WMG / Samurai Jack - Cult of Aku

Index: Jack | Aku | Cult of Aku | Other Characters | Storyline | Crossovers

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Ashi

Ashi is Jack's daughter, made from extracted DNA from his blood/hair/etc.

One episode of Justice League revealed that Terry McGinnis was truly Bruce Wayne's biological son, made from a blood sample that Amanda Waller had collected.

• Similarly, the cult of Aku managed to get a hold of something that contains Jack's DNA (blood/hair/skin/etc.) after one of his battles. They used this sample to extract his DNA, which was then somehow used to make him the biological father to the Daughters of Aku.
  • Jossed. Ashi's paternal DNA comes from... Aku.

Ashi will make a Heel–Face Turn.

She and her sisters have been raised from birth to believe that they were Aku's chosen fighters to protect his world from the wickedness of Samurai Jack. However, they believe that Aku made the world beautiful, yet they have never seen him in person. Ashi will discover that everything she learned about Aku was wrong, and everything she and her sisters fought for was meaningless. If she is the only surviving sister at this point, all the better. Jack, who knows what it's like to lose everything, might provide some comfort and encouragement, causing her to fight with him to right everything she did as a servant of Aku.

• Confirmed.

Jack will spare Ashi, which will prompt a Heel–Face Turn.

There has to be a reason why the writers bothered to name only one of the assassins AND give her a personality beyond a mindless killer. Now that we show the mental toll a human death has on Jack, he'll be forced to cut down the remaining sisters until Ashi is left, but he won't go through with putting her down either. This might cause Ashi to question everything she's been taught and cease her pursuit of Jack.

• Jack ends up killing all of the Daughters except for Ashi. However she still wanted to kill him, so he sent her falling to her (seeming) death.
• Confirmed.

Jack will save Ashi's life

Ashi will find herself in serious danger, and Jack will save her life. She will be completely taken by surprise, but this will prompt a Heel–Face Turn regardless. The description for the upcoming Episode 4 heavily implies this.

• Confirmed.

Jack will recover his sword and has a rematch with Ashi with it, and he will realize that she is more than meets the eyes when the sword refuses to harm her.

If I remember correctly, one of the divine sword's purposes is to defend the innocent. When Jack fought the sisters, he did without his sword and use conventional weapons. However, if he recovers his sword in a future episode and fights with Ashi (who most likely survived her fall) again, he will realize that Ashi is not the cold-blooded killer by nature as she seems when the sword refuses to deliver the killing blow, because the sword realize that Ashi is ultimately just a victim of her mother's manipulations.

• Despite Ashi's tragic background, that does not equal innocence. Brainwashed or not, she has been trying to kill Jack with malicious intent. Jack's sword would not prevent its user from committing justified self-defense.
• Possible self-defense to the point of just disarming Ashi, then? As I said, it could just leaves her harmless and unable to harm Jack but not deliver the killing blow should Jack tries it. Though it's kinda convoluted now that I think about it. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
  • Jossed. When forced to fight Ashi, the sword could harm her due to her connection to Aku.

Before she meets Jack again, Ashi's Heel–Face Turn will happen once she explores the world a bit more.

While severely incapacitated from the fall she took in Episode 3, Ashi will be found and nursed back to health, either by everyone Jack's ever helped or their descendants. She'll be confused and frustrated by their hospitality, given she was raised to believe kindness is weakness. While she heals, Ashi's healers share how Jack has touched each of their lives, the stories they've heard about him. When Ashi argues that Aku is a good deity who created the world, her healers disagree and tell her the truth. Naturally, Ashi is broken when it finally sinks in how misguided she was.

• And if it's the Scotsman who tells her the truth, no doubt he'll be more brusque with her: "Where was your Aku, when he could've done ten times Samurai Jack's good deeds? When he could've fixed the problems of the world? Oh, that's right: CAUSING ten times the problems of this world!!"

