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Something that has always bothered me about the Samurai Jack ending. (unmarked spoilers)

Uzumaki Goku

Uzumaki Goku

One Winged Slayer
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Oct 27, 2017
19,254
Wow, been nearly a year since it aired already... but anyway, the primary story of the fifth and final season deals with Jack and Ashi who starts off as a Daughter of Aku, as the season progresses Jack and Ashi grow closer and even fall in love... which is said and fine for what it is... but then Aku shows up and discovers that Ashi literally IS his daughter as she was created from his essence by the High Priestess drinking his essence. Jack discovers this as Aku takes control over Ashi's body...

...eventually long story short, through the power of love, Ashi breaks Aku's hold on her and she teleports Jack back into the past herself, Jack kills Aku and all seems well... and Jack and Ashi are about to get married... but oops, killing Aku in the past before he could spawn Ashi causes Ashi to never exist so in death, Aku managed to hurt Jack one last time.

Now, I get what they're going for, that every victory has a great cost, but.... one thing that bothers me: Shouldn't Jack have known that Ashi's existence could be at risk by killing Aku in the past? He knows full well she was created from him, but the thought never seems to occur to him, in fact when he goes back in time, he seems content and peaceful that he's finally achieved his goal... but shouldn't he have at least thought... "what happens to Ashi if I kill Aku?" Just.. something that didn't come up that kinda bugs me.
 
HStallion

HStallion

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Oct 25, 2017
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I'm guessing Jack wasn't very well versed in the effects of time travel and didn't see it coming.
 

rude

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Oct 25, 2017
12,812
The whole back end of that season is shit, it's just better not to dwell on it. Symbionic Titan was more deserving of a reboot but CN wrote it off.
 
Rackham

Rackham

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Oct 25, 2017
8,532
I kind of really hoped that he would stay in the future with Ashi and it would be like a "you can't change the past" kind of lesson.
 
Dark Knight

Dark Knight

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Oct 25, 2017
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The inconsistency is weird. Why does she get erased but Jack doesnt change into a version of himself that never travelled through time?
 
AnansiThePersona

AnansiThePersona

Started a revolution but the mic was unplugged
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Oct 27, 2017
15,682
I think that realization would have been good before Jack went back. And Ashi stays in the past (thinking it's an alternate timeline) to defeat the rest of Aku's forces and Jack goes to the past to defeat Aku and deletes the future in the process.
 
DongBeetle

DongBeetle

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Oct 25, 2017
8,017
Terrible, terrible season. First three episodes are fantastic, dives off a cliff from there. Would've preferred Jack had a fatherly role
 
Dark Knight

Dark Knight

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Uzumaki Goku said:
No, that part I understood. Jack gets flung through time, lives out the show, then goes back to 10 seconds after Aku first sent him to the future.
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Right but the idea behind Ashi disappearing from existence is that she was never born because her timeline got erased.
Jack also spent yeeeaaars in that timeline. If that timeline got erased then he never spent time in the future and so he should rightfully disappear in a way too because he never had the experiences that happened in a timeline that never existed.

I wouldn't mind the story using one set of logic or another(they both disappear or they both remain in their post-Aku state), but using both sets of logic is just weird.
 
I KILL PXLS

I KILL PXLS

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Oct 25, 2017
11,520
Does she die because the timeline is changed, or does she die because Jack killed Aku which was literally a part of her? Not sure if that was clarified anywhere.

Either way, I don't think Jack was really thinking that hard about the logistics of time travel. That definitely would have been an interesting hurdle to throw at him though.
 
OP
OP
Uzumaki Goku

Uzumaki Goku

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Oct 27, 2017
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I KILL PXLS said:
Does she die because the timeline is changed, or does she die because Jack killed Aku which was literally a part of her? Not sure if that was clarified anywhere.

Either way, I don't think Jack was really thinking that hard about the logistics of time travel. That definitely would have been an interesting hurdle to throw at him though.
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She died because of a Butterfly Effect... without Aku to spawn her, she couldn't have existed. She says so herself.
 
Dark Knight

Dark Knight

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Uzumaki Goku said:
She died because of a Butterfly Effect... without Aku to spawn her, she couldn't have existed. She says so herself.
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Why doesn't the butterfly effect have an effect on Jack? Aku dies after sending Jack through the portal into a timeline that no longer exists. The Jack we spent the whole series with shouldn't exist anymore if Ashi doesnt exist anymore.
 
