Fridge / Samurai Jack

Fridge Brilliance

Fridge Brilliance

• The reason there are so many time portals everywhere is very likely because Aku threw many of his other problems into the future like he did with Jack.

• In the pilot movie of the series, the Archaeology Dogs used a sniffer device to determine that Jack is from "25 B.A (25 years Before Aku)". The reason it states this despite Jack not actually aging that long is partially explained by the 5th season; the machine wasn't measuring Jack's Age, but when his particle dates back to. Jack being displaced from time effectively froze him permanently to "25 B.A".

• Everywhere Jack goes, nearly everyone speaks english, including Jack. However, Aku had conquered the world thousands of years previously, and he was "born" in Japan. It's likely that Translation Convention is at work and everyone actually speaks Japanese, because Aku had it spread after he enslaved the Earth as the official language which largely stuck around despite thousands of years passing because Aku wouldn't care to learn another language and would enforce Japanese staying official throughout his reign.

• In "Jack and the Warrior Woman", notice how Aku (disguised as "Ikra" at the time) manipulates Jack: "she" invents a tragic-sounding backstory about wanting to rescue her father, who has been taken prisoner by Aku. Of course, this all sounds familiar to Jack, so he easily empathizes with Ikra.
  • At the end when Aku reveals his ruse, he mockingly recalls Ikra's fake story about her imprisoned "father". This adds an extra layer to Jack's shock: he feels confused, deceived, betrayed, and now personally offended.

• "Jack and the Warrior Woman" is the last time in the series until the 5th season that Jack has a traveling companion on his mission. Under suspicion that anyone he could come across could either be Aku or one of his minions playing him for a fool like "Ikra" did, Jack would reject anyone who might join him if anyone offered. Plus, there are few people who would be capable enough to not be more of a liability than a help, until Ashi came along.

• In "Aku's Fairy Tales", Aku tells the story of a world-devouring dragon that comes out of the sky and is vanquished by a mighty warrior who becomes beloved by the people. "The Birth of Evil" reveals that Aku was actually telling the story of his own arrival on Earth, only he's switched a few characters around. In his story, he's the beloved warrior; in real life he's the dragon.
  • Further more, the SECOND story? An evil monster attacks the hero thinking it will be an easy kill and is promptly blindsided when they produce a power and combat skill capable of overpowering them. What happened in his first fight with Jack, or his second fight against Jack's father? The third story is basically painting Jack as Evil Is Petty incarnate, just like Aku himself and same with the fourth, at which point Aku just gets so frustrated he can't even try to pretend Jack is the bad guy anymore. The only concept of good that Aku has is the heroes who have bested him in the past and telling loose inversions of them, while he can't resist the urge to let his own malevolence seep into the stories he tells with villains.

• The giant two-headed worm monster from "Jack Tales". Jack learns the hard way that the Worm lied about having magical wish-granting powers. However, it's implied that they did share some truth — if you get eaten by them, you're digested for "500 years". Jack is seen sitting next to a bunch of old men who have been trapped in the monster's stomach for apparently a long time, yet they're somehow still alive and undigested.

• Da Samurai's inability to function as a true samurai is evident not just in his behavior, but how he treats his katana. Swords are popularly known as the souls of samurai, but he is very careless with his; spinning it, leaning on it in a Sword Plant, outright tossing it on the ground when Jack insists they use bamboo sticks to fight, and so on. He's never seen retrieving it after losing his fight to Jack, foreshadowing his later life as a humble bartender.

• In "Jack is Naked", aside from its horns bearing resemblance, why was Jack so quick to assume the 'Chesire Dragon' was Aku? Because Aku is a shapeshifter. Jack has practically conditioned himself to stay on guard for anything that resembles Aku, any moment the demon's disguise becomes paper thin.

• Within the series, it is shown that Aku, having conquered Earth, has begun to spread his reign across the universe (the alien fish people in Episode II come to mind). Aku is the fragment of an Eldritch Abomination that threatened to engulf the universe in darkness; spreading his reign across the stars is effectively doing exactly what the Abomination originally intended.

• While Jack is usually cool and collected, he never hesitates to draw his sword when the situation calls for it, and never regrets his decision on killing droves of enemies. While every single thing he kills in the series is usually undeniably evil (except for X9), it makes sense why Jack would never be afraid that he made the wrong choice; it's shown that his sword absolutely will not harm the pure and innocent and was given to him by the gods of several different religions. Jack would never have to make a moral choice on his own because if someone can be harmed by the sword, that person must have done something evil to have tainted themselves.
  • This comes back in "XCIII". Since Jack no longer has the sword, he has been forced to make do with scavenged weapons across the land. Which results in him killing one of the Daughters of Aku with her own sword, thinking she was just a robot. He is notably shaken by this

• The reason why Aku is more comical in the future, is because after he sent Jack into the future, there was absolutely nobody who could even scratch him. After all that time with nobody really being a threat, Aku let himself have some fun and had his guards dropped completely. When Jack shows up again, Aku takes a few seconds to recognize him; probably because of all the time that passed, he has forgotten.

• The montage in the first episode of Jack traveling the world and learning new combat techniques as he grows older is awesome, but it makes more sense with the revelation that the sword used to defeat Aku was forged by Ra, Vishnu, and Odin, the gods of three different religions. When preparing for his son's training for when he had to fight Aku, the emperor clearly was inspired by the union of gods from the religions of three different cultures and decided to have Jack study different forms of combat from different places so that he'd learn different strategies and be better prepared for fighting Aku than his father was.

• Demongo's ability to steal the souls of warriors, and his reputation as Aku's mightiest of minions, may both seem like an Informed Ability since he ultimately has no fighting skill of his own, and is never seen actually taking a warrior's soul. But it's possible that he used to be a formidable warrior on his own, and became so arrogant and reliant on summoning his imprisoned warriors to fight on his behalf, that his own skill diminished severely as the eons went on.

• The first kanji character in Ashi's name is the same kanji for Aku. Assuming that the other Daughters carry this motif as well, the High Priestess gave them those names to further drill in the point that they are not individuals; they are extensions of Aku's will, even in name.

• Scaramouche isn't Aku's best assassin, but he is his favorite:
  • He has Aku's phone number, even if Aku didn't recognize him it's still more than any other lackeys had.
  • He wasn't sent to kill Jack for over fifty years, Aku sent machines with less chance than him to certain deaths before him, but he doesn't until the plan is train children into adulthood to kill Jack.
  • And to top it off he is one charming assassin. And much like Aku, Scaramouche has quite a (dark) sense of humor.

• During "Jack and the Rave", Jack hesitated to fight the children when his sword would have brought no harm to them (being innocent, even if mind-controlled). However, chronologically, Jack had forgotten about that particular ability of his weapon until the subsequent episode "Jack and the Zombies".

• Aku tells the scientists who upgraded their beetle drones that he doesn't care if they try to kill Jack despite being upset over the 50 year old stalemate is because he knows their creation will fail. Why else would a Bad Boss like him normally try to say otherwise?

• Jack's new mantra about Aku's minions being just "nuts and bolts" seems at odds with his old personality of simply killing whoever came attacking him. Then you realize that Jack's sword served as a detector to see if someone was truly evil enough to be killed or a soulless robot. Without it, Jack is much less certain of his actions and might be slaughtering actual people, hence why he needs to repeat this to himself.

• The second fight with the Daughters makes a lot of sense when you recall the Daughters spent their entire life in a temple while Jack was trained in tons of different environments over the world, including the one they're fighting in, and Jack has had time to scope out the area. In addition, their mother told them not to help one another, because it shows weakness on the other's parts. At no point in the fight do they cover for each other (in fact, at one point during the battle one of the sisters actually moved away to avoid the spear Jack thrown instead of blocking it, letting the spear to hit the other sister behind her). They attack as one but they don't fight as one. The Daughter's weakness wasn't inferior combat training, it was the rest of their training that was heavily flawed compared to Jack's.

• In S5 E3, Jack uses his ninja training, first seen in S4 E1, to take down his pursuers. What tells us this is that the scenery fades into blinding white, just as it did during said episode. Worse for the Daughters, they had no idea how to counter it, leaving them to be decimated by Jack.

• A small one, but during the fight with the Daughters of Aku on the lone branch, Jack ditches his weapon in favour of fighting with this fists. This seems odd until you realize that the weapon he was holding was a kanabō, a huge unwieldy war club that requires strength and balance to effectively use. Since he was on a branch with no way to back out, Jack needed every edge in mobility he could get, hence he could no longer use the kanabō as a weapon as it would severely handicap him compared to the lightweight and long reach weapons of the remaining Daughters.