Ashi will end up befriending Flora, the Scotsman's daughter.

Ashi stood out from the other Daughters of Aku, as does Flora from the rest of her family. It only makes sense that if the two meet, they'll form an Odd Friendship akin to the one Jack and the Scotsman have.

• Jossed.

The series will end with Ashi taking Jack's place.

The advance publicity says that this will be the end of Jack's story, but nothing about whether he finally defeats Aku or not. Maybe the reason Ashi is emerging as an individual is to set up the following ending: Jack dies (possibly through a Heroic Sacrifice), is somehow incapacitated, or Ascends to a Higher Plane of Existence, while Ashi (who has undergone the Heel–Face Turn mentioned in one of the above theories) replaces him as the one person who can stop Aku, possibly as a Sequel Hook to a follow-up series. Might involve a Passing the Torch scene and/or a literal Take Up My Sword moment.

• Or alternate timelines could come into effect; Jack returns to his past and stops Past!Aku, while Ashi takes up the fight against Future!Aku.
  • Ashi would need a weapon to kill Aku. That is, assuming that she even takes up the hypothetical task of fighting him.
• Jossed. She actually gets erased from existence due to Aku being her father, as Jack finally killed him off in the present time.

Ashi will be Jack's successor, but not because Jack died.

Rather she will become his apprentice, and after Jack destroys Future Aku, he'll entrust the world to her care when he returns to the past to kill Past Aku; allowing Jack to finally return home with peace of mind, that the future world he defended for so long will be in good hands.

• It makes sense. Just because Jack has killed the Bad Future's Evil Overlord, it doesn't mean that centuries/millennia worth of Aku's tyranny would be reversed overnight. Someone would still have to work hard to restore peace to the world.

Ashi will have a brief moment where she will mourn for her sisters.

All that time she has spent with Jack will have a positive effect on how she viewed her siblings.

• Ashi will most likely rant to her mother on how she raised them.
  • Confirmed, more or less.

Ashi isn't fully human.

It might explain why those electric shocks at high voltage didn't kill her.

• Or her coal coat protected her.
• More than likely, Ashi probably just has an insanely high tolerance for pain, as a result of her Training from Hell. As such, the shocks didn't do as much damage to her as they would a normal person.
• Seconded. The way she curbstomped a literal army in XCVII cemented this theory in my mind.
• When she confronts her mother, the High Priestess refers to Aku as "Our lord father". While that wouldn't be out of place among religious followers who believe their god created everything, it's the first time Aku was referred to by her in that manner. It also suggests that "The Daughters of Aku" might not refer to simply to Ashi and her sisters, but to the whole cult who are all descended in some way from Aku.
  • Confirmed; Ashi and her sisters really are the daughters of Aku, though the rest of the cult seem to be fully human.

Ashi will wield Jack's sword at one point.

Whether she'll be worthy to use it is anyone's guess.

• Probably not, at least for now, as she's much more driven by her unrestrained rage than Jack is. Ashi still seems a bit emotionally and spiritually unbalanced.

Ashi will die.

She's already completed her character arc by bringing back the ideal Jack we all know and love. She will probably be killed in the Final Battle, which will give Jack the willpower and fire he needs to finally slay Aku.

• Both Confirmed and Jossed. She actually gets erased from existence in the present time during Ashi and Jack's wedding because of her father Aku's extinction.

Jack and Ashi falling in love is a setup for a Bittersweet Ending at best.

If Jack stands victorious at the end of the series and manages to return to the past after all, the only way this can be a happy ending as of Episode 8's developments is if multiverse theory is in effect. Otherwise the moment Jack slays Aku in the past, Ashi and everything after the event of Aku's defeat will cease to exist. Jack will be stuck in a world that though saved will now be very alien from all his time in the future, and the one person he fell in love with will be gone.

• Confirmed. Although, Jack does stay in the past, which is well good and all.

Ashi will be pregnant in the last two episodes.

