#apologies that none of it os coherent i havent proofread jt either

[basicallyjaywalker]

The timeline and history of Ninjago is weird and fluid: an essay

So recently I reblogged a post asking what people thought the length of the time skip between S2 and S3 was and it got me thinking about the weird chronology of this show.

Disclaimer: i have only seen up to S8 because I'm a hack and a fraud but I do still follow fandom and have seen enough clips I think to gain an understanding of how the ninja are portrayed and characterized in later seasons. I welcome and deeply appreciate those of you who are more caught up on the seasons adding to my points and pointing out where I'm wrong on this post! Who knows maybe in 15 years when I do catch up I'll make a follow up

Basically, the conclusion I have after years of thinking about this timeline way too much is this:

The time twins completely screwed up the timeline

Only slightly joking, but it does feel like the divide between S7 and S8 (coincidentally also when the design change took place) is when the writers had to retcon a lot of old ideas because the show was moving in a new direction spurred by an increase of popularity from the movie and by desires from the people supervising the shows creation.

My main points for this are as follows

The ninjas age

How old the country of Ninjago is

The depiction of the passing of time itself

So let's examine these one by one and let me tell you exactly what I think caused the chronological fluidity of this show

Wait... How old are the ninja?

The answer to this question depends on who you ask. Some people say they're in their late teens, that they're early adults, or that they've got to be hitting the mid 20s by now. Personally, I'm of the latter camp, but depending on which season someone is viewing, any of these can be true.

In the post I talked about at the start, I mentioned that S1-S4 felt like the ninja clearly grew older and matured as time went on. They went from blowing off training to play video games in S1 to dealing with the ramifications of trauma in various, independent, adult ways in S4. Yes, they can still be super immature and goofy, but let's be real adults are like that irl too. Now they seem to stall out on dramatic progression in S5-7, but they generally maintain the same level of maturity as before.

Now again, I have not watched the following seasons, but the general vibe I have gathered is the ninja seem to almost... Regress? They seem to go back to S1 levels of maturity. Teenagers! I mean Lloyd specifically seems to be more of a typical teenage boy archetype whereas beforenhe was portrayed as almost more mature than the ninja. Additionally, there's an interview wherein someone on the team confirms they're supposed to be teens (if anyone can find it I'll be forever in your debt).

This weird regression happens in the later seasons, and while I can't pinpoint where, to me it feels like a result of how they were portrayed in (you guessed it) the movie!

Small aside: I also haven't seen the movie but ik it's non canon and very typical Lego movie silly fun fluff. I like what I've seen and think the whole narrative is super cute. Plus movie aus are adorable. Moving on

Now I have no way of backing this up but I would be unsurprised if the movie brought more people to the Ninjago franchise as a whole and acted as a soft reboot after s8. We get the new redesigns, new garmadon brought back specifically to be able to mirror movie garm, and teenage ninjas including our favorite magical boy with daddy issues--Lloyd.

Basically, the ninjas almost have a parabola of maturation, starting off very young and dumb in s1, maturing into very adult people by S4, but slowly regressing after the rebrand to match the new style.

And funnily enough, none of this goes against an official canon. The ninjas ages are never stated, really, only implied. Really, they could still be in their mid twenties or early teens at any point. Even if you argued that they wouldn't be teachers or able to own stocks in a company or etc etc etc, you can also argue that the laws in Ninjago may not be the same, it may be through Wu or another adult, it could just be that they're the ninja and really no one is gonna question them on that. The canon itself is kinda wobbly which brings me to my next point:

HOW OLD IS NINJAGO?!?!

HOW IS NINJAGO THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD HOW ARE THERE MULTIPLE GENERATIONS OF EMS HOW PLD ARE GARM AND WU HOW OLD ARE THE NINJA HOW OLD ARE THEIR PARENTS HOW OLD IS ANYONE WHAT THE HECK--

--Are all thoughts I've had when trying to piece together the timeline of this world because let's face it: it simultaneously seems to be very new and very old. "Long before time had a name...' HOW LONG WU. HOW LONG.

When I was watching S7 I specifically took note of when it was said that the Serpentine war was 40 years ago. It felt weirdly recent, as before when the serpentine were discussed and depicted they seemed to be an ancient race. So ancient, in fact, that it's mentioned in s1 that they're just "an old wives tale, meant to keep kids from poking their noses where they don't belong'

Now don't get me wrong, temporal perception is weird. Things that were 40 years ago can feel super old, I'm approaching 20 years old and things from when I was born feel like ages ago. Still, 40 years does not feel like enough for something as intense as an entire war to be forgotten. Ray and Maya fought in that war, so presumably Ed, Edna, and Lou all lived through it. Wu was literally present for the banishing of the Anacondrai generals, so how tf did it fade into obscurity?

Then there's the EMs themselves. In S4 Garmadon explains that they were the FSM "guardians" and that their powers are passed down through generations. This does give an answer to the origins of the ninjas powers except. No, wait, I have more questions now. Firstly, how many generations? We know Garmadon is the son of the FSM, so presumably if the first generation of EMs are contemporaries of the FSM, then we're on the third. Okay, that's less confusing. With three generations, we can explain how the EMs separated, the master of earth who was most definitely not Lily in a flashback in S4, and even the odd comment Nya makes in S5 about powers "skipping a generation" with people from the second generation not getting powers from their relatives while others do. We could possibly point to Zane as an example of this, as it could be possible that the master of ice seen inna flashback is his grandfather and Juliens father, with Julien having no shown elemental powers.