• On a meta-level, the flashback of young Jack witnessing his father kill the bandits could be an allegory for how some fans feel about Season 5's darker tone; as well as some fans' mortification at seeing Jack kill someone, even unintentionally. On that note, the Emperor's wise advice could be the show's way of comforting the audience that if he must kill, it won't make Jack less of a hero. He just needs to learn the maturity and responsibility to live with it.

• Re-watching some of the episodes, one can find the wolf in Season 5 and the Creature from Season 3 Episode 7 may be glaring opposites, yet they both represent Jack's personality.
  • The creature: Even though it's sillier and more childish than Jack by comparison, it does share the original Jack's personality in some aspects. When left alone, the creature is peaceful and gentle just like Jack. But when innocent people like Jack are harmed, the creature becomes a monster who will make Jack's attackers pay dearly. Even its cartoony aspect represents how Jack's story is an animated show meant to entertain children.
  • The Wolf: Where to begin? It's a representation of how Darker and Edgier Jack has become in the past 50 years. As a realistic depiction of a wild animal, it embodies how the show is more serious and realistic; and how Jack has grown "feral" compared to his former self. And yet, when it first meets Jack, they bond almost instantly over their wounds. And even for a realistic wolf, it treats Jack gently and doesn't hurt him, perhaps to represent Jack is still a good selfless person deep down. And when they part ways, it is with the respect of equals rather than master and pet.
  • At least one thing both the Creature and the Wolf share in common: thus far, neither have been named. It perfectly reflects that the series has not yet revealed Jack's real name and likely never will aside from the creator announcing it himself.

• When Jack tells the baby the story of Momotaro, it may be an allegory for Jack's own story. His quest to defeat Aku mirrors Momotaro's quest to defeat the Oni on Oni Island. Even the animals reflect parts of Jack's entire journey.
  • The dog represents the talking dogs Jack first saved in "The Samurai called Jack".
  • The pheasant represents the time he was changed into a chicken in "Chicken Jack".
  • The monkey represents his adventure in "Jump Good".

• Now Jack is known to have put up with long rants and insults from other characters (such as the Scotsman) without so much as flinching for one bit. But why did he finally snap after Ashi's long rant against the Samurai? Simple, it's not so much as Ashi is personally insulting Jack and calling him a monster; but rather it's Ashi blindly praising Aku and claiming him to be a benevolent deity, who is kind and merciful to the world's beauty. Jack (who had seen his home destroyed firsthand by Aku, and his people subjected to torturous slavery, not to mention all the other atrocities he's seen in the future) is understandably pissed that Ashi insulted all of their honor by believing and repeating these Blatant Lies to his ears.

• In Season 5 Episode 5, when dealing with the alien children that are implanted with mind control chips that are activated with an auditory signal, Ashi is able to hear the soundwave while Jack is unable to. This might be because there are certain auditory frequencies either at the extreme low or high ends of the audible range, which cannot be detected by people as they get older. This would let the children and Ashi hear the sound, while Jack would be too old to pick up on it.
  • It could also be that, since Jack has been exposed to many loud noises in his journey, he suffered permanent hearing loss in the higher frequency registry. He's shown not to be able to age, so it may not make as much sense for him to be 'too old' to pick up on it.

• Why would Jack follow the mysterious ghostly samurai only now after seeing the blue children getting knocked out? Well, not only does he think they're dead, but he believes they're dead even when he tried and succeeded at getting rid of what was hurting them. He started seeing the ghost samurai when he believed his journey became hopeless, and it's reappeared before him when he's been incapable of helping or unwilling to help (like with the village in the first episode of the season). Here though, he's tried and succeeded, only to have the results of his victory seemingly snatched away. Even though the children ended up alright, for all Jack knew he had reached a point where even trying anything at all would still end in failure.

• Also in Season 5, Episode 5, Ashi is captured by the Dominator and subjected to Cold-Blooded Torture until she breaks free through sheer, livid rage at his mistreatment of children that practically came off as a daily occurrence for his job. At first it seems strange for this to happen so easily, but first, her limbs are particularly limp and thinner-looking than before until she gets the chance to recover after she pulls them out of gigantic metal claw grips, implying that her body was briefly mangled before she managed to get her Heroic Second Wind. Second, not only did she have Training from Hell that probably helped her resist said pain, but the next episode reveals that her entire body was covered in blazing hot ash and soot that solidified as a child, which implies that she's got a downright insane amount of pain tolerance that rivals Jack's through methods more comparable to torture than training. Combine that with a Mama Bear and Determinator mentality at the thought of children being tortured like she was, and is it any wonder she literally yanks her way out?

• In Season 5 Episode 6, The return of Demongo may also explain why Samurai Jack began losing hope in the span of 50 years. Not only did he feel his deeds weren't helping good people anymore, but he felt it was futile to fight the bad ones if they kept coming back. This brings the feelings of futility and entropy up to eleven.

• Scaramouche tries to board a ship that doesn't allow people with no bodies, but it does have a point. You need a wallet or a passport on your person; how can you carry those if you don't have a body?

• Ashi changing outfits from her burnt-skin suit to a suit of leaves is meaningful when you consider ancient Japanese embraced nature as a divine thing.

• The Omen waiting for Ashi to show up makes sense when you realize in actual seppuku, it is usually a detailed ritual and meant to be performed with spectators, not just on the battlefield. Thus why he told her she could 'witness' it. He was waiting for someone to wander by to be a spectator as is proper for the ritual.
  • While there isn't evidence showing that The Omen is connected to Aku, a spectator witnessing Samurai Jack's death would be needed to let Aku know about his arch enemy's demise.

• When Da Samurai is finished telling his story of his encounter with Samurai Jack, one of the patrons remarks his fate doesn't sound so bad. But then you remember Da Samurai didn't go into details about his duel with Jack. And it was a Humiliation Conga that came to a head when he was stripped down to his underwear and lost his muscle suit. Also crosses into Fridge-Heartwarming when you realize Jack hasn't told a soul about Da Samurai's humiliating secret.
  • On the same track, his retort to the robot telling him that being humiliated by Jack isn't nearly as bad as being maimed by him is to claim that the robot "has no soul". At first, it sounds like an ad hominem attack, but you realize that Da Samurai really means it: a soulless robot really can't understand having your confidence and ego broken so utterly in a single night like Da Samurai's was.
    • Entailing that, it hints a surprising amount of character development on Da Samurai's part. Before, he was only concerned with things for their physical appearance or appeal. He was also unprepared to face physical pain. But now, his duel with Samurai Jack has taught him that what's on the inside is more important. From his viewpoint, the robot who says his fate doesn't sound so bad is Comically Missing the Point.

• It's revealed that Jack lost his sword while fighting a trio of friendly sheep (turned into vicious monsters by Aku) after the last portal on Earth was destroyed by Aku. One could argue that he was merely acting in self-defense as they were trying to kill him after being transformed by Aku and being consumed by anger over not being able to return to the past could be excused, until you consider that the monsters ended up reverting to their original, innocent forms upon their deaths. Jack's blade has been bathed in the blood of innocents trying to help him; add the fact he let his rage take him over, and this was enough reason for his sword to abandon him.
  • The flashback when Jack loses his sword is different than the actual scene when Jack loses his sword. The background is much different, but if you look closely, it's very similar to the green/black color that appears when the Omen shows up. Jack's memory was so fogged up and full of guilt that he associated that very moment with the start of his self-hatred.
  • Alternatively, perhaps the Sword didn't leave Jack because he killed those sheep; it was, after all, in self defense. But what was important is that Jack himself felt guilty over it and subconsciously thought he was unworthy of wielding the sword, thus making the sword leave him until he came to terms with his mistake.

• Jack getting his old outfit when he regains his sword is not out of nowhere: Something similar happened to his father the moment he first wielded the sword.

• In the original show, Jack's skin had a yellow color. For most of season five, Jack's skin was recolored and looked Caucasian. At first, you'd think this was necessary due to changes in social views, but as of episode 7 Jack is back to his original design. It wasn't a PC change, it was a visual indicator foreshadowing his mental turmoil.

• It seemed odd that Aku had spent almost half a century or so avoiding Jack and thus never realized he'd lost his sword, but the flashback makes it clear why this could have happened: the last time he'd seen Jack, Jack was so murderously angry that there would have been none of the banter or quasi-civil behavior that had marked previous encounters, just Jack trying to kill him. Aku probably spent several years anxiously awaiting Jack's inevitable attack in revenge only to never have it come, which would have made it the stress of waiting worse.

• Another explanation for Aku never checking up on Jack may be because all the time portals were destroyed. With all the time portals destroyed, Aku no longer had to check on Jack to see if he was close to finding a time portal and with the threat of Jack going back to the past gone, all Aku had to do was hole up in his tower and wait for time, which Aku had no way of knowing wouldn't affect him, to take out Jack.

