: I'm pretty sure the head blew up of it's own accord.
: Soulblighter would have no reason to blow it up. In
: fact he nearly got caught in the explosion himself.
Maybe he did set an explosive trap. In the last cutscene from TFL, an avatara's head flies by very quickly. Since no other avatara would have any reason whatsoever to be there (and since most of them were already dead, anyways), it seems reasonable that this would be alric's head. Perhaps, in early development, Bungie intended for alric to die at the end. As for why soulblighter would do that, perhaps he had more free will than anyone, including balor, realized. He saw that he had an opportunity to allow Balor to die and simultaneously kill off alric. Without balor, he would be able to aquire more power without being bound to him, which of course he would want.
This also ties into the conspiricy theory between soulblighter and the head discussed in the Dilusions section of myth.bungie.org. Basically, it says that the head arranged things so everyone except soulblighter would die, and that soulblighter would then give the head power of some sort in return. Perhaps he would get his body back, or get a new one. The head told the nine how to kill shiver. Once Shiver died, the Legion advanced to the east. Also, when escaping convenent, Soulblighter can be seen observing the legions, but not doing anything to help the Deceiver. Why? Because Soulblighter figured it would hurt him in the long run to attack the legion. On the way east, it tells them to get the Watcher's arm, and how they can use it. Sometime around now, it also mentions the eblis stone to Alric, who realizes he can use one of them to kill Balor. When they got to Forest Heart, it tipped soulblighter off, who trapped them in the tain. Two avatara (Murgen and Rabican, I think, but I could be wrong) died getting the legion's forces out. The head then allowed the nine to figure out that it was double-crossing them, giving it an excuse to take control of thousands of the legion's own men, which resulted in the deaths of two more Avatara. Also, the head sent Alric to find a suit of armor that would make its owner invincible, and then sends balor there as well. There, either Alric or Balor would have died, either one of which would have suited the head and soulblighter. As it turned out, neither did, but the head told the nine what had happened to alric, allowing his rescue. Perhaps it didn't want Balor to find out what it was doing, as he might try to kill it for good. While being interrogated, Alric somehow finds out that Balor is bound to the rest of the fallen. He gets the idea to kill Balor, and starts heading North after being rescued. Alric, however, realized that the head's not on the level, and warns the nine, leading to the civil war. Then, since the civil war was raging in the west, Alric and the legion head north to take care of Balor. On the way, he uses the Watcher's arm to turn him to stone, then finishes him off. Scratch another one off the list for the head. Now only Alric, Soulblighter, The Deceiver, and Balor are left, not including maybe one or two other avatara, who aren't really important to the head. Alric goes on to kill Balor. However, for whatever reason, he fails to show up. Maybe he had some other important thing to do, or maybe he had seen the pattern involving the head and rightly figured this was the place it would try to kill him at. At any rate, Alric didn't show up, but soulblighter decided to put a show on anyways and "try" to stop them. When you chuck the head into the devoid, notice that soulblighter immediately turns into crow form and flies off, even before the explosion goes off. Considering it's unlikely soulblighter would know that the head would do that if it DID blow up on it's own, that seems to indicate he had laid a trap to blow alric sky high and leave only the deceiver alive, who could be killed off relatively easily. However, since alric was still alive, soulblighter realized that he wasn't powerful enough to kill him, and thus went into hiding to return to power and come back in Myth 2.