This is the "shocking discovery" Aku makes about Ashi in the "Episode C" description. This of course will raise the stakes and cause conflict for Jack. The series will end with Jack and Ashi raising their family (in the future or past). For added hilarity, they will also end up having septuplets.

• Jossed. The reveal is far more scary — Ashi's mom was impregnated by Aku.

Ashi will create a new time portal.

With the revelation that Ashi is literally a daughter of Aku and shares his powers, it's possible she could create a portal, and it would be a bookend to Aku sending him to the future in the first place.

• Confirmed. She creates a portal to allow her and Jack to go back to the past and finish Aku.

Ashi will fight off Aku's influence somehow in the final episode.

• Confirmed.

Ashi will become an Ascended Demon.

Aku is Made of Evil. What if Ashi, via either the Power of Love or Heroic Will Power or even Divine Intervention, she'll replace Aku's evil in her with good and become half Made of Good.

Ashi is biologically immortal.

As the Daughter of Aku, Ashi is technically a half-demon/demi-goddess. She's not fully immortal like her father, but she at least inherited his inability to age (or at least can continue to grow old without dying). With this ability, Ashi and Jack may be able to spend an eternity together after they defeat Aku.

• Sadly, jossed.

Ashi will be reincarnated as a ladybug.

Ashi is the only one erased from history

.There is a fair chance that all of the other characters that Jack has met, except for the ones directly created or begotten by Aku, still exist in the good timeline, but that they are born into different circumstances other than what they were born in within the future timeline ruled by Aku.

• Alternatively, she and her sisters are simply fathered by someone else in said Good Future — Odin, Ra, and Vishnu can probably ensure it happens.

Ashi is actually alive and sent back to the future.

• The Gods decided to send her back to her own timeline, so that she will become the new Samurai Jack in the Post-Aku future.

Aku is not Ashi's biological father.

The High Priestess was already pregnant when she drank Aku's essence. In The Mortal Instruments book series Valentine laced his wife's food with supernatural essence during both of her pregnancies, resulting in enhanced demonic and angelic traits in their children, so who's to say HP didn't try the same thing with her babies? Back to the aforementioned book series, Johnathon (Valentine's son) was purified of the demonic essence and died within a minute because without the essence that had been infused into his DNA, there 'wasn't enough of him' to survive. This opens up the possibility that Ashi and her sisters are alive in the new timeline since Aku was not necessary for their conception, and his essence was never infused with them.

Ashi Didn't die to a paradox erasure.

• Ashi just didn't want Jack to feel guilty because he killed her. The holy sword has proven in the past to be... finicky about sorting good from evil and Ashi while a good person is partially made of Aku. When Jack cut into the evil that was an inextricable part of her body it started to burn just like Aku does and unlike Aku who's had centuries of practice Ashi couldn't resist it. From that moment on she was doomed, and she knew it feeling the evil inside burning away but leaving nothing to replace it. In the end it took too much of her, she couldn't keep living missing so much of herself, so she lied to Jack so he wouldn't have to feel guilty. After all in the time she's known him he already tried to kill himself at least once.

"Ashi" is still out there in the past somewhere, and Jack will find her.

While (to my memory) never being mentioned, the series' strong roots in East Asian mythology and spirituality imply that Buddhist-style reincarnation may be a thing in-universe. And if reincarnation does exist, the soul that would eventually become Ashi is still somewhere in the past in a long lost previous life. Setting up one of the most backwards instances of Reincarnation Romance ever.

• While that is a possibility, there's no guarantee that the soul would be inhabiting the body of a woman or any human being. And Jack would have no way of knowing who this would be anyways.

Ashi and Her Sisters

The Daughters don't have individual names.

Or at least people names like 'Sue' or whatever. Either they're just gonna refer to each other as 'Sister' or they have numbers to call each other. Or they never refer to each other at all.

• Only one of them is named onscreen (Ashi), while some (though not all) of the other sisters are only named in the credits.

