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banana-snake-but-reblogs · 2 days ago

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golden power theories ; the big messy version

okay i've fully rewatched the last two episodes of s15 and my notes are almost two pages long, so i'll give a brief summary of what i think happened to the golden power that was distributed among the ninja by lloyd back in s3.

the overlord

his armour before his transformation is quite golden. majority of his arms and like half his chest plate is gold. even after he transformers, he has gold accents on his chest, head, and weapon. and similar to golden power, they have damage reduction (i think) from both physical impact, garmadon's oni power, and lloyd's un-powered-up spinjitzu.

another important thing to note is that the overlord uses lightning. it may be purple, but it's still considered an element. and the way the overlord handles crystals is quite similar to the way cole handles rock. similar properties are also shared between ice and the action of "crystalising" (more appearance-wise), but i couldn't find any connections with fire.

this could be related to how the overlord, before his form completion in s15, still had remnants of golden power still in him, but not as strong as before since he doesn't have any powers that resemble fire.

harumi managed to chop off his hand with a mere sword made out of the same crystal he was using to corrupt the powers of creation and ninjago. do what you will with that information, i guess.

when the overlord is properly destroyed and his castle explodes, there is a shit ton of gold glitter falling from the sky. you could argue it's because of golden ultra, but i think it's still worth noting.

lloyd + golden ultra

unfortunately, we can't see if lloyd's energy element is negated by the gold on the overlord's body, seeing as he never actually properly used it in the fight. when conjuring his spinjitzu, he doesn't inject any of his own elemental power in it either, which makes it less powerful. HOWEVER, it is notable that lloyd's spinjitzu in the majority of this season has gold particles, instead of his previous seasons' green.

however, it is to note that this season's suits had significantly more golden than gis from previous seasons. lloyd's even more so than usual, with more than 50% of his suit being covered in gold.

furthermore, in his oni form, lloyd is very, very gold. given that his torso is merely expanded from the same suit he wearing at the time of transformation, everything that was given to him in his oni form (head, new pair of arms etc.) were all gold.

however, his purple eyes during this form could also be attributed to the overlord, since the overlord also tells garmadon that "your powers were a gift from me" while garmadon was in his oni form. this brings about a theory that i will explain later.

let's move on to the destruction of the golden weapons to unleash the elemental energy that they hold. energy cannot be created nor destroyed (it's just physics guys LMAO), which is why wu said that the elemental powers will be "cast out, to assume whatever form they originally had", with the original form being a golden version of ultra.

and i think that it is extremely important what the elemental powers do after they are free from the weapons—they go back to lloyd.

i feel that up till the events of s15, we're still operating on the idea that the ninjas' (except nya) elemental power, at its core, still stems from lloyd. and even though they've been slowly growing independent from relying lloyd's current condition, those elemental powers were always meant to be lloyd's, hence "assume whatever form they originally had", and it's why golden ultra had the instinct to save lloyd after being created by the unleashed elements.

not to say that the OG main four don't have innate powers that they can tap into—they most certainly do, seeing as the "quest for lost powers" book exists. but i think their innate powers manifesting is heavily reliant on their own condition. more on them later!

going back to golden ultra, its power could somehow negate the overlord's own, similar to how the golden power managed to defeat the overlord the first time. but what i find a connection with lloyd and golden ultra is that he isn't new to commanding a four-headed dragon. although why the elements were formed with a similar stature to the original ultra dragon (that was hunted by iron baron. that BASTARD), but it could be because elemental powers originated from the source dragons, as said in dragons rising.

but the fact that lloyd has so much ease with commanding this dragon that looks very similar to ultra raises my suspicions. lloyd, in that moment when he and the elements collided, might have unconsciously conjured up the elements in the form of a golden dragon, just like he used to. the way he's steering golden ultra in s15 is very reminiscent of how he was training to steer OG ultra back in s2.

additionally, everyone knows that even though the individual dragons belonged to their respective elemental masters, that ownership changed when they shed their skin and combined into OG ultra. ultra recognises lloyd as their owner. so that relationship would be pretty big to lloyd in my opinion, and making a dragon just feels...right. to him.

i like to think that after golden ultra disappears, lloyd regains that energy slowly. he doesn't get back his golden power immediately, but the more he hangs around the streets of ninjago near the destruction of the sky palace, the more golden power he absorbs, eventually gaining back full power that was always meant to be his all along. and now, the OG four are fully independent in terms of elemental power, and are no longer dependent on the golden power lloyd redistributed to them.

garmadon

okay, so this is where the theory begins. the overlord mentions that "[garmadon]'s powers were a gift from [him]", referring to garmadon when he was in his oni form. so the overlord should be an oni? albeit an extremely powerful one, or maybe their leader that chased FSM all the way to ninjago. since the garmadon's bite from the great devourer was orchestrated, that meant that he had been planning for quite some time.

