As others have said, they built up to Gargos’ invasion in the story. Plus they gave characters the new purple shadow effects that are said to be lore driven (ya know, the ones that people can’t stop bellyaching about). I’m 99.9% positive that we’re getting Gargos either as a playable boss or as an unplayable boss this season.
That said, count me among the bellyachers where it comes to 3 stages. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE how the stages look after the relighting and I’m 100% on board with those think it was a necessary thing that they did there.
But for characters that won’t be getting their own backgrounds… It seems very odd to me that Arbiter gets his own stage, while Rash and LEAK REDACTED will not. That just seems odd and rather random to me. I mean, can’t they at least alter certain stages to make them fit a different character? Could Gargos fit on Kan Ra’s stage, only have everything that’s blue changed to red and start the match with the portal open and stuff flying around in the background? Or if LEAK REDACTED winds up making it, then change the corresponding stage to start with the storm and then have it change to an even worse storm, or maybe just change the setting to night?
Look, I get that these types of things require money and hard work, but if you do something consistently through two seasons, you should do it through the third in some fashion. I’m not saying every character should have their own completely unique stage now because after a while it does get to be a bit much number-wise, especially given the time and cost. But give them their own variation, at least. You want to say Rash dropped through a portal, okay, fine. But are ya’ll seriously going to do that for every non-stage having character for season 3?
Honestly, if we’re talking community fund at some point, I sincerely doubt that people would turn variations of existing stages to fit the homeless season 3 characters. Some here might even take that over a bonus 9th character for this season (though I’m extremely, unforgivably greedy and want both plz 
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FYI, I did the leak redacted thing myself to avoid talking about those things specifically, so I hope this doesn’t get deleted or flagged. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone else and if I need to make this even more general to avoid deletion or flagging, just let me know.