• Jack being told that he was worthy of the sword in season 5 makes sense considering he didn't earn it like his father did, but merely inherited the blade. As of season 5 though, he has finally achieved spiritual balance and rightfully earned the sword.

• Jack's inner voice growing more sadistic and monstrous over time. Notice how it stops sounding like his own guilt and more like a malicious shoulder devil. Then we see him wearing the same black and red robes of a certain clone of Jack. That isn't just any inner voice, that's Mad Jack. What was Mad Jack's purpose? To kill Samurai Jack. If he couldn't do that through a fight, he'd do so through poisoning Jack's mind!
  • To be more precise, Mad Jack was Jack's hatred. The reason he existed was when Jack felt an excess amount of hatred. He started coming into being because Jack hated himself. Well, by the end of that episode, that is officially past tense.
  • Inner Jack doesn't just represent Jack's anger and frustration; he also represents Jack's entitlement. After he's been told that he's on the wrong path to regaining his sword, what does he say?
    Jack: This isn't the path? Then you must show me!
  • One of Samurai Jack's lessons took hold here: "You cannot defeat another if you know not how to defeat yourself". In XCVIII, we see that by defeating Inner Jack, he effectively defeated his inner turmoil, aggression, and rage. He knew this was the case all along, and by doing so, he became worthy to reclaim his sword.

• Jack's despair and hopelessness was caused ultimately by the loss of his sword, not the loss of the time portals. It's highly likely that if not on Earth then out in space there are time portals or a means to create one or otherwise time travel that Jack could have searched for. After all, he had forever to do so. However, even if Jack found a way to go back to the past, without his sword Jack would have no means of killing Aku, so it would be pointless to even bother to look for a way. Jack's guilt for killing the sheep on it's own is something Jack could've gotten over with time, and if there truly wasn't a way to return to the past Jack could learn to live with just destroying Aku now. However, the sword abandoning him and thus failing in his mission was what really drove the samurai into hopelessness. The knowledge that he can't possibly succeed at so much as destroying Aku in the future is what truly broke Jack.

• After he lost the sword Jack has lived with the knowledge that Aku could show up at literally any time and kill him with ease without the samurai being able to do anything to so much as fight back, the same knowledge the rest of the residents of the future have been living with for thousands of years. Jack has probably spent every waking second constantly on edge for Aku to show up and kill him, and wondering every time he closes his eyes to sleep if he's going to wake up again. Of course Jack is stressed out and paranoid after living like that for 50 years. The constant attacks by Aku's bounty hunters and minions probably didn't help that paranoia let up either.

• Lazarus-92 is a life form that survives as a Hive Mind of leeches that reproduce very quickly, letting it revive itself and avoid death as long unless absolutely all of its leech components are destroyed. Its namesake comes from a story in the Bible; Lazarus was a man who was miraculously raised from the dead.

• Lazarus-92 may be a Plot-Irrelevant Villain, but it shares many characteristics with the Black Mass that spawned Aku. It is a malevolent mass that consumes everything in its path, it will restore itself if it takes damage, and there's only one way of killing it available to Jack. With any part of Lazarus at all surviving meaning it will recover and return, just like Aku can never actually be destroyed unless every last part of him is obliterated and how a small piece of the Black Mass surviving is how Aku came into being in the first place.

• Jack falling in love with Ashi makes a certain amount of sense, seeing how Ashi is the first female companion he's had who doesn't need him to protect her, and isn't out to kill him (anymore). Ashi also greatly helped him emotionally, being the one who pulled him back from the Despair Event Horizon. There's also the little matter of Jack going fifty years without much social contact, especially with the fairer sex (it's even implied that Jack never lost his virginity). As badass as Jack is, he is still only human in mind and body.

• Ashi nonchalantly still fighting naked after Lazarus 92 destroys her clothes while Jack is bothered has to do with the fact that for almost her whole life, Ashi and the Daughters of Aku were used to fighting in the nude. They just had ash cover their skin as a layer.
  • Or if we takes the tack that their suits are, as Phil LaMarr says, a sort of magical darkness not unlike body paint or perhaps latex, they grew up in an all-female environment. Modesty is among the things they were never taught.
  • There's also the fact that she can't be bothered to be concerned about it while fighting for her life.

• Aku hasn't been actively running his empire during the fifty year Time Skip, and you'd think that with his lack of action, one of his high-ranking henchmen could pull The Starscream on him to take over his empire, but why hasn't any of them tried that? Quite obviously, as long as anyone doesn't have Jack's sword, they can at that point could throw anything they have at Aku and it wouldn't even leave so much a scratch to him. In other words, his underlings couldn't overthrow him even if they wanted to. The power of demons like Demongo only pale in comparison to Aku's, and having access to divine artifacts is no easy task.

• The Reveal of Ashi and her sisters' true natures as the literal, biological Daughters of Aku was foreshadowed evenly and lightly throughout Season 5:
  • Hell, it's in their name! Even though most viewers thought that "Daughters of Aku" was only a figurative term referring to their worship of Aku, it really should have been an indicator that they really did have some blood connection to him.
  • The High Priestess told her girls that they all have "Aku's fire" burning within them during their Training Montage.
  • All the Daughters displayed superhuman levels of speed and strength during their fights with Jack, enough to easily doge machine gun fire and punch him out despite their petite frames, with viewers no doubt attributing that to Charles Atlas Superpower.
  • In "Episode XCV", Jack has a vision of one of the Daughters of Aku with the real Aku's face. Granted it was a hallucination, but it was still very eery foreshadowing.
  • In "Episode XCVII", the Woolies say they can sense her evil.
  • "Episode XCVIII" is perhaps the best example; while defending Jack during his meditation, Ashi massacred an entire legion of orcs by using her own bare hands, easily smacking them around without getting tired. And later, she's shown picking up a large rock to use as a shield to deflect arrows, and throws an arrow as if it were a javelin. Not an easy feat.
  • Also, the High Priestess herself shows various inhuman traits, which could probably be a result of drinking Aku's essence.
    • Speaking of superhuman endurance, after giving birth to seven live babies in a row, the Priestess was immediately able to get back up on her feet to deliver another sermon, like it was no big deal despite her intense cries of pain.
    • As shown when HP fights Ashi, she has retractable claws on her fingertips, and is also quite strong and fast enough to match her daughter, giving Ashi much more trouble than the orcs she killed earlier.

• Although Jack ultimately loses Ashi, all is not lost. There is one glimmer of hope for all of us who wanted him to be happy in the end. Remember how he received his first kiss from a girl back in his native time during "Jack Remembers the Past"? She's probably still there. Jack will not be alone.
  • That sounds very likely. In "Jack Remembers the Past", he made an origami grasshopper when the girl was bereft of catching one. He offered her a replacement. So it seems appropriate that upon seeing Jack bereft of his bride, the girl (now grown into a young woman) shall offer herself to Jack when he's healed from his loss. Like everyone Jack has ever helped, she may repay his kindness from years ago.

• Why didn't Future Aku just follow Jack back into the past?:
  • For one thing, time changes might take effect instantly for him, and he's wiped from existence right after we last see him. Alternately, he may not actually be able to cross his own timestream. Which is why Jack could only return after he left.
  • This could also explain why the series is about sending Jack into the future and not into the distant past, long before Aku's arrival; Aku's magic can only transport beings into time periods where they do not already exist.

• Why did the Guardian's vision in the old series show an older Jack? Even if it's not a retcon, visions are often be symbolic, and Jack is older. Alternately, that vision takes place after Jack returns to the past, has resumed normal aging, and the Guardian misinterpreted it.
  • Or, another alternative is that Jack still didn't age, but he still regrew his beard such that he appeared older.

• The Scotsman has a point when he said Ashi wasn't Jack's type. Not because of the chemistry, but because there's no way a hero, whose quest is to change the Bad Future, can have any lasting relationship with somebody from that future. I'll bet like some fans, the Scotsman always believed Jack's heart would be set on somebody from the past.
  • Or more likely, the Scotsman was just simply confused when Jack told him that he was dating an ugly demon woman who serves Aku.
    • Becomes Fridge-Funny when you realize now it's the Scotsman's turn to see Jack's love interest and wonder how someone could fall in love with somebody not-so-pretty.

• In a way, the story the kids told in "Aku's Fairy Tales" prophetically came true. It just didn't come true in the exact order. The end of Jack's journey led him to a "castle" (Aku's fortress, albeit Jack didn't infiltrate it). He did have to fight a monster before facing Aku, except it wasn't the six-armed mutant, but Ashi possessed by Aku. Jack had to fight Aku one last time (complete with cleaving him right down the middle), but in the past rather than the future. And epicly, Jack did say his quest ended.