If the names of all the Daughters are revealed, they will also begin with A.

Given some families do things like that with their children when more than one is born. Makes sense when they are supposed to be the Daughters of Aku and the only name thus far being Ashi.

• The first character in Ashi's name apparently is the same character used for Aku, so the family name motif might be that. It might still start with A anyway.

All the Daughters have the character for Aku in their names.

The first character in Ashi's name is the same character used for Aku, so why not the other Daughters?

• Confirmed for three of them.

The Daughters of Aku are actually the daughters of Jack.

The mother was impregnated with them in one of two outcomes; either Jack had a one-night-stand with her and then had to leave to keep her safe from any minions of Aku who might be after him (unaware that she was an Aku cultist), or she outright took advantage of him.

• They likely took his blood and used science to make children from that.
• Jossed. Turns out they are really Aku's daughters.

The Daughters are literally Aku's biological children.

He got his nasty on with that She-Aku that's voiced by Grey DeLisle, or he just conducted some sort of juju to create magic-test tube babies that have his blood or whatever. That kind of thing.

• Confirmed. The High Priestess drank a cup full of Aku's liquefied essence, which conceived the Daughters.

They weren't kidding about Ashi and her sisters being "The Daughters of Aku"...

There has to be some reason why the High Priestess was pregnant with a bunch of kids with jet black hair, right?

• What? That is a very weak argument for your theory. Aku doesn't even have any hair. And besides, most people from Asia have black hair, there's nothing unusual about that. And if the "Daughters of Aku" were the literal offspring of a giant devil, they wouldn't look or act so human.
  • No no silly, I meant that their hair was the same shade as... most of Aku's body.
    • That's still quite a great leap-of-faith conclusion to jump into though.
• This troper doesn't think it's weird for Earth's supreme ruler to have consorts, at least for killing boredom. Having his way with women of any species, human or not, shouldn't be a problem for a shapeshifting sorcerer. A tree is only his default form. He's taken human forms before.
  • Aku has never shown any real interest in sexuality or mating with mortals. The closest was when he fooled Jack with his disguise as an attractive woman, and that was simply to troll him for his twisted sense of humor.
• Surprisingly, this has been confirmed. Although it should be noted that the Priestess got pregnant through indirect means, not by having sex with Aku.

The Daughters are just girls kidnapped when they were babies and trained to be assassins. That's it. No plot twists, just that they were indoctrinated to be Child Soldiers.

• Semi-Jossed. They were born and raised as assassins by their own mother.

Jack will Mercy Kill the Daughters.

After he realizes that they were never taught to know any better but he's unable to redeem/save them, he kills them (and they're okay with it), allowing them peace in death.

• Jack does kill off all the Daughters (except for Ashi apparently), though it was all self-defense in the heat of combat. The Daughters had no intention of giving up their quest to kill Jack.

Jack will kill the Daughters of Aku.

It won't be a Mercy Kill as in one of the above theories, but a Killing in Self-Defense. Jack is enough of a hero (even after taking a level in cynicism) that this necessary, unavoidable act will give him a Heroic BSoD and he'll Cry for the Devil. (Extra points if Jack tries to Take a Third Option, such as Break Them by Talking, but fails.) In a related theory, the Daughter Jack is forced to kill will be Ashi, who is being differentiated from her sisters to set her up as a Sacrificial Lion.

• Confirmed. Jack steals the sword-wielding Daughter's weapon and slashes her throat, and he is genuinely shocked that it was a flesh and blood human trying to kill him instead of a robot. She also stabs him in the gut during the scuffle, forcing Jack to collapse the temple and jump into a river to try and escape the others.

The differences between how Jack and the Daughters were raised will lead to Jack's victory over them.