OP
OP
Uzumaki Goku

Uzumaki Goku

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Oct 27, 2017
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Dark Knight said:
Why doesn't the butterfly effect have an effect on Jack? Aku dies after sending Jack through the portal into a timeline that doesn't exist. The Jack we spent the whole series with shouldn't exist anymore if Ashi doesnt exist anymore.
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Y'know..... Time Travel is bullshit, it pretty much works however the writers want or need it to work at the time.
 
I KILL PXLS

I KILL PXLS

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Uzumaki Goku said:
She died because of a Butterfly Effect... without Aku to spawn her, she couldn't have existed. She says so herself.
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Ok just checking. Been a while since I've seen it.

Dark Knight said:
Why doesn't the butterfly effect have an effect on Jack? Aku dies after sending Jack through the portal into a timeline that no longer exists. The Jack we spent the whole series with shouldn't exist anymore if Ashi doesnt exist anymore.
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Time was affecting Jack differently from everyone else evidenced by the fact that he didn't age. It's kind of consistent he wouldn't be affected the same way. Now why time affects him differently who knows?
Or did they answer that too?
 
Finaj

Finaj

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Oct 25, 2017
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Honestly, I think the ending would have been better if Aku died and Jack never made it back to the past. Given his current relationship with Ashi and all the characters we've met throughout the show, trying to help rebuild the world the Aku destroyed into a better future might be a little bittersweet, but satisfying.
 
mas8705

mas8705

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Oct 27, 2017
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Can't say I'd hold it against Jack for not catching on to it sooner. After all, he didn't know that the time portal that took him to the future halted his aging, so he couldn't die an old man (something to which we can't really say for sure if it got fixed or not at the end btw) so I wouldn't be shocked if he didn't connect the dots at first about the butterfly effect here and how Ashi wouldn't exist since Aku didn't make it to the future.

I suppose we need to bare in mind that we have what we could say is two kinds of time travel out there:
The one that can drastically change things by changing one small things
and the one to quote DBZA: "Multiverse Theory's a bitch."

In the world of Samurai Jack, it is the former.

If it was the latter, than chances are that Aku (theoretically of course, can't confirm he can do this) could have gone back into the past too and tried to either prevent Jack from killing his "younger" self. Would have been a pretty badass final episode or even perhaps a "TV Movie" to wrap up the series as a whole.
 
Starlight Glimmer

Starlight Glimmer

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Killing Aku in the past was far more important to all the life on the planet than one possible means of happiness for Jack, of was a mature ending.
 
BLEEN

BLEEN

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The dude hated Aku with every fiber of his being. That love was pretty much nothing compared to that hatred. That's the way I see it anyway. 4.5 seasons of Aku Hate vs. .5 Season of Ashi Love. Pretty simple.

Starlight Glimmer said:
Killing Aku in the past was far more important to all the life on the planet than one possible means of happiness for Jack, of was a mature ending.
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This too!
 
knightmarre

knightmarre

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Oct 27, 2017
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Theres only one timline. Aku dying means the future is different from the one we saw and the one we saw was erased forever.
 
Zubz

Zubz

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no
Uzumaki Goku said:
Never seen that
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They're trying to say it in a subtle way, but
it's ending is almost note-for-note Samurai Jack's. And it came out a decade earlier.

That ending was definitely a disappointment. I mean, forget Ashii, it makes the entire story a Shaggy Dog one. The Scotsman was paradoxed out of existence, & any solution that loses us the Scotsman is a solution not worth making.
 
Rellodex

Rellodex

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Oct 29, 2017
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ffdgh said:
What bugs me is that Ashi didn't disappear the moment Jack killed Aku. The fact it happened right when the wedding was going sucked.
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This is what I was thinking after watching the series. Especially since so much of the payoff moments of the entire franchise is Jack quietly realizing something, and then the audience themselves realizing what Jack just figured out.

The dust settles, Jack is like "wuhhh?", thinks for a moment, and then continues on his somber way, having lived an entire lifetime in an instantaneous moment.

To plainly spell something out like they did goes against most of the show's sensibilities.

I also would have dug OP's version of the events, where it was a conscientious decision to end Ashi's timeline.


What we got wasn't bad though. I'm not going to shit on the ending.
 

Cap G

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Oct 27, 2017
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whiteninja said:
I hated that ending. He should of stayed in the future.
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He should have just bailed on everyone in japan, huh? Let alone the fact that Aku spread out to other planets and shit.

Jack staying in the future would be him accepting that there's things he cant change, or justifying the acceptance of atrocities.To stay in the future would be to accept hundreds of years of galactic suffering as something necessary. That's never really been what the show is about. Jack suffers and then perserveres.
 
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