• Now that we know changing the past would have erased the Bad Future, it makes even more sense why Jack passed up a lot of opportunities to return to the past when he saw others in trouble under Aku; if he traveled back in time, the butterfly effect would occur with the risk of them fading from existence. If they did, they'd go without knowing if their suffering has ended. Ideally, Jack wanted to make sure that once he returns to the past, anyone he's saved would disappear knowing that their lives were changed for the better.

• The implications of Jack defeating Aku in the future or in the past are as follows: Jack can defeat Aku in the future, it would mean he can stay and have a new life with Ashi, and rebuild from there, but it will be at the cost of being unable to save his loved ones from the past, as well as many who have sacrificed themselves to save Jack to allow him the opening to defeat Aku. Or, If Jack defeats Aku in the past, it will be very easy, and he will have negated the deaths and sufferings of many who have had to endure a few millennia of a living nightmare that is Aku, but at the cost of altering the people Jack has met in the future (with them different at best, Ret-Gone at worst), as well as the cost of losing Ashi. We know that Ashi immediately chose the latter, because she knew how important it was for Jack, but what of Jack's choice? Knowing Jack, he would've chosen the former for these reasons: Jack has been in situations where people (such as the Shaolin Monks) were willing to make great sacrifices to allow him to return home, but wouldn't allow such to happen. If Ashi told Jack she had the ability to send him back instead of using it right away, Jack likely would've hesitated to let her do so, knowing it would be at the cost of her existence and that isn't what he wants. Plus, Jack in Season 5 learned the importance of moving on, willing to accept that everything from his past were as good as gone.

• Ultimately, it was suiting that Ashi disappears after the past is changed. It fits Season 5's overall theme about killing and consequences. Although he had it coming to him for a long time, Aku's death did result in a consequence, namely saving countless lives but at the cost of Ashi's eventual death. It may almost merit as a Space Whale Aesop, but once you grasp the concept, it makes the Bittersweet Ending all the more meaningful.

• The Robo-Samurai proves capable of harming Aku, being the only thing in the battle other than the Scotsman's Celtic Magic. In its debut episode, it's explained it's no simple robot, but an ancient magical giant, so it makes sense it could actually hurt Aku.

• In the original episode, Jack merged with the Robo-Samurai and for all intents and purposes BECAME it while when it shows up in the finale to fight Aku, the robots are piloting it like a mecha which leaves them vulnerable to Aku killing them, while the Mondo Bot impaling it with tendrils badly didn't hurt Jack inside. This makes sense when you remember than Jack was The Chosen One while the Robots, by their own admission, are commandeering it. They can't merge with it, only Jack can.

• Ashi has reverted back to her hanyō form (human appearance but retaining her demonic powers) and manages to grab Jack's katana without it harming her. How? Jack's Anguished Declaration of Love combined with her letting go years of hate and malice indoctrinated into her along seeking with the true beauty of the world has managed to purge the evil out of her.

• If one watches the original series and the last season for comparisons, it's easy to tell that there is a marked change in the way Phil LaMarr voices Jack. In the first four seasons, LaMarr's voice is soft and smooth. 13 years later, it's grown somewhat tougher and and deeper with age. 50 years have gone by in-universe for Jack, and it shows in the heavier nature of his voice.

• Something about the ending averts Book Ends: Jack's hair. This whole story began with young Jack's hair up in a top knot. But in the end, even when he's returned to the past and defeated Aku, his hair is down (mostly signifying his depression at losing Ashi). Perhaps, it is symbolic that he's not the same person he was before Aku sent him to the future. He's seen horrors of the Bad Future, he's fought so hard and so long, he lived 50 ageless years. Indefinitely, he may never be the same again. Yet, on a happier note, his letting the ladybug go peacefully implies he's also changed for the better.
  • At the same time, the ending plays straight one element of Book Ends: a tree. The entire series began with the black, ugly, ominous tree that Aku was seal in. It heralds the end of Jack's peaceful, idyllic childhood, and the beginning of Aku's reign. By the series finale, the story ends with Jack standing under a peaceful, beautiful Japanese oak tree. It represents that not only has Aku's reign ended, but a new life begins for Jack, one where he and his people shall live in peace.

• In Season 5 Episode 6, when Ashi is fighting the Omen to snap Jack out of his seppuku trance, she mentions he saved her life. But if you think about it, she's not just talking about how he saved her from the insides of that creature from Episode 4. She also means metaphorically. Before, she was an assassin who was all too willing to throw away her life to kill Samurai Jack. But her journey thus far has reminded her there's still too much unseen beauty in this world to leave it out of hatred for him.

• If Jack retains his functional immortality he gained due to his time travelling, he can become a Good Counterpart to Aku, and have his good become law.
  • Alternatively, if he isn't really immortal, then perhaps he'll simply start a family who will uphold a legacy where his good is law. They will pass down the stories and legends of how a foolish demon named Aku attacked Japan, and the brave prince Samurai Jack who stood up to him and vanquished him.

• The irony of Aku calling Jack a "fool". Aku himself is Laughably Evil, and his ego often backfires his plans, so he's the foolish one.

• In the final episode, Ashi stopping herself from strangling Jack to death fits in with what the Emperor said about actions and consequences: "You cannot hide from your true self." No matter how much Aku piled on his influence over Ashi, it wasn't enough to smother out how much she truly loves Jack and humanly cares for him.
  • What's more, it reflects Ashi overcoming what Jack feared would come of killing (even in self-defense), becoming a relentless, bloodthirsty murderer. Because Jack's confessing his feelings for Ashi gave her the personal strength to remember who she was.

• At first, Jack curbstomping Princess Mira and the other bounty hunters at the end of their episode can be a little hard to believe, given their reputation of being the best bounty hunters of the world. Indeed, some more silly-looking villains gave Jack a harder time, like those 50s-themed robots in "Jack and the Creature". However, before the introduction of the Daughters of Aku in Season 5, most of Jack's opponents were robots, aliens and various magical creatures. The bounty hunters and Mira were some of the few 100% humans Jack faced (not counting the alien-like I and Am). Even fellow bounty hunter Ezekiel has cybernetic hands, while Josephine has to use a stratagem to make Jack lower his guard. And no matter how strong a human is, it will always be weaker than the advanced robots and magical creatures that Aku send on a regular basis to kill Jack. Given the fact that Jack is able to surpass those robots and magical beings, even the most badass humans don't stand a chance against him.

• It has been rumored that Season 5's theme would be about destiny. Suitably, the Guardian is dead (as evidenced in the second-to-last episode. Why? Because his vision about Jack using his portal to return home is destiny. And the whole point of Season 5 is to demonstrate that nothing is written in stone. This can be both bad (Jack can't use the time portal home) and good (instead, Ashi helps return Jack home).

• Once we learn that Da Samurai wears a muscle suit, it makes sense why he walks in that odd fashion: he can't move right wearing that stiff suit.

• Our hero takes on the name Jack in the second episode of the series. When he was a child, he travelled the world, learning every fighting style that existed at the time, along with the philosophies that go with them. In the future, he learns about guns, and other high tech weapons, and also figures out how to ride a bike. He's shown to be quite wise and eloquent as well. Our boy is literally a Jack of all trades.

• In a way, Ashi is the reverse of all the attractive women who come Jack's way. Usually, they try to steal his heart, and then try to kill him. Instead, it's the other way around with Ashi.

• Why did Ashi have no hesitation to use her new powers to assist Jack in going back to the past, despite her being fully aware of the fact that she will cease to exist? It's because despite her love for Jack, love is about making sacrifices. Ashi knew how important and serious Jack's goal of returning to the past was, and by assisting Jack in destroying Aku and bringing back peace, she is sacrificing herself for Jack.

• In Episode C, Jack laments that Aku had taken away everything Jack had ever loved, leaving him with only the memory that it ever existed. He didn't want this to become of Ashi, yet his mission to destroy Aku in the past left him no say in that matter. With Aku now destroyed, Ashi as Jack knew her will never exist, making it seem that Aku had taken one last thing away from Jack, even after his defeat. Yet in that last moment before the closing credits, Jack realizes that Ashi could still be born. She just won't be born into servitude as a Daughter of Aku. She will be born free. Ashi wasn't taken away from Jack by Aku. She was saved by Jack from Aku. And that is a memory Jack can find comfort in, even if he is the only person on Earth to ever carry it with him.