maybe the overlord came over with mystake to make an effort to bring FSM back to the first realm, but realised that FSM wouldn't leave, and vowed to take over ninjago in an effort to convince FSM. but because the FSM decided to break ninjago in two, the overlord could no longer reach FSM and was hence stuck on the island that he was on in s2.

it was quite painfully obvious that FSM would try to lead both his sons down the dragon path (aka the 'good path'), so in order to continue the fight between dragon and oni (good and evil), the overlord would have to make changes to his plan to bring back FSM to the first realm, and instead become the evil to challenge the good. i don't really believe in the whole thing about the overlord just being a by-product of the malevolent side of FSM's ninjago balance thing. he has unknown goals that are similar to the oni, hence why i am making this comparison.

so the change of plans just happened to include garmadon at first, which somewhat worked out in his favour until lloyd came along. then the overlord realised that garmadon was, in reality, NOT the perfect vessel for his evil plans. since garmadon was still the son of FSM, it makes sense that no matter how much oni blood he has, or how much venom runs through his veins, his dragon blood will always still be there to counter it. as lord ras says, there is always some good in the bad and some bad in the good. no being (except the overlord for some reason) is an exception to this rule.

so the overlord moves on—if he can't have a living vessel, he'll just make one himself. but his plan to be a virus and hence get a physical form using the very thing that destroyed him, which was golden power, failed in s3 for reasons still unknown. we still have no idea as to why zane had to make that sacrifice or how any of that power dissipated into thin air, which is the whole reason why i'm writing this damn post.

hence why the overlord tells garmadon that "now at last i have such a vessel" all the way in s15. which is quite telling that garmadon wasn't a vessel by any means. or maybe the overlord didn't consider garmadon a worthy vessel. after that, the overlord says "thus garmadon, son of the FSM, meets his end." the fact that he still refers to garmadon as that basically ties him to still having a dragon bloodline despite the venom that the great devourer injected in him. and if one side of your vessel is constantly trying to combat you for control of their body, then that's not a very good vessel, is it?

so yes. i believe that the garmadon resurrected was the full garmadon. it's just that his kind side has been suppressed unknowingly by harumi, since she constantly fed him ideas to make the world in his image. and it is because she was there since the resurrection. if it were only lloyd who was there at the time of resurrection, i believe things would gone very differently for everyone.

the ninja

okay to the fruits!!! let's get nya out of the way first since she's the easiest to tackle for this whole debacle.

nya's powers aren't related to lloyd. they have no correlation with lloyd's condition, and they're not dependent on him. because her elemental powers stems from wojira. similarly, if morro were here, he would also not be affected by lloyd's condition since his power is also from wojira.

this can fully explain why neither nya nor morro can do dragon form or use golden power respectively. they were never related to golden power in the first place, so nya not being able to achieve that form makes sense to me (although i would have liked to see her do more in s15, don't get me wrong. i think the way the writers handled her in that season is for lack of better word, preposterous).

moving onto the OG four. their spinjitzu, when conjuring up their dragon form, was gold. what else is gold? GOLDEN POWER. yup. i think i wrote more notes on it but i'm way too lazy to check back at my notebook.

however, now that the ninja have returned the golden power that was helping them channel their elemental powers, they only seem to have lost their elemental powers in that timeframe between the end of s15 and the events of quest of the lost powers. but it can be explained—if you put enough thought into it.

kai had to learn to ask for help, zane had to learn to forgive himself, cole had to re-embrace his family and learnt how to cope with the high expectations he had of himself (at least, that's how i interpreted it), and jay also had to learn to cope with the fact that he may not have his biological family, but friends are still family you can choose (yes pun FULLY intended in reference to friends are family from lego batman).

these were all things that gave the ninja to treat themselves better and to grow as people. their powers, without the help of the golden power that lloyd gave them, are all heavily reliant on their mental stability. it's the same with the elemental powers given from golden power—but instead of being reliant on the individual's state of mind, it's reliant on lloyd's state of mind.

conclusion

lloyd slowly regains his golden power, and the ninja slowly come onto their own without relying on that same golden power. it's only a matter of time before lloyd can fully utilise golden power again.

think of golden power as an enhancement of one's ability to use their element. like a power-up ability. only lloyd's powers are golden because it's that concentrated. there are several instances when we see all the ninja focus their energy onto one area and the result looks very much like golden power.

because lloyd had to redistribute the golden power to the OG four, the concentration of that golden power was no longer as effective, hence why we don't really see gold in lloyd's spinjitzu form anymore. that is until s15, when the overlord is back with remnants, and he manages to absorb (?) said golden power.

thanks for reading! i feel like i've written three ninjago essays in the span of a week what is UP with me

edit: THIS WAS LONGER THAN MY TLNM COMPLAINT POST. WHAT?

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