FA+
Shop
The Ending to Samurai Jack
7 years ago
I know it happened like a year ago a but it popped up in a conversation I was having and my comment was too long to post on twitter.
The reason I have a problem with the ending to Samurai Jack is because it makes no sense. If Ashi vanished because the timeline corrected itself, a.k.a Aku never gave birth to her in the future therefore she couldn't go back to the past to kill him, then Jack should've also vanished because he also wouldn't have had Ashi to send him back into the past.
I've heard somewhere that apparently this was the timeline correcting itself, like she couldn't have existed without that future, so the universe corrected itself. But I think that's such a lazy thing to write that doesn't make sense, Matter can't just disappear simply because "it's existence makes no sense in this timeline." If that were the case then, even in Fantasy, time travel would be impossible. Because any changes you make to the past would cancel themselves out.
So for this example, you go back in time to kill yourself as a kid, you never grow up, therefore you fade from existence. However the plot hole in this example is, if you never grew up, then you never went back in time to kill yourself as a kid! So kid you would still be alive, and able to grow up and go back in time to kill you as a kid!
When you go back in time you're creating a new universe, a new universe where the only difference is that suddenly YOU are there at your current age, and absolutely nothing you do in this new universe can ever interfere with the universe you came from, because they aren't the same universe.
If you kill yourself as a kid in this new universe, you wouldn't vanish from existence, you would still go to jail for murdering a child though.
In Samurai Jack, Jack is teleported to the future, a future where Aku is dominant and the world is mostly in ruin. If this were all 1 unaltered timeline like they're claiming it is, when Jack arrives in the future Aku wouldn't have been there and the world would be fine, he'd return to the past and kill Aku, and remark on how trivial the whole "sending him to the future" thing was.
BUT since Aku WAS in the future, that could only mean in this unalterable timeline that Jack never returns to the past, he might still be able to kill Aku in the future, but he can't go back to the past.
But he does, and he brings a friend, thus creating a new universe where Ashi is suddenly in it. They kill Aku, they get married, then Ashi disappears for literally no reason. This NEW UNIVERSE corrected itself, even though there was nothing to correct.
If you move an apple from Universe:A to Universe:B, then that just means Universe:A has 1 Less Apple and Universe:B has 1 more apple. But if Universe:B erased the apple from itself because it simply didn't exist in it prior, then Universe:A is down 1 apple, while Universe:B doesn't have it anymore.
That's not how matter works... It the apple has to be somewhere!
I mean, if a universe erased things that didn't previous exist in it, then Rick and Morty should've vanished on their first episode.
Thoughts?
The reason I have a problem with the ending to Samurai Jack is because it makes no sense. If Ashi vanished because the timeline corrected itself, a.k.a Aku never gave birth to her in the future therefore she couldn't go back to the past to kill him, then Jack should've also vanished because he also wouldn't have had Ashi to send him back into the past.
I've heard somewhere that apparently this was the timeline correcting itself, like she couldn't have existed without that future, so the universe corrected itself. But I think that's such a lazy thing to write that doesn't make sense, Matter can't just disappear simply because "it's existence makes no sense in this timeline." If that were the case then, even in Fantasy, time travel would be impossible. Because any changes you make to the past would cancel themselves out.
So for this example, you go back in time to kill yourself as a kid, you never grow up, therefore you fade from existence. However the plot hole in this example is, if you never grew up, then you never went back in time to kill yourself as a kid! So kid you would still be alive, and able to grow up and go back in time to kill you as a kid!
When you go back in time you're creating a new universe, a new universe where the only difference is that suddenly YOU are there at your current age, and absolutely nothing you do in this new universe can ever interfere with the universe you came from, because they aren't the same universe.
If you kill yourself as a kid in this new universe, you wouldn't vanish from existence, you would still go to jail for murdering a child though.
In Samurai Jack, Jack is teleported to the future, a future where Aku is dominant and the world is mostly in ruin. If this were all 1 unaltered timeline like they're claiming it is, when Jack arrives in the future Aku wouldn't have been there and the world would be fine, he'd return to the past and kill Aku, and remark on how trivial the whole "sending him to the future" thing was.