Jack and the Daughters were both raised their entire lives to be the best warriors possible, but there's a crucial difference: Jack was raised as a person and the only hope of defeating Aku, the Daughters were only raised to beat Jack. This means their thinking will most likely be far less flexible than Jack's, as they are singleminded towards that one goal. Jack, in contrast, was raised both like any child, allowed to play, make friends, and learn. That contrast likely means Jack is a far more inventive and creative person, on top of actually giving him something to fight for. While the Daughters rival him in skill, Jack will win by being more creative, clever, and inventive than they are.

• Confirmed somewhat. The Daughters, having lived in the temple their whole lives, are so sheltered that they can't even identify common animals like deer. Lacking in any skills besides their training, as well having no real family/team loyalty to each other, Jack kills them all (except Ashi) in a ninja-style ambush.

At least one of the Daughters will pull a Heel–Face Turn and join Jack.

Once one of them realizes Jack has been trying to save the future, rather than destroy it, one of them will turn over and help him in his journey.

• One, and only one, seems to have empathy.
• This troper's money is on Ashi.
  • Confirmed.

The Daughters of Aku are all illiterate.

It's made obvious that they were taught combat training and religious indoctrination instead of a mainstream education. There will likely be a joke or moment where Ashi will be confused by a book or sign.

One of Ashi's sisters survived and will return for the Final Battle.

One of the girls was thrown from the tree branch, much as how Ashi fell, and therefore could conceivably have survived. She will return, along with her Mother, the High Priestess, and during the final battle, Ashi will try to cause her sister to undergo a Heel–Face Turn, while her mother will try to goad her sister into killing her and Jack. Ashi will deliver a Kirk Summation about how The World Is Just Awesome, and will either convince her sister to join their ranks, and turn on their mother, or she will be forced to kill her in much the same way Jack was.

• Jossed.

The dead Daughters of Aku will make another appearance.

They will be revived by Demongo as his minions.

• I hope so. With the exception of Ashi, they were all killed in the span of two episodes. It would be nice to see them for longer. Plus, what's the point of giving them names and distinguishing hairstyles from each other if their sole purpose was to be killed by Jack? They might as well have been clones of Ashi.
  • This better happen, however remote the chances are. It would be a great use of both Demongo and the Daughters for them to return like this. And of course, this would be a great way to milk more drama out of Ashi, what with being confronted by literal ghosts of her past.
• With the reveal that Aku is their father, the other Daughters could be revived and turned into demons like Ashi was.
• Jossed, they all remained dead up to the final episode.

The High Priestess

Jack will kill the High Priestess in the most brutal way possible.

Perhaps by this time, Aku would have betrayed her and she would be mindless in her attempts to kill Jack after the Daughters have failed, leading to her death.

• Jossed; Ashi does it.

Ashi will be the one to kill the High Priestess.

Since she is the one mostly focused on amongst the seven daughters and she and her sisters were abused their whole lives by their mother. Ashi doing the deed will either mark the beginning of a Heel–Face Turn or come towards the end of her arc. Additionally, her desire to kill the High Priestess will only come once all of her sisters have been killed.

• Confirmed, but it comes post-Heel–Face Turn.

The "Are you weak?!" scene with Ashi and the High Priestess will receive a callback near the end of the series.

Most likely during a confrontation between a post Heel–Face Turn Ashi and the High Priestess. This scene practically screams out for a callback.

• Either that, or Ashi will use it on Jack after a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech, using her Mother's words to reignite Jack's will to return to his time.
• Jossed.

The High Priestess is Jack's childhood sweetheart.

Extremely unlikely, but imagine what plot-twist that would be.

• The Priestess is that little girl from Jack's childhood flashback? That's quite a stretch. If the Priestess knows Jack personally, it's more likely that she's from the future, Jack got lonely, so he had a one night stand with this woman, who was secretly planning to breed his future assassins.
• Jossed.

The High Priestess will be unmasked.

Most likely before or after she dies.

• Jossed.

The High Priestess will be offered redemption, but will reject it.

• Jossed.

The High Priestess knows Jack is good and Aku is evil.