So with all of this in mind it makes complete sense that Ninjago is less than a century and a half old, allowing about 50 years for each generation.

So, I ask with great exhaustion, how the FUCK has all of it's RECENT HISTORY become LEGEND????

I would like to reiterate my point about the serpentine, but also see pirates (who had to have also been contemporaries to the FSM which begs the question WHY piracy in a barely established nation), the devourer and ouroborus (devourer specifically was around 60 so years ago to bite Garmadon, also how did the serpentine tribes just FORGET a whole city in 40 years or less between the war and being freed), the ideas of EMs as a whole???? (Specifically how did Kai, Nya, and Cole not know or at least have an idea Abt their powers bc it feels like they each had enough of a connection to an elemental parent for a MENTION to be made), etc etc etc

Now I will go on record and admit this point could just be explained by the fact that for a country that is say, 150-200 years old, things that happened 100 or even 50 years ago FEEL ancient, relatively speaking. Really most of my issues are just gripes of why and how and decisions made and could be picked apart easily. However, that idea, that things just FEEL ancient, despite being recent, brings me to what is going to be my favorite point

Tick Tock.

Throughout this incoherent ramble disguised as a coherent essay, I keep coming back to one excuse for each of my issues: nothing chronological is stated for certain (save for the Serpentine war date), merely implied. The ninjas ages are never stated, just implied over time. The actual age of Ninjago is never stated, just implied. Hell, NO ONE's ages are ever stated, just implied. Wu and Garmadon are simultaneously dad aged and ancient. Garmadon specifically is both an ancient demon lord and also the ex husband to a very private and very human museum curator and also the absent father to a boy who is simultaneously like 16 and 20 something.

Except, I get hung up on one thing the longer I think about it, which is that the show seemed to be a chronological passing of time at first.

I mentioned it again earlier when talking about the ninjas ages (can you tell that a lot of my confusion and frustration comes from that) but they do seem to age and mature over time. They have arcs and maturation that sticks. Lloyd does too. Id argue Nya does as well despite the fact that she's woefully overlooked by the writing a lot (I'll get to it in the love triangle essay) going from the "little sister" doing whatever she can to prove herself to a woman still fighting that omnipresent idea that she's lesser or different from her male teammates because of her gender. Hell, in s7 they specifically talk about how Wu is aging and will die someday soon--hed been time punched, but still.

The time skips add to this. Between s2 and s3 there seems to be a large leap-- new Ninjago city wasn't built in a day. So do S3 and s4 with the ninja splitting up and Jay having enough time to establish a hit tv show like... that had to take a few months at least???Same with s4 and s5 and steep wisdoms founding.

There's a strong sense of the passing of time that feels... Different when looking at the new seasons. I won't say the passage isn't there, just that it feels... Frozen? In the same way that a show like Pokemon is. The protagonists are the same age, despite the fact that their surroundings and lives change. They are constant even if their world is not. And that feels like the product of something completely different.

Ninjago will never end.

In the beginning, I think it was clear there were two seasons planned. Rise of the Serpentine and Legacy of the Green Ninja. S2 had a nice happy ending and a photo finish even!! Then we had S3, but it still felt like it was final. The loss of a friend, but the characters finding a sense of closure still. But then we had S4... Which left with a cliffhanger for S5. Which paved the way for S6. And after that... Well, Crystalized was what, S15? And now we have DR so who Knows when this franchise will truly end? Not to mention the seasons slowly getting longer and longer --

I think the crazy chronology we ended up with was the result of Many Cooks. As the franchise's fan base grew and the demand for more and more content grew with it, more writers came in and left. There was no more telling how long this series would go. We needed new villains to fight, new stories to tell, so came the retconning and, over time, the tighter chronology seen during those initial seasons faded because if we keep aging the ninja, how old would they be? Too old. We need to keep them at a place where the target demographic can look up to and relate to them.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Ninjago, I love how big this fan base is (I remember being on Quotev and Wattpad and Pinterest and YouTube in the S3 era SCOURING for any new fanfics or art or fan content, now I just scroll the Tumblr tags and find new stuff all the time) and I love that the series has lasted this long and continues to feed my autism fun colors and silly jokes and insane storylines to latch onto. These criticisms aren't meant to damn the show, hell they're pretty flimsy considering I'm not even halfway through the series relatively speaking and thus can't really use that as evidence for or against me. They're just a culmination of many thoughts I've had while watching the show and trying to build my own AU with OCs using as much of the canon as possible. I would LOVE to wake up someday and find someone has reblogged this rebutting all of my points.

As it stands though, ninjagos chronology is fucked. Why? Because what was initially a short, fun Lego show grew so massively popular that today we have a new Netflix spinoff? Continuation? Still being made today and so the writers had to change gears and make it so that could happen without the ninja becoming grandparents.

It is one thirty am and I have to wake up in 5 hours. Stay tuned for an even less coherent essay on why I hate the love triangle. Spoiler alert: none of it is nyas fault and my trait of evisceratinf the things I love w criticism is about to be set upon Jay my kin