BUT since Aku WAS in the future, that could only mean in this unalterable timeline that Jack never returns to the past, he might still be able to kill Aku in the future, but he can't go back to the past.
But he does, and he brings a friend, thus creating a new universe where Ashi is suddenly in it. They kill Aku, they get married, then Ashi disappears for literally no reason. This NEW UNIVERSE corrected itself, even though there was nothing to correct.
If you move an apple from Universe:A to Universe:B, then that just means Universe:A has 1 Less Apple and Universe:B has 1 more apple. But if Universe:B erased the apple from itself because it simply didn't exist in it prior, then Universe:A is down 1 apple, while Universe:B doesn't have it anymore.
That's not how matter works... It the apple has to be somewhere!
I mean, if a universe erased things that didn't previous exist in it, then Rick and Morty should've vanished on their first episode.
Thoughts?
Especially if the entire point of them bringing back Samurai Jack was to give it a conclusion. Their ending was pretty much, "Well, this didn't happen!" And you're saying that's okay, that I shouldn't think too hard about a series that is designed to make people think hard about it.
But yeah, i really disliked that ending.
But, if you're really unsatisfied, think about this:
Remember the Guardian who guarded the time portal and wouldn't allow him to pass? In the last season, we saw that the portal had been destroyed, and guardian killed. When Jack and the Guardian fought, he defeated him, and Jack couldn't use the time portal because the Guardian said that it wasn't time, and then showed a very old version of Jack.
Now, the Guardian was stated to have existed for eons, meaning he very well could have existed in the past. If that's the case, then maybe Jack's purpose was to return to the past, defeat Aku, and then after many years, use the time rift the Guardian protects to go to a future where Ashi exists.
Time travel can't really happen to correct something because once it's been done the reason for going traveling through time in the first place also disappears. Same applies to Chrono Trigger. There is no bad future to motivate stopping the Day of Lavos, etc since they stopped it. But with no motivation to stop it, it happens. But because it happens they can see the bad future and stop it from happening, which stops them from wanting to stop it and they sotp sotpSTOPSTOPSTOPSTTTOP
Yeah the final episode felt really rushed, every episode prior was in line with what the show used to be like, lots of quiet moments with interesting art, action, and strange comedy. Which is great! But it's almost like they wanted to do both, keep the pacing of the original, but also have a conclusion, but they didn't have enough episodes/budget. And they unfortunately waited till the last episode to have to wrap it all up, so they completely ditched the slow pace, as everything in the final episode rushes passed us. They throw all the typical tropes down our throats almost as if to say "Well this would probably happen." And they leave out tons of plot points that were really important in the original series.
Like.. Jack's father beat Aku already, before Jack did, before Jack was born. But Aku returned. They never explain how he returned, so he might be able to return again. I mean, it's kinda a really important thing you have to explain before the end of a series like this, because how are we supposed to tell if Aku is dead for real real this time?
Yeah I don't see how Jack beating Aku was any different than his dad beating Aku. It just made Aku explode instead of melt into the sword and then become trapped in a tree or something. How??? D:\
They prrrrobably just ran out of time and money :\ Plus the whole episode from the original run with Not-Morpheus saying he'll come back to use the time gate as some older regal-looking warrior never came to pass. Ahwell, better than nothing? Now the theme song is no longer false advertisement
Well maybe not fixing his current body.. Maybe that's a stretch.. But his ability to age should at least be fixed now.
With this said, if this is the be all end all ending then it was bad leaving it as time travel shananagins.
When I watched the original show, I couldn't help but feel that Jack returning and stopping Aku in the past felt like a cheat of an idea. I thought, at the time, it would only make sense of the end of the journey was that Jack came to realize he couldn't return; after all, he had been changed so much by his journey in the future that going back and fixing the past would contradict the entire series (after all, if he stopped Aku before he took the events of the show, how could he have even taken the journey?).
I honestly thought the end result was Jack defeating Aku in the future and realizing that he can't go back, and that instead his influence upon this future world had in fact made it a better place.
