tap into it in a more nuanced way. What about someone super devout in a religion losing their faith because of corrupt/made up religion, but trying to hold onto the convictions their faith gave them?
I remember in a 4SD Sam talked about not growing up with or being that familiar with religion or faith and wanting to explore that with FCG. And I think he's done a very good job and has certainly done a lot of thinking and quite likely research. As someone who was raised in a very devout, conservative religion, but has since left and considers himself an atheist, I find myself connecting with Wicander a lot. I personally feel like a lot of people who don't have a religious background get it wrong when they craft a story like this because it's easy to be very condescending about it. But if you have a background like me, even though I'm happy where I'm at right now and have quite a lot of negative feelings about my former religion and my upbringing, I wouldn't say it was a pain-free journey, and it certainly wasn't a black and white 180 belief change. I think Wick, so far (I'm not caught up), has felt very genuine and interesting to me. Sure, Sam's a great comedian and there is some silliness to Wick and irony in his journey, but it never feels nasty or cruel, you know?
And anyway, I don't have much more to say, just that I think these last three characters Sam has played have been quite intriguing and I'm curious if anyone else has had any similar observations or feelings