• In season 5, Jack didn't merely lose his balance when the last time portal was destroyed; he was unbalanced before then. Long story short, in Eastern Philosophy, Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil; a person needs to accept that they contain both light and dark in order to be in balance. But Jack has always seen himself as nothing but pure light.
  • Jack only lost the last time portal because he was too inflexible; rather than realize that he needed to destroy Aku in the future first so that he could then use a portal to return to the past to destroy Aku there without interference, he just kept blindly seeking portals and losing them to Aku. Rigidity of thought and inflexibility is symptomatic of being too unbalanced towards light.
  • When he killed the sheep, Jack was so horrified at being confronted with his own inner darkness that, ironically, he allowed himself to fall into darkness, because he could not accept that he had any darkness inside of him in the first place.
  • Thus, Jack's remembrance of his father killing bandits and how he explained that they had brought it upon themselves was important not just so he could face down the Daughters of Aku, but also to begin his healing: Jack did not just find balance by turning back to the light, he found balance by accepting that he does have darkness inside of him and that, sometimes, darkness is necessary.
    • The theme also extends to Ashi. Jack not only comes to fall in love with Ashi despite that she's tried to kill him, but also despite that she's literally Aku's daughter. It's a show of his Character Development, that he's learned to accept that just because someone has darkness in them doesn't mean they don't have light in them. And it's also because of his unconditional love that saves her from being consumed by the darkness.
  • In other words, season 5 ultimately came to pass because Jack allowed his greatest strength - his purity - to become his greatest weakness!

• Even though Jack killing the transformed sheep and losing his sword as a result has been a hotly debated issue, there are reasons why this would unbalance him:
  • Firstly, Jack had grown (for lack of a better word) spoiled after countless adventures defeating robots, whose deaths he could easily justify because, in his eyes, they were never alive. He had forgotten his father's teachings on how, sometimes, a warrior has no choice but to take life in battle, and that doing so is not inherently evil, which means he would have immediately become disgusted with himself and could not bear the burden of blood on his hands.
  • Secondly, although Jack's sword is canonically incapable of harming living creatures that are pure of heart or innocent, it's canon that this becomes relevant so rarely that Jack actually forgets it has this power! In his emotional turmoil at seeing his first organic kills since coming to the future, Jack would certainly have failed to remember that the sword couldn't have hurt them in the first place if they were innocent.

• I realized late one night that "Aku’s Fairy Tales", airing all the way back in S1, possible foreshadowed events that happened much later in S5 and flips some things around. To start:
  • “Little Red Hood” – in this story there is Little Red Hood (a girl) who goes to see her grandmother. Said grandmother is eaten by a wolf (Jack) and then impersonates the grandmother to lure Little Red Hood in close. Little Red Hood comments on her “grandmother’s” features (big eyes, big teeth) and sees that her grandmother is really a wolf (a monster). Skip ahead to the S5 with the Daughters of Aku. Here are 7 girls raised from birth to view Jack as a monster and it becomes their sole mission to destroy him. Their few interactions with him are just attacking and trying to kill him. It is not until Ashi is along with Jack (the monster) that she realizes he is not a monster. The events of “Little Red Hood” parallel and are the opposite of Ashi’s experience with Jack (the monster/wolf). While Little Red Hood sees through the grandmother disguise to see the actual wolf (monster), Ashi sees through the masquerade that had painted Jack as a monster (a wolf) all her life and comes to see him as a force for good. Ashi started as Little Red Hood, to a degree, but instead of only seeing a wolf, she sees the person.
  • “Three Little Pigs” – in this story Jack again is the big bad wolf who torments 3 innocent little pigs. We never finish the story because a girl in Aku’s audience gets scared. Much later on in S5, Jack encounters 3 little sheep. They in turn are transformed into monsters by Aku that Jack fights and kills. Jack, unaware he just killed 3 living beings, is horrified by his actions and throws his sword away. In the story, Jack is the monster to the pigs; in the episode Jack is the (unintentional) monster to now monstrous sheep (who are still innocents caught between Jack and Aku). After killing the sheep, Jack also becomes scared of what he is becoming and tries to stop his own story by getting rid of his sword. In both case, the "story" stops after Jack attacks innocent creatures.
  • In fact, in Season 5, we see an actual wolf, travelling along when it's attacked by monstrous green tigers. In comparison to the cartoony wolves Aku narrated in his story, this wolf is serious, stoic, fierce, but nonetheless a living creature fighting off monsters for its life. This very much reflects that even as a "wolf", Jack is but a man trying to return home.

• Something interesting to note about Jack In Africa. When Jack first arrives the village, he is noticeably put off by the unknown and very different environment than he was used to, from the people, the buildings, even the mask decorations. It's perfectly understandable for him to be a little overwhelmed, especially since he is a still just a child. This parallels what it was like when Jack first arrived in the future. He's thrown into a new world that is completely alien to him and makes him uncomfortable. But that’s how it has been for Jack for many years since he’s been traveling to new and different places for nearly all his life.

• The ending of "Jack and the Spartans" (likely unintentionally) foreshadows that Jack will be stuck in the future for 50 years. The whole point of Jack's quest is to "undo the future that is Aku", which means that Aku's future will stop existing once Jack succeeds in getting back to the past. The fact that the Spartan king is able to live a long life and tell a tale about Jack decades later proved early on it would take a long time for Jack to succeed.

• At first, the first attempt to kill the black pool by Jack's father seems to have backfired big time by giving it sapience, turning it into Aku. However, when rewatching the series, many of Aku's failures which ultimately lead to his demise stem from his various Bond Villain Stupidity moments, making him an Evil Overlord that is terrifying but beatable. Meanwhile as the black pool, it is practically an unstoppable disease that just kills and eats anything it touches when spreading across the world and would've consumed the world. In other words, Aku has obtained sapience...along with all the bad stuff that comes with it. So in a roundabout way, the attempt to kill Aku actually worked. Just not in the way the Emperor hoped.

• Why did Aku label himself with various Japanese terms? It was given sapience by the Japanese Emperor. It was the first thing it knew.

• Notice how, while in both Africa and Rome in the training montage in the first episode, Jack is lightly dressed? That’s an explanation as to why he’s not afraid to fight unclothed. If he fought unclothed in his youth and teenage years, doing it as an adult is no different.

Fridge Horror

Fridge Horror

• Fridge Tear Jerker: It's not hard to imagine how Jack's parents reacted after he disappeared into the far future. They would've spent the last years of their miserable lives believing that their dear son suffered a horrible death by Aku's claws, trying and failing badly to end his reign of terror. They died with all their hope extinguished, never knowing that Jack is still trying to finish the job thousands of years later.
  • Thankfully, Jack was only gone for 10 seconds, so his parents never knew that he even left.

• Who's to say Aku didn't attack the lava monsters city while Jack was training all over the world? What if he is now trapped down there until he gains his rock magic again without jack in the future, will anyone be able to defeat him?
  • If it eases your mind, the archeologist dogs indicate Aku didn't spread his influence any further than Japan until after Jack was sent to the future. ("25 B.A." should chronologically confirm that). So Aku didn't pay the Viking a visit until some time afterwards. And even if he already had, the spell thankfully died along with Aku in Season 5.
    • It does and doesn't, even if he did visit the lava monsters city and the curse he placed on the lava monster was broken when he died in the past, then there is no way his death would have been considered "honorable" enough for Valhalla since he would have died of old age or the rocks falling into the hole the crystal left.

• In the second episode, Aku appears to use his eye beams on the young aquatic alien who dared to call him out on stealing his peoples' oceans. Sure, Aku assures the elder that the youth was unharmed and merely sent to a correctional facility, but how can we be sure that Aku didn't actually kill the youth and lie to the elder about his relocation?
  • The correctional facility was the depths of the Pit of Hate. How is that better?

• At one point, Samurai Jack visits a ruined city that looks like Townsville. Given this, and the fact that the original Powerpuff Girls series had hints that it shares its universe with Dexter's Laboratory, if not other CN shows from the time (though Word of God does conflict with their crossovers), it leads one to a horrifying thought: Did Aku kill the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter, and every other CN hero around who could have stopped him?
  • The Powerpuff Girls episode "Speed Demon" shows the ruins of Townsville, fifty years in their future. All because they disappeared from the timeline. If Samurai Jack is the prime timeline, it leads to a more horrifying thought: The Powerpuff Girls, Dexter, and every other CN hero made no difference to the outcome; Aku dominated. If CN City taken into account given the show's original run period, this includes Grim, Ben Tennyson, the Justice League and the Teen Titans.

• It's bad enough that the Woolies, a peaceful and civilized species, had been enslaved and treated like domesticated animals by the Chritchellites. Their pointless cruelty makes one wonder if they ever considered killing or even eating their slaves.
  • The way the Chritchellites invaded and enslaved the Woolies now has a better explanation after "Episode XCVI", where we see that Aku actively welcomes criminals and other villains from all over the cosmos, and deliberately invites them to attack and pillage peaceful settlements. So when Aku stated that "my evil is law", he really means that "evil is tolerated".

