Yusaku locates Ai's whereabouts and confronts him in the real world, by his lonesome. Ai reveals his motives for attacking humanity, and he and Yusaku engage in their first and last battle.
This episode contains the following tropes:
- Book Ends: Ryoken set sail to an unspecified location in the finale of the first season after losing to Yusaku a second time. He does the same thing once again this episode after losing to Soulburner.
- But Now I Must Go: Ryoken hands over an unknown card to Yusaku before setting sail once more to an unspecified location.
- Fighting Your Friend: Playmaker and Ai, formerly allies, fight each other in one last duel to determine the future of the world.
- Final Battle: Yusaku engages in his first and final battle against Ai, with the future of the world on the line.
- First-Name Basis: For the first time in the entire series, Yusaku addresses Ryoken by his given name and not "Revolver", signifying Ryoken being rid of his burden.
- Full-Name Basis: Meanwhile, Ryoken refers to Yusaku by his full name instead of "Playmaker", making his goodbye more dramatic and signifying that he sees Yusaku as more than just Playmaker.
- Go and Sin No More: As a price for losing the duel, Soulburner demands that Revolver continue to monitor LINK VRAINS while permanently bearing the burden of the pain induced by the Lost Incident, rather than let him turn himself in for his actions as a Knight of Hanoi.
- Going Home Again: Takeru reveals that he intends to return home and once again lead a normal life after the situation with Ai wraps up in its entirety.
- Irrevocable Order: Ai has set up his plan in such a way that even he can't willingly stop it. The only way to stop his Self-Duplication and return the consciousness data he stole is to defeat him in a duel, which would destroy him, and Ai has no intention of losing on purpose.
- Mythology Gag: Ryoken throwing an unknown card to Yusaku before his battle with Ai echoes the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, where Kaiba did the same to Yugi right before the latter's duel with Dark Marik.
- The Reveal:
- It turns out that Ai was behind Playmaker and Kusanagi meeting. Not only that, but he was also the one who led Playmaker to find his Cyberse deck.
- Ai's plan is to use SOLtiS androids to mass-produce copies of himself with physical bodies. Though the copies will be like him initially, he intends for them to gain their own unique experiences as they live in the world, becoming their own people. Even he can't predict how things will turn out.
- Self-Duplication: Ai mass produces copies of himself to cope with his loneliness after the rest of the Ignis were taken down with Bohman.
- Was It All a Lie?: The sentiment is there when Playmaker accuses Ai of manipulating him and Kusanagi in order to get them to defeat the Knights of Hanoi. Ai admits that he was using them, but also insists that Playmaker is the only friend he has left.
- The Watcher: Turns out Ai knew who Yusaku and Shoichi were from the beginning, and subtly influenced them since running away from Hanoi five years before the series started. He led Yusaku to seek revenge in addition to influencing them to go to Den City, team up, and find the Cyberse Deck.
