Japanese Title: Clash of the Ultimates! WarGreymon VS MetalGarurumon
Jou tries to get Yamato to calm down, telling them that they're all friends and have a duty to save the world, but Yamato retorts that they don't know who chose them as Chosen Children and therefore that they cannot be sure they are destined to do anything. Taichi tells Jou to stop trying, since this is Yamato's way of throwing a tantrum when things don't go the way he likes.
Despite their attempts to get away, MetalGarurumon keeps them from leaving and Agumon is forced to super-evolve to WarGreymon and fight him. Taichi goes up to Yamato and starts a physical fight with him, telling him to snap out of it. The others try to get him to stop, but Taichi punctuates every punch with the name of a Digimon who had died for them, telling them that they wouldn't have wanted them to fight a stupid fight like this. Yamato loses it, confused and frustrated, continuing the fight anyway, while the other Digimon find themselves unable to intervene.
Mimi breaks down, wondering when the fighting will stop. Hikari finds herself talking to a mysterious glittering force in the air. After hearing something from the mysterious entity, she closes her eyes and holds up her Crest, and the entire area is enveloped in light...
All of the Chosen come to and find themselves all together with their Digimon, with Hikari saying that light and darkness must always be in balance. They are shown a vision of the battle between Greymon and Parrotmon four years ago, and Koushirou and Tailmon realize that Hikari isn't the one talking, but an entity who is possessing her.
The entity (named in the novelization and the Digimon Xros Wars manga as Homeostasis) reveals itself as a Digimon-like entity that cannot take a physical form, and is using Hikari as Hikari was the only one who could communicate with it. Homeostasis takes the Chosen through the vision, showing each child present at the event four years prior enveloped in a light that is scanning their data.
Homeostasis provides a much needed Info Dump on the purpose of the Chosen Children. It takes them to an event in the past taking place at Vamdemon's castle, where the gate to other worlds was. It shows them a bunch of people there, who had created the Crests and Digivices from the data scanned at the event four years ago.
The Chosen Children had been chosen because they had the special qualities who could cause Digimon to evolve; the Digivices and Crests were only a channeler for that. The children who were not Taichi and Hikari, but were present at the event, were also determined to have similar qualities, even if they had not made Greymon evolve. Homeostasis then goes on to tell them that the Crests were chosen out of the qualities they found most significant out of each child; however, losing or misusing those qualities could end up disastrously.
The children notice the DigiEggs next to the Crests in the vision of the past, and they realize that these are the DigiEggs who will hatch into their partner Digimon. Homeostasis goes on to narrate how the Dark Masters found out about their plan and sent an army to stop them, and how a much younger Gennai had attempted to intervene. Piemon had inserted a mysterious black ball into him (what that was or what it did remains unexplained by the series), causing Gennai pain, but he escaped with the DigiEggs and Crests. While escaping, he'd also dropped Tailmon's egg and Hikari's Digivice, explaining why Tailmon grew up alone and separated from the others. The eggs were kept safely until they hatched on File Island, and the Digimon waited for the partners they were destined to have until they fell into the Digital World that day.
Homeostasis tells them that they don't know what the Dark Masters will do, and all they can do is take repair measures until they're defeated. Taichi asks it what they should do next, and Homeostasis replies that while it doesn’t know, it has faith the children will find the answer.
With that, Homeostasis leaves Hikari's body, and Taichi tells Yamato that, now that they know why they’re the Chosen Children, they can fight together again, but Yamato apologizes to them, confesses his own weaknesses in believing he had to fight Taichi, and says that there isn't a wrong or right way of doing things, but Taichi and Yamato do things differently. He declares that he has to find himself by leaving the group, and that someone like him doesn't know what friendship really is. Sora encourages him to find himself and tells the others to let him go off, and the rest leave...
...except Mimi, who's had enough of fighting and decides not to go on. Jou decides to stay with her to look out for her safety and hopefully convince her to return. The Digimon express dismay that the group is separating again, but Tailmon assures them that, even if they take different routes, they’ll eventually end up in the same place.
Tropes
- Adapted Out: The fight between WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon does not occur in the novelization, although the backstory is mentioned.
- A House Divided: Cherrymon's plan from the previous episode comes to fruition here — in addition of Matt and MetalGarurumon and Tai and WarGreymon going for each other's throats, the stress from watching them fight starts to put the other kids and Digimon at odds with one another as well. Without Homeostasis's intervention, this fight might have broken the Digidestined apart entirely.
- Flashback with the Other Darrin: In the English dub, when the flashback sequence features Tai and Koromon’s first meeting from the first episode, Koromon is voiced by Brianne Siddall, who voiced him from episode 17 onwards. In the original episode, he was voiced by MJ Lallo.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: When Matt proves unwilling to be talked down, Tai decides to fight him directly to snap him back to his senses.
- Leaving You to Find Myself: After having had his faith in himself and his values shaken and eroded by Cherrymon and having been manipulated into fighting his friends, Matt leaves the group to strike out on his own, hoping to be able to grow as a person and overcome his faults if given time to work things out by himself.
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: The Digidestined split apart for the second time in this episode: Matt leaves alongside Gabumon to find himself, having had his faith in himself shaken by how easily he was manipulated into fighting his friends, while Mimi stays behind to avoid having to face more death and suffering and Palmon, Joe and Gabumon stay with her to look after her safety.
- Mind Screwdriver: Homeostasis is unnamed in the actual episode proper and, prior to the release of the Xros Wars manga, the only way to know this name or Homeostasis's role as a guardian of the Digital World was to read the novels.
Neither the novel nor the manga has ever been released outside of Japan, making this episode very confusing for those who don't have access to this information. - What Happened to the Mouse?: We never find out what that black object Piedmon inserted into Gennai did.
Fandom has speculated that it's what led to Gennai becoming the old man you see him as in the series proper. The novels state that it was a seed of darkness necessary to evil Digimon, and postulates that it disabled his movement.
