While Tobias Forge has regularly retired his Ghost characters from live shows, his current one, Cardinal Copia, likely will not be retired for the band’s next album and tour. Forge created new Papa Emeritus characters on the band’s first few records. Cardinal Copia replaced Papa Emeritus III after its retirement before the release of last year’s Prequelle.
Forge told Australia’s The Music podcast in a new interview that he wants to keep Cardinal Copia, rather than retire the character.
“I have a vague idea of what’s in store. It’s gonna change over the years, to whatever extent we’ll be around.
Right now, if everything goes according to plan, we’re hoping for Cardi to be strong enough and cool enough to possibly do something that none of the previous ones have done, and that’s basically to do two cycles.
Which I just find interesting, because each of the other ones you’ve sort of met when they’ve already accomplished their thing — they’re already accomplished; there’s no story — whereas this time around he’s presented very al dente; a little bit of chewing resistance. Not even I liked him to begin with. But now I can’t wait to see him hopefully accomplish these things and I really look forward to possibly seeing him in the skull paint and real papal attire.”
