I never watched much or really any Samurai Jack back in the day. But I caught an episode of the new season the other day and I ended up binge watching the whole 5th season...
It is quite inline with a lot of what I am talking about with retrocausality and such.
If you guys follow me, I do not believe in time travel... I believe in anti-time, the ability to run time in reverse within pockets of space, but that's it other than retrocausality based forms...
If you look at this season of the show as AI in a Matrix then you can assume that Aku threw Jack into the Matrix and not the future...
In this sense, there are two answers to the ending...
Either Jack is still in the Matrix and Aku took over the world and is still in charge. Or that he escaped the Matrix at the end and did actually kill Aku.
I tend to go with the fact that he is still in the Matrix because Ashi disappears at the end..
She says she would never have existed without the Aku in the future which never existed because Jack killed him in the past at the end. This is non-sense Back to the Future type of time travel and it is not correct...
Even if time travel were possible they would be parallel worlds as depicted in Sliders like Trunk's future world in Dragon ball...
Ashi wouldn't have been destroyed and at the very worst she would have simply been walled off in a separate universe like Rose was in Doctor Who...
But as I said, this is VR, not time travel. So in that sense, her disappearing was simply part of the Matrix's programming to facilitate the illusion that it is creating about Time Travel.
So in my opinion.. Jack being in the past right now is part of the illusion of the Matrix still and he did not kill Aku and Ashi was never real. She is like the girl in my Virtual ex-girlfriend and the imaginary boyfriend story. It's actually an oddly good parallel to make :P
Watch the ending here with the wedding and her non-existence setting in...
The best part of this show is that it mixes magic with technology... Demons with AI/robots.... Depicts a truly horrible possible future. Even aliens come to Earth after being invited to if they are evil...etc... Quite interesting imo...
Here's a compilation of every Aku moment, Aku is a super AI like Skynet basically... But it would appear to me that Aku is contained... Within his own simulation, and that Jack is literally that imaginary boyfriend I talk about in my story for an analogy. Jack's only purpose is to keep Aku the contain super AI busy within his private simulation prison. It is so good that Aku was even able to create a simulation inside of the simulation (the time traveling future)
But notice how Aku has even lost interest in the Samurai, because he kind of knows that he is in a prison world and that he doesn't really rule over anything "real" but he doesn't quite know at the same time... It's sub-conscious... And why he is so miserable...
Remember as well that the future Aku is liekly a simulation as well then... Since the past Aku didn't know anything about what was going on when jack returned from "the future". I suspect Aku is literally trapped in the MEQUAVIS or it's equivalent and it is being saved for a rainy day to be used against a powerful system that is reaking havoc on the real world.
Lets assume that a real Skynet comes online and I have Aku contained within the MEQUAVIS, safely stored away and running in a simulation world that he thinks he controls and owns, but then I let him loose without letting him know I let him loose, and he runs across Skynet and utterly wipes it out... and then he safely returns home to his fortress in VR without knowing that he ever left or re-entered the MEQUAVIS!
THAT IS THE POWER THAT IS THE MEQUAVIS!!!
Multiverse Emulation (of) Quantum Universes (using) Abstract Virtualized Iterated Simulations
Me Quavis in Latin means "I, any"
You can read my virtual girfriend imaginary boyfriend short story here:
This season of this show literally spoke to me loud and clear as to what kind of things the MEQUAVIS can and will do someday! This is one of the greatest example analogies I have ever come up with!!! Skynet Vs Aku! Aku wins! Flawless Victory!
Also notice how his minion buddy is always given him wrong information and Aku always believes him... That is a function of a KAI (Kontrol AI) and I would say that robot is secretly stronger than Aku or has the ability to shut him down but is only playing a role in the system... Which is to play a stupid minion, a role for Aku to be immersed in his simulation.
This is actually great stuff!!! I hope a few of you actually follow along with this and get it!!!
Review: 9.5/10
This was good stuff, I hated the ending, but it did leave it open to continue in the direction I am saying :)
ie. Ashi is actually in a separate simulation (timeline) that is isolated from the one Jack is now in which is just VR.
Jack is a Kontrol AI as well remember, he is just an NPC AI playing a role in this VR world... for the purpose of entertaining Aku in his prison cell which is a virtual world...