• Let's say that you're a parent living under the thumb of Aku, a godlike supernatural head of state literally made of evil. He pillages innocents for breakfast, genocides entire species for lunch, and murders his own subordinates for dinner. One day, he orders that you and everyone else in the area bring him your children. We know that he's only trying to indoctrinate them (and failing miserably at that), but did they know? They could probably only guess at what sort of monstrous act he was planning to do to them For the Evulz. Some of the more imaginative ones may have even killed themselves out of despair.

• While it's quite noble that the Imakandi spared Jack and released him from captivity due to their weird sense of honor, there's still the fact that they pissed off Aku by refusing to complete their deal and deliver Jack to him. As Aku knows where they live (he visited their homeworld to meet them in the first place), there's a strong possibility that Aku wanted to punish their "betrayal", and retaliated by launching an invasion of the Imakandi's planet.
  • Yeah, good luck with that. If they beat Jack, then I doubt any army Aku sends would be able to beat them and, given how lazy Aku has gotten, I also doubt he would finish the job himself. He probably ordered some Mook to try and drown the planet in armies and then promptly forgot about them. Knowing the Imakandi, a forever guerrilla war, like the one they would probably wage given their apex hunter lifestyle, might just be their version of Valhalla.

• "Jack and the Haunted House" featured a Demonic Spirit, but nobody knew where it came from. But there likely is a place it came from... who's to say Aku was the only monster that was born from the Black Mass?, And keep in mind, the Black Mass spawned Aku in Japan, where the haunted house episode also takes place.
  • What's worse is that since Jack finally managed to defeat Aku in the end and change the events of history, everything he's done the future now will never happen, including the events of "Jack and the Haunted House". Which could mean the Demonic Spirit is STILL ALIVE in the new timeline.
    • That depends. If the Demonic Spirit existed way back in Jack's time period, then the Samurai could just find that Haunted House and destroy that Demon again. Or perhaps the Demon's entire existence was another result of Aku ruling the world, so there would hopefully be no reason to worry at all.
    • Hopefully....

• In "The Birth of Evil", there was piece of Black Mass that landed on Earth. It consumed any living creature that got too close. That black thing later became sapient and was named Aku. That means that Aku was doing immoral deeds before he was even conscious.

• "The Aku Infection" episode was scary enough, in which Aku (who somehow got the flu) accidentally coughs up a small piece of himself that Jack accidentally swallows, causing Jack to slowly turn into a clone of Aku. Fortunately Jack cures himself in the end, but it makes one wonder: is Aku even aware that he has this terrifying power?
  • Fortunately, it seems that Aku is completely unaware that he can even do this. And it may have just been a one-time event caused by a mutation of whatever virus he had at the time.
  • The horror of this episode becomes Harsher in Hindsight after it was revealed that Ashi and her sisters were conceived when their mother impregnated herself with Aku's bodily fluid. When Aku meets Ashi for the first time, he forces her to go through a similar transformation.

• You don't really think Aku kept Lulu (sweet thing) around after her usefulness as a bargaining chip had ended, do you? It makes one hope that Lulu may have somehow escaped Aku's clutches alive.
  • Thankfully, that doesn't matter anymore. Aku is dead, X-49 never existed, and Lulu is safe if she still exists.

• Aku released the Minions of Set to kill Jack. What if they had succeeded? Just imagine these three invincible monsters roving across the world slaughtering everything in their path, and nothing can possibly stop them. If the world wasn't quite yet a completely terrible place with just Aku in it, it certainly would be with the Minions of Set roaming free.
  • When Jack does make it back to the past and destroys Aku, it will be a world where the Minions of Set still exist. Though of course, the world should be fine... just as long as nobody thinks to release those monsters like Aku did.

• In "Jack and the Baby", we discover that the ogres weren't living beings, but robots. The creepy part comes when you realize that instead of just being monsters whose natural impulses were to eat humans, they were robots programmed by Aku's scientists with the specific purpose of slaughtering and eating babies!
  • And who knows what other abominations they could've built in the meantime.

• According to the Season 5 trailer, Jack hasn't aged in 50 years since he came to the future. That does not bode well for the cast of the original series, and it's likely that Jack bore witness to a lot of funerals, including the Scotsman's.
  • Apparently, the Scotsman is still alive, though he's now wheelchair-bound◊.
    • However, many fans have already feared that the Scotsman probably won't survive the episode he returns in (S5 E5: "XCVI"). It doesn't help that this episode preview implies that he might lead a Redshirt Army in a futile attack on Aku's lair.
    • Confirmed... kind of. While Aku vaporized the Scotsman's body, Celtic magic (from his sword) brought him back as a ghost. Of course, Jack's gonna have a really awkward reunion when he sees him again.
    • On a related note, when the Scotsman does reappear in Season 5, we see that he had many children, but his wife is neither seen nor mentioned. It's very likely that she's dead, hopefully from natural causes.
  • Thankfully, that wasn't the case; many of the people he met in the first four seasons were still alive in time for the final battle, even though they grew old.

• Imagine if the High Priestess would be as powerful as Aku. If she has proved to be just as cruel and twisted as her god with her limited resources, imagine how frightening she could be with Aku's demonic powers...

• Both Scaramouche and the Dominator. No, seriously, they are Fridge Horror embodied with a heavy dose of Nothing Is Scarier. How long have they been committing atrocities for pure enjoyment? Remember that Aku gives free will to the malignant ones...
  • Not to mention the many hostile aliens who arrived on Earth.

• One important detail from the revival teasers and trailers; in every scene we see Jack in post-Time Skip, he doesn't have the sword. He's fighting with guns, knives, axes, polearms, a weaponized motorcycle, but the sword is nowhere to be seen, only featured in the montage of time passing by. If the sword is lost or, gods forbid, destroyed, then the situation is far more hopeless than previously believed.
  • It's been confirmed that Jack has lost his sword. The real Fridge Horror comes from the fact that Jack has to keep this secret, or else Aku will realize that he has the advantage now...
  • In the new opening sequence, Jack seems to have his sword and his old hairstyle. Even without any remaining time portals there are wishes, the faster-than-light thing mentioned in "Jack and the Astronauts", and other planets that may have their own portals. It would still be possible for him to achieve his goal, just far harder, which combined with how long he's been looking is plenty of reason to be depressed. But losing the sword? Without it even if he could go back, he wouldn't be able to stop Aku, and that's crushing.

• Another potential layer of horror to Aku's more comedic side that the fifth season brings to mind, is that he's probably making a few of his mistakes because he knows he can afford to make them. Resources and minions mean nothing to him compared to breaking Jack in some form, be it his body... or his spirit.

• Jack's inner demons tries to convince him to commit suicide, as that is the Japanese samurai way of restoring honor after committing an unforgivable sin. However, Jack refuses and insists he can still do something about the situation despite having no idea how. It could be his normal determination, but it could also be that Jack feels so horrible about failing that he thinks not even ritual suicide can absolve him of his sins, and that he could not face his parents in the afterlife even if he went through with it.

• That the Daughters of Aku had no choice in the way they were raised gives them an Alas, Poor Villain vibe, but it also means that even if Jack had known that somehow when he encounters them, it wouldn't have made a difference. Unless he could overcome the brainwashing they'd had their entire lives, Jack would never have any choice but to meet these young women with lethal force in order to save his own life.
  • He had other choices, as he could have kept running and hiding or accept death, but like his father said to the bandits when they made choices that lead them to attack him "as have mine", Jack has made his choice that he will kill his pursuers if they don't back down. Jack's battle against Aku led to this moment and he accepted that he'll have to kill humans if necessary to keep battling on.

• Remember the Viking warrior from "Jack and the Lava Monster"? The one who was turned immortal by Aku's magic, and after being set free, he immediately aged to death? This might be Jack's fate after he returns to the past and kills Aku! Which would not be a fun ending, really.
  • Apparently jossed, as when Jack does return to the past and kills Aku, he doesn't suffer from Rapid Aging. Which either means that Jack is mortal again but now aging at a normal pace, or his immortality curse never wore off in the first place.

• In spite of their newfound bond, Jack still doesn't know Ashi was born specifically to kill him in the first place, while Ashi doesn't know he intends to kill Aku in the past. They will have to realize eventually that this involves erasing Ashi from existence altogether, which wouldn't be much fun either.
  • Well, if it helps, it's implied that the cult has never personally interacted with Aku, so he's unlikely to be Ashi's father.
    • No, I think what they meant was that Ash's entire existence (as well as that of countless other people) are dependent on Aku's conquest of Earth in the distant past.
    • Though there's a possibility that travelling back to the past will simply create a new timeline/universe. Who knows, we have no actual idea how time travel in this show is going to work anyways.
    • Also worth noting that the show hasn't given any indication that Aku missed any of the time portals; killing Aku in the past may well be impossible at this point, and Jack seems to have accepted that.Now that he's regained the sword, he seems to have shifted focus to killing Aku in the present.
    • The Grand Finale sadly confirmed this. When Jack and Ashi time-travel back to the past and kill Aku, they eventually realize that this means that Ashi (and implicitly, countless other people from the Bad Future) would be erased from existence.