She kept the Daughters away from the outside world so they wouldn't learn the truth, hoping they would be fully focused on killing Jack and complete their mission before they could learn the truth. The way she quickly tried to change the subject when Ashi tried to ask her questions was suspicious.

The High Priestess' mask conceals a Nightmare Face, judging by how Ashi remembers her.

Alternatively, her face is rather ordinary, and even attractive.

• As of now we still haven't seen her face, though the silhouette implies that she looks a lot like her daughters.

If the High Priestess is unmasked, she will bear a resemblance to Ikra.

More or less just to be a cool throwback, and a meta-reminder of how obsessed she and her cult is with Aku.

Ashi will be the one to kill the High Priestess.

Whether it's part of the Final Battle, or the lead up to it. Either way, it would be so cathartic (both in-universe and out) if Ashi is the one to kill her mother, for all the suffering she was put through.

• Confirmed, though it was easy to see coming.

The High Priestess is an expert combatant.

Just look at how fast she moves during some of the Daughter's training scenes. Someone with that speed must be a competent fighter.

• Confirmed; Ashi defeated an army with ease, but her mother was a dangerous threat.

Aku and the High Priestess will meet at some point.

It would go kinda like this:

High Priestess: (Explains her cult, what her Daughters went through, and her undying love towards Aku)

Aku: ...You are a crazy woman. (awkward pause) ...I like it.

• Jossed. Aku and HP did meet long ago in the past, though they didn't have any conversation like that.

Aku and the High Priestess/Cult have already met once.

After all, the High Priestess mentions Aku gracing them with his presence "once again". However, it'll turn out that there's a reason for Aku not appearing before them. It'll be the same reason the cult never thought to simply visit his fortress to provide him tribute: the High Priestess and the Cult of Aku were actually way too creepy for the Shapeshifting Master of Darkness to handle, and he actually issued a restraining order on the annoying cultists to make sure he doesn't have to deal with them.

• Confirmed, sort-of. A flashback confirmed that they did meet about two decades ago, although Aku never met the cult again, not because he found them annoying, but simply because he didn't care enough to remember them.

The High Priestess' obsession with Aku... is an extreme sexual fetish.

She's always dreamed of marrying and fucking Aku for her entire life. The fact that she refers to her own daughters as if they were Aku's daughters would imply this. Going with with the above theory that Aku finds his cult to be too weird and creepy, he cut off all ties with the cult because he's asexual and never had any interest in sexuality (especially if it involves lowly, pathetic mortals that he considers beneath him).

• Jossed. Aku is the father of the Daughters, but he conceived them without actually having sex with the High Priestess (what really happened is something similar to... artificial insemination?).

The High Priestess was one of the few children who were convinced of Aku being the hero and Jack being the villain in "Aku's Fairy Tales".

A possible origin for The High Priestess.

When she was a child, her father and her went to pay tribute to Aku (possibly in exchange for food). However, Aku denied, so she spoke up against the demon and his cruelty. Due to speaking against the almighty Aku, he promptly sent her to the Pit of Hate where she was tortured and brainwashed until she learned to love Aku. A place equivalent to Hell, using propaganda and brainwashing to enslave her along with a nice extra side of possibly impregnating her when she grew older or allowing her to create an evil cult to have children in his name who will be given the world's harshest training until adulthood which the Spartans themselves would call cruel.

How the High Priestess conceived and birthed her daughters.

Through some sort of strange, mysterious dark sorcery (or mad science), the Priestess somehow got herself impregnated with seven cloned embryos of herself, and reproduced asexually. Which would mean that the "Daughters of Aku" are not only literally fatherless, but they're actually younger identical sisters of the High Priestess, rather than being her "true" daughters.

• Sort-of confirmed/jossed? The High Priestess did become pregnant through unconventional methods; she consumed a cup full of Aku's body fluids, which made her pregnant with the Daughters.

The High Priestess isn't dead.

