Could sonokai_enable_italic = 1 fail gracefully?

[githorse]

System

Linut Mint 20.1 Ulyssa (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS)
GNOME Terminal 3.36.2 using VTE 0.60.3 +BIDI +GNUTLS +ICU +SYSTEMD
xterm-256color
tmux 3.0a
NVIM v0.4.3

Minimal vimrc that can reproduce this bug

call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')
Plug 'sainnhe/sonokai'
silent! call plug#end()

let g:sonokai_enable_italic = 1
colorscheme sonokai

It took me a while to figure out the blocks of color are occurring because I have g:sonokai_enable_italic = in my .vimrc but don't have a font that supports italics. Not a bug exactly, but would it be possible to fail more gracefully so this just looks like normal text?

[sainnhe]

That's because your terminal emulator doesn't support italics. Check FAQ, there is something like "Comment color looks weird", which gives a possible solution.