Besides, with the timeline being rewritten, what happens to all the allies he met along the way?
Gone, not sure if the writers for that episode realized that they pretty much killed off all the characters in the show other than Jack.
timeline alterations. But I can name at least two of them that follow's samurai jack's timeline rules which I deduce was this:
1. Only the time traveler will remember all changes and realities in the timeline and will exist as long as their own existence is not threatened. Reguardless of the circumstances making sense or not.
2. Alternate reailties can fade if the timeline has been altered.
Now will name at least two examples of this happening.
1. In a Justice league episode hereafter ((read here: http://dcau.wikia.com/wiki/Hereafter )) The tl;dr version:. Superman goes back in time where Randal Savage destroys the world, but sends Superman back in time so he can stop him from doing so. It erases Savage after Superman changes the outcome. But if he is erased how can he send him back?
2. Back to the Future:. tl;dr. Why would Marty's existence be almost erased if he wasn't able to go back and prevent it's own birth in the first place?
I am sure there are more instances in time travel fiction that follows these rules. When you said: You are creating a new universe when changing the timeline is kinda reduntant because you're trying to say it's a fact on a work of fiction :). But more so you are suggesting is something that would make better sense to you which is fine, we are human and always try to put something our minds can comprehend the silliness of physic defying stories. I agree I don't like the ending but just because some works of fiction use that rule doesn't mean it's written in some sort of law that all should follow. XP
Granted, it doesn't factor in the concept of Bootleg Paradoxes, but that's where something from the future goes to the past to put in motion the events that lead to whatever it was being sent to the past, which doesn't apply here.
I don't usually get on my computer before around midnight, and FA isn't reached until at least 2 am, so I hope you'll pardon the occasional lapses in correct wording.
1. Timelines are closed and if you are able to go back into the past you are unable to change anything - that everything you have done in the past was ALREADY integrated into the future. It's not that nothing you do matters, but you cannot change events you know to have occurred unless you're real clever about it. This lets you go back and forth wherever you want in a timestream with no repercussions.
2. Timelines are open and if you are able to go back into the past anything you do differently forks into a new timeline. Yes, you can go back and kill your grandpa, and then the world goes on as if you did. You cannot "return" to the future in a meaningful sense - either you can return to the timeline where you just left and hadn't changed anything - or can appear in the future of the timeline you did change with all events adjusting accordingly....depending on whatever rules the author wants to bake in. This lets you do whatever you want in the past, but now things get messy with multiple/infinite timelines and so on.
Bad time travel writing uses a combination of both systems without defining the rules, and so you get crap like "oh no, I'm disappearing because someone is changing the past! We've gotta go back before it's too late!" (this is nonsense, it would happen instantaneously and you would never even know differently) or the "Terminator" situation where a nonstop chain of people keep coming back from the future to "change the past" and stop other time travelers from also changing the past. They also always badly handle situations where you're killing someone who was crucial to the ability to time travel in the first place.
And they didn't finish it up, there's too many unanswered questions, they left it open.
In the end, we're dealing with magic and time travel. In my personal opinion, time travel is one of the most dangerous plot devices out there, and usually a sign that something is going to disappoint you. In very, VERY rare events, it's done fantastically well and the results speak for themselves, but in the majority of cases you're going to be left annoyed by the results. There are so many interpretations of time travel, from the Grandfather Paradox to multiverse theory to Futurama and Back to the Future. The rules are slippery and impermanent no matter how you go about it.
My point, I guess, is that I expected Ashi's fate and, as a result, was not disappointed by it. Would I have preferred Jack have a happy ending to his journeys? Of course, and I would have been at least as happy with an ending where he and Ashi lived "happily ever after." But I'm not disappointed by the final conclusion of a theme that I felt throughout the series. To me it just makes it feel bittersweet rather than triumphant, but...I'm rambling and bound to repeat myself so I'll quit while I'm ahead.
At the very least, though, can we all agree that it was a stroke of genius for the final episode to incorporate the opening to the entire series? That "NOT" cracked me up beyond belief.