Let's not forget, this is the same woman who gave birth to SEVEN children at the same time and was able to stand up moments afterwards like it was nothing. No way in HELL is one arrow going to be enough to get rid of her. She will likely return in the two-part finale, seeking vengeance on her treacherous daughter.

Or alternatively...

The High Priestess that Ashi fought in Episode XCVIII was a hallucination.

The High Priestess will later appear in the form of a ghost.

The High Priestess didn't actually drink Aku's fluid.

Naturally, showing the Priestess impregnating herself via artificial insemination would be asking for trouble from the censors. But beyond that, remember Aku is retelling an event he was present for followed by what he figured was the natural follow up. Being a primordial space demon, Aku may not have any idea how human reproduction actually works, and he just drew his own conclusion based on the fact women appear to carry babies in their stomachs.

The High Priestess was corrupted by Aku's essence.

We've all seen what happens when you swallow a piece of Aku. It's very likely that the High Priestess wasn't that bad of a person before drinking Aku's essence. After she had drunk from that chalice, she lost her humanity to Aku, making her every bit the monster he is.

The High Priestess is just as much of a Half-Human Hybrid as her daughters.

Going off the above theory, drinking Aku's fluid did turn the Priestess into a demonic being. Though unlike Jack, she wasn't exactly converted into a mini-clone of Aku, but retained (most of) her human appearance and personality, because she was already very evil to begin with. She became superhumanly fast and strong, and had she ever gotten the chance to encounter Aku again, then he could've turned her into a "full" demon like he did with Ashi.

The Cult in General

There are many more Aku cults scattered throughout his empire, with varying membership and practices.

• Some of them are all-female like the one shown, some are all-male, and others are mixed-gender. Some cults may even have non-human members (quite plausible because half the world's population consists of alien immigrants).
• Some cults are so isolated that they have no contact with Aku, while others have personally met Aku himself. Aku may have played a role in founding these cults in the past, given his narcissism, but he no longer cares about being worshiped.
• Who knows what they're up to? Some of them are also training their nuns or monks to become loyal soldiers for Aku. Others may well be committing atrocities such as ritual sacrifice of people and animals.

Aku screwing up inadvertently leads to his cult seeing him as a Broken Pedestal and/or the Daughters having a Heel Realization / Heel–Face Turn.

Wouldn't be Aku without him screwing up by being too hammy.

• In that case, the High Priestess will make a Heel–Face Turn, if not one that completely redeems her atrocious treatment of her daughters.
• Jossed.

The cult isn't actually led by Aku

They merely worship him and the High Priestess is simply insane, thinking that Aku is giving them direction. He doesn't even know that the Cult exists.

• This is rather heavily implied by the first episode. Aku has a telephone and people who actually work for him can call him as needed. The fact that the High Priestess doesn't even have his phone number indicates that she probably has nothing to do with the real Aku.
• Partially jossed. He knows about it, but does not lead it.

Aku knows about the Daughters, he's just never seen a reason to care.

As an alternative to the idea Aku knows nothing about the cult or the Daughters of Aku: As a living fraction of the ultimate evil, Aku has never been especially impressed by humanity. Jack is only a Worthy Opponent because of the sword; Aku is largely dismissive of his impressive abilities even without it, and has the rest of humankind under his control. Considering it looks pretty easy to get into Aku’s fortress to do him homage, the High Priestess probably came in raving about him and swore to supply him with a task force of ultra-loyal warriors in seventeen years’ time. Aku then probably rolled his eyes, said, "Sure. Whatever. Thanks." and sincerely hoped Jack would be long dead by then.

• If this is the case, Episode 3 would seem to have proven his doubts to be well founded.
• Oddly enough, Confirmed, but now he sees Ashi as a benefit.

The huge female Aku cultist will make another appearance.

Ashi will likely kill her, if she doesn't suffer a Heroic BSoD.

• Jossed, she was already killed along with the other elder cultists in the season premiere.

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