• The High Priestess gave birth to seven children one-by-one. OUCH. The true nature of their conception makes it all the more horrific.
  • Want the worst mental picture ever? The Scotsman and his wife (ugly-on-ugly) sired at least TWENTY-NINE. And all of those daughters are about the same age... the things the Scotsman's wife must've said during the mass birth(s) would probably make her initial debut look tame.

• Yay, the blue alien children weren't killed! ...Except their village is rubble, and only one adult is alive.
  • From the sound of the kids' voices, some of them may be teenagers. Not that it makes the situation that much better, mind you...

• You probably can chuck Aku's Therapist from "Episode XCIII" as Aku merely duplicating himself to cope with his malaise, but then you remember one of Aku's weaknesses is his limited color scheme. His therapist wears clothing that isn't apart of Aku's original color scheme. That means there are possibly more Akus running around out there. Oh, Jack, you have to get that sword now.
  • Aku probably just bought a nice suit for his therapist. And that guy may be the only Aku clone in existence. Fridge Horror averted.
  • Or, the Aku clone magically conjured a set of clothes. He once made it rain diamonds, so of course he can conjure up other material objects.

• If you thought Ashi and her sisters looked gorgeous in their spy catsuits, the revelation in "Episode XCVII" makes it completely horrifying: the suits are not clothing in any normal sense, but some sort of extremely hot substance into which their mother pushed them when they were barely out of diapers.
  • When Ashi decides to get rid of the darkness covering her body, she spends the whole night scrubbing it in a waterfall with a rock. Considering it covered her entire body, removing it from certain parts of her body had to hurt.
  • The true nature of their darksuits, as stated by by Phil LaMarr and Genndy Tartakovsky somehow makes this worse. They're made of a quasi-living magical darkness drawn from the Pit of Hate.

• Even though his appearance is a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment in "Episode XCVII", Demongo is alive and still out there searching for powerful warriors to steal their souls. The only thing that saved the bar patrons from being enslaved by him was that he thought they were all losers and decided to look elsewhere. Its a good thing he didn't found any interest in Ashi, or her search for Jack could have been cut short by A Fate Worse Than Death.
  • Worse still is the fact that the Scotsman died and became a ghost in the last episode. Imagine what would happen if Demongo found HIM.
  • With the frightening reveal in "Episode C" that the Guardian has likely died, just imagine if Demongo also got a hold of HIS soul and fought Jack. The Guardian alone is practically the equivalent of all the other warriors Demongo once enslaved.

• The leader and King of the Spartans from Episode XXV, "Jack and the Spartans", was later shown at the end of the episode to be old and on his deathbed telling the tale of Jack to his descendants. Back in the days of the original series, this implied Jack eventually claimed victory over Aku, and the Spartans lived in peace all this time. But now with the revelation his quest has gone on for 50 years, the truth is the king was waiting for Jack to defeat Aku to the end of his life, which never happened, kept the hope alive for the younger generations by telling Jack's tale, and he's probably up and died on him. As have many other of his old allies. This means at large, many people have not lived to see the day Aku falls. Except it turns out he was alive and still full of vigor during the finale, so is what we're seeing proof that some of the timeline from the future still exists, or did the Spartan King suddenly make a miraculous recovery or muster up the strength for one last fight (because maybe the King wasn't on his deathbed, but bedridden or it was a look-alike descendant or AAUUUUGGGHHH...)?
  • Likewise, some of Jack's allies from the past have aged slowly, being aliens, but others have aged dramatically, like humans. Olivia is still alive 50 years later, but much older and graying. But what of her father? Or mother (who never even appeared/may not have even be around anymore from the start)? And what of the archaeologist dogs who didn't return in the finale? Do their lifespans run long or short, (if being bipedal and able to talk makes them any more long-lived)?

• In "Episode XCVIII", we find out in a flashback that Jack lost his sword after being tricked into killing three adorable goats that assisted him in finding the time portal after they were turned into monsters by Aku. This retroactively marks the first time that Jack (unwillingly) killed an innocent in a fit of rage. These actions have haunted Jack so much that its no wonder when he witnesses the brainwashed alien children dying two episodes before, he may have suffered flashbacks from this event, and that pushed him through the Despair Event Horizon to follow the Omen and commit seppuku.
  • Adding on to that, Aku fled the scene after destroying the portal and turning the goats into monsters. Jack unwittingly killing them in his frustration is what led to him becoming "unbalanced" and losing his sword. If Aku had stuck around for just a couple minutes longer...

• Ashi is one of several identical sisters and took on a radically different appearance in what was presumably a couple of days in-universe. However, her mother is able to recognize her easily and seemed to know what she's been up to, leading to two possibilities. First, that the High Priestess had tracking chips implanted in her daughters (a technology that already exists today) or she's been following Ashi since who knows when.

• Also from "Episode XCVIII", the High Priestess refers to Aku as "our Lord Father". This confirms that she is a Daughter as well as mother. Although it may just be metaphorical, if it really is true that Aku is the biological father of her septuplets, it creates one hell of a vomit-inducing thought if Aku were indeed father of both her and their children. Which would mean that all of her children are byproducts of incest, Ashi included.
  • Seven! Seven incest babies! ϟϟϟϟ AH-AH-AH-AH!!! ϟϟϟϟ
    • I think you're reading too much into this statement. Christians also refer to their God as both Lord and Father. This doesn't mean that Aku has been engaging in literal sexual affairs that spawned several women.
    • Also, considering the end of "Episode XCIX", imagine how Jack would feel if it was true that Ashi was literally the offspring of his mortal enemy and the greatest evil of all time.
    • "Episode C" confirmed that the Daughters of Aku are, in fact, literally Aku's daughters. However, the High Priestess is not Aku's offspring herself.

• Considering Ashi's mother also had the black charring on her skin, and combat skills rivaling Ashi's, it's very possible she was raised just like her daughters were. This begs the question: how long has her cult been around?
  • Even if the High Priestess has been killed, there are possibly other cults out there dedicated to Aku that are just as toxic, cruel, hateful, sociopathic, sadistic, nihilistic, self-destructive, and downright batshit insane. Now that Jack has his sword back, he needs to kill Aku without further delay before these cults become malignant, and the tragic circumstances that led to the demise of Ashi's sisters begin anew.
  • The High Priestess's ability to hold her own against Ashi and very nearly killing her as well implies that Ashi and the Daughters of Aku were never necessary to kill Jack, since the Priestess alone is stronger than her daughter. This means that all that suffering, all of the cultists that died, were because the High Priestess was just that batshit insane and nothing more. None of it was practical or necessary in the slightest if the Priestess was able to become so strong without the Training from Hell.
  • It's also quite possible that until then, the High Priestess didn't know how powerful she was as a result of consuming Aku's essence. Her assault on Jack and Ashi was a desperation measure, one she doubted she'd survive.
  • Judging by the size of that idol, assuming it was hand-carved by the cult's membership, the cult must have been around for at least two generations prior to birth of Ashi and her sisters.
  • What if the High Priestess was raised exactly the same way by her own mother, and her grandmother, and so forth? It's possible that many of the cultists were related to each other by blood. The High Priestess could've ordered the deaths of her own sisters, cousins, aunts, nieces, etc. but cared nothing for her own family. She may not have been born an evil sociopath, but was just made into one.

• Ashi's fearful apology to Jack in S5 E8 after leading them to a dead end. She honestly believes that Jack should be angry with her for making such a mistake, and it shows that for all the strides she's made, she still has lingering issues from her horrific childhood.

• The villain of S5 E8 is designated as Lazarus-92. However, a glance of the armory walls in the ship reveals a stylish design of the number 92. 92 is not the name given to the prisoner alone, just a way of indicating this Lazarus is a prisoner unique to the 92nd prison ship. It more than likely means there are at least 91 other prison vessels out there, and this monstrosity comprises a whole species of Lazarus. How many of these things even are there?!

• The Reveal that Ashi and her sisters are Aku's literal daughters, along with the demonic form that Ashi was forced to turn into is terrifying on its own, but imagine if Aku were to somehow resurrect her sisters and turn them into... those demons. Jack would have a ton to deal with.
  • And there's no way out for Ashi. Even if Jack manages to get his sword back and kill Aku once and for all, the fact that Aku's essence basically forms half of her genetic code means she has to die as well for Aku to truly be defeated, or else there will always be the lingering threat of Aku coming back through Ashi or her (possible) descendants.
    • Actually, there might be a way out. She does not have to die. As long as there's the goodness in her heart that Jack helped her find, it might be enough to conquer the demon once and for all. Also, when Aku dies, who's to say the evil essence within Ashi may become neutralized, or that Ashi may gain control over it?

• The High Priestess didn't seem to be morally corrupted by Aku's essence, unlike Jack in "The Aku Infection". While not explained, the main difference between her and Jack, was that Jack was morally pure and good, while she was already a monster. This implies that the High Priestess was so morally bankrupt as it was, Aku's essence couldn't make her any worse like it tried to do to Jack. Let that sink in for a moment.
  • How can one be absolutely sure that Aku's essence didn't do something to the Priestess? There's still a strong possibility that she got mutated, as she demonstrates being able to keep up with Ashi (already shown to be superhumanly fast and strong) during their fight.
    • Not to mention that we never see her face... what if Ashi's nightmare of seeing her mom with a monster face had some truth to it?
  • Fridge Brilliance: if the High Priestess was already a terrible person, how could Aku's essence make her worse? By making more of her. Note that not only does she only have daughters, all her daughters look and sound alike.

• How Aku found and seemingly killed the Guardian, and destroyed the time portal he was guarding, can be traced back to how Aku was monitoring Jack's movements near constantly in the beginning. Who's to say that Jack didn't inadvertently lead Aku to a time portal he was unaware of when he faced the Guardian, given that the Guardian outright admits he's been guarding the portal for "countless eons".
  • Also, if Aku has destroyed every single time portal that existed on Earth, including the Guardian's, then there's a possibility that he went after the time portal from "The Aku Infection". After an Aku-possessed Jack destroyed the portal, the Lizard Monks claimed that it might eventually regenerate if they rebuilt the nexus that got ruined. If it did, then Aku would've returned to finish the job, while slaughtering the poor little monks who guarded it.

• The fact that Scaramouche survived even as just a head, meant that Jack was in for an ambush regardless of whether or not he got his sword back. Once Scaramouche informed Aku, he would still lead him to Jack, and it would play out in one of two ways: if Jack doesn't have his sword, then Aku can immediately kill him right there; or if (as what actually happened) Jack does have his sword, then Aku will discover Ashi, and turn her into a demon to surprise Jack and take him off guard, and he could have her kill him if he so chose. In the end, there really was no way for Jack to get out of this, at the moment that news of the loss of his sword got out to someone.

• Because Aku played the original opening, all the people who came in the final battle knew what Jack's mission was. Time travel is a well understood enough concept that 'defeat Aku' would mean 'this timeline never existed'. Everyone who came to help Jack went in knowing that even if they won and didn't get killed by Aku, they would die. Aku's future is so bad that everyone was willing to go on a suicide mission.
  • Kind of related to the above horror, it took the existential erasure of all of his friends and allies, including Ashi, for both the world to be free of Aku and for Jack to return to his home. Meaning that, especially given his state right after Ashi's passing, Jack could have potentially felt responsible for all of their deaths despite the ultimate outcome! If this was the case, given his past reactions to whenever he was directly/indirectly responsible for flesh-and-blood deaths, it's not too hard to imagine Jack at the very least permanently depressed, had that ladybug not found him and restore his hope for the future.
    • Jack also could have been reminded of the possibility of everyone now living a more peaceful existence as opposed to the one tainted by Aku, or at the very least no matter what the sacrifice was worth it.
    • Give how time travel works in Samurai Jack It's hinted that Ashi will either be reincarnated or just born normally without Aku having influenced her family. The gods of this world work in Mysterious Ways, so presumably, everyone who was born under the rule of Aku could simply exist in one form or another. Giving the heavy Buddhist themes and the idea of reincarnation, then no one's essence was erased, just... reused for possibly completely different people but having the same souls essentially. Also, any people whose lives weren't influenced by Aku wouldn't be affected. Say it took 40 years for Aku's influence to be felt in America, then the people born within those 40 years existed in both timelines. If another planet wouldn't be at all be influenced by Aku (or any of the ripples Aku's presence caused in the timeline for that matter) for 2000 years, then that planet would proceed in exactly the same way as it did in the Bad Future for those 2000 years. So not everyone was erased.

• As tragic as it was for Jack to watch his own bride getting existentially deleted on their own wedding day, Ashi may have (potentially) been a bullet that was dodged. Even The Power of Love does little to change the fact that she was still the Daughter of Aku, the offspring of the guy behind all of Jack's (and the whole world's) misery. If Jack decided to impregnate her, she would've conceived and birthed the Grandchild(ren) of Aku! Granted, the two would be Good Parents and try to raise their kids right, but if they (or any further descendants) inherited both their demon ancestor's abilities and personality, that would be asking for history to repeat itself.
  • Though of course, even if they did end up good, remember that Jack is now The Ageless. Yeah.
    • We don't know if Jack is still ageless; it's more likely that when Jack returned to his past and killed Aku, he turned mortal again. Hell, if he and Ashi did get married and have children, it's possible that they themselves would've inherited some measure of immortality from Aku.
    • As of Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time, this possibility is now squarely on the table as there is now a canon timeline that Ashi survives the retcon and lives happily as Jack's wife. Fingers crossed that either being Good Parents pays off or she lost both her powers and the ability to pass on those powers.

• Even though Aku has been destroyed and the Bad Future averted, there are potentially many horrors still alive in the new timeline such as the Minions of Set, the Haunted House spirit (though it's unknown how much its existence was tied to Aku in the first place), and Lazarus-92, as well as the countless hostile alien civilizations that were attracted to Earth by Aku's presence, that might still be laying around the universe. Just because Aku no longer exists doesn't mean that they don't either. Hopefully nobody is foolish enough to summon the Minions, or if Lazarus' prison ship never crashes on Earth.

• After all the crazy, horrific, and traumatic events that he's seen and experienced, it's more likely than not that Jack is probably going to suffer from some level of anxiety, depression, and PTSD for the rest of his life. Just because he finally returned home and killed his hated nemesis, that doesn't mean he can just instantly or permanently recover from all his emotional traumas, especially after seeing his first true love getting cruelly snatched away from him.
  • Though of course, this doesn't mean that Jack will always be miserable all the time, as his hope for a better future implies that his depression will gradually improve over time.

• When Aku gave his essence to the Cult of Aku, what if, hypothetically, he stayed to raise his daughters along with the High Priestess? What would he do to the children and to her? Sure, the HP is a horrible parent, but she is nothing compared to a demon who literally can't feel remorse or compassion. Would Aku drown the daughters for showing compassion for each other? Have one of their training methods be to somehow dodge his eye beams? Have them temporarily go to the Pit of Hate for showing what he sees as weakness? Or maybe torture Ashi for her constantly being distracted? Possibly maybe force the High Priestess to have more children in case Aku hits one of the daughters a little too hard?
  • If Aku did raise his daughters, he could have gotten the idea to unlock all of their demonic powers at a much earlier age. Jack's battle with the Daughters was already very harrowing, but he would be even less likely to survive if he was being hunted down by seven mini-Akus, and back when he was missing his magic sword no less!

• Remember "Aku's Fairy Tales", when Aku tried to indoctrinate children into believing that he's the hero, but failed? Well, after destroying the last time portal, Jack was reduced to a wandering madman that he no longer register's on the world's radar. With Jack no longer being able to have a noticeable positive effect on the next generation of children, this would mean Aku used the same story-telling tactic on this new generation of children, and one of those children grew up to become the High Priestess after believing Aku's stories of Jack being the villain.

• Observe how many members were in the Cult of Aku worshipping him. Bear in mind, it has long been established that Aku is so despised that there's no way that many people, let alone women would willingly serve and worship him...unless the few who supported Aku kidnapped a lot of female babies to raise them as future cult members, and then they continued the practice well into the time Season 5 takes place. Additionally, would it be a stretch to say the High Priestess killed the previous cult leader and took her place?
• Do we have any reason to believe that Jack will start aging again now that he's back in his own time? Aku himself clearly had absolutely no idea that it would happen, so there's nothing suggesting that he or by extension, Ashi would be able to do anything about it. Jack might have returned home only to watch his loved ones waste away and die right in front of him.
• Given the manner in which Aku threatens or forces cooperation in the many people he sends after Jack, especially alluded to in the Bounty Hunters episode, it's horrifying to think how many civilizations and deaths were indirectly caused by Jack being basically unbeatable. Perhaps even worse to think that Jack could almost certainly never know this.

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