Uploaded Dec 3, 2022
Summary
In a flashback, King had a little son whom he loved dearly. One day, the two went to a fair where the son stumbled across a Minecraft simulator. Eager to try it out, the son enters the game and all seems well, until an alarm is sounded; the game is starting to corrupt. The workers and King try to bail him out of the simulation to no avail, and can only watch as the simulation falls apart, taking the son with it. Grief turns to anger as King takes it out on the workers. Time passes and King develops a way to get his revenge; he researches all about Minecraft and its workings to formulate a plan to destroy it, making a staff to help him in his goals. However, the staff cannot fully utilize its power, and requires something better to function properly.One day, King stumbles upon Second Coming and his friends playing Minecraft. Watching the screen, he notices the five friends have the final component he was searching for and tries to ask around for people who know them. A young Purple grabs one of his "Wanted" posters and meets him. Taking the young stick figure in, King trains him in its functions and survival mechanics. Days pass and King and Purple enter the Nether with King's staff in hand. Venturing into a Nether fortress, they are cornered by some Piglins, but King subdues them by using his staff to spawn in some gold ingots. With that, King becomes king of the fortress.
In the present, Second Coming, his friends, and their many allies gang up on King, who has created a black hole on the Nether's ceiling with his staff and the two Master Blocks. The others try and fail the destroy the destructive singularity when Herobrine arrives to reclaim his missing students, chastising the Skeleton for ditching the class. Skeleton reveals he and his friends were fighting King, prompting Herobrine to engage the foe with his powers, combat prowess, and many Steve clones. However, King proves to be too powerful for the being, forcing him to possess Red to save himself. Nevertheless, King manages to defeat the possessed Red and suck in Herobrine.
King unleashes the full power of the two Master Blocks to strengthen the black hole, destroying the surrounding Nether portals and the worlds outside each portal. He manages to throw everyone to the curb until Purple tries to stand up to his destructive beams. Seeing Purple begin to suffer from its effects, King sees the similarities between his son and Purple dying in similar ways and, not wanting him to suffer like this, rushes to the stick figure to save him.
Meanwhile, Second Coming and his friends try to stop the staff to no avail until Second Coming remembers that, when Purple took the Master Block through the Nether Portal, anything done with it was undone. With the knowledge in hand, the Stick Gang race to their own Nether Portal to Alan's computer.
In a vision, King enters a house where he sees a drawing of Minecraft's icon destroying his son. He sees a drawing of himself beating up the block, harming its inhabitants and begs his drawn self to stop when he suddenly breaks the wall, revealing a lonely Purple. Finally seeing the grieving Purple as his surrogate son, he embraces the stick figure who hugs him back.
Back in reality, Second Coming, with assistance from his friends and some Piglins, manages to pull out the two Master Blocks from Alan's Nether Portal, reversing the destruction caused and splitting the two Blocks. As everyone reunites with their friends, a remorseful King fixes a Command Block to his staff, brings back the Titan Ravager's family and hands his weapon to yellow and returns his crown to Purple, who in turn gives it to Red's pig. With the battle over, everyone goes their separate ways with Purple leaving with King, the Warden joining Herobrine and Second Coming and Red placing back Alan and alexcrafter28's Blocks back where they came from.
Some time later, Blue holds a feast for his friends, serving Nether Warts among the dishes, the Warden excels at Herobrine's school, the Titan Ravagers and Villagers drive away a witch and King and Purple bond at the playground where King once played with his son.
Tropes
- Antagonist Title: Courtesy of King, who is an Anti-Villain Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
- Bookends:
- The very first episode of the season began with Blue preparing a feast for himself. The very end of this episode shows him preparing a feast for him and his friends. Both scenes even feature him throwing a disc in the jukebox playing the same song, "Chirp".
- As the Stick Gang makes a mad dash for the portal back to Alan's PC, they go through the different Nether biomes in reverse order from when they first travelled through them earlier in the season.
- Also for the Minecraft series as a whole (or at least the first 3 seasons): The very first Minecraft episode has The Second Coming take the Minecraft icon out of the taskbar and The King ends with him putting it back.
- Once again, the Stick Gang are racing to remove the Minecraft Game Icon from the world in order to undo its effects. Though unlike when the gang was fighting possessed!Red to get the icon into the recycle bin, the gang's race to get King's staff through the portal has much higher stakes.
- Brick Joke: Blue finally gets his Nether Wart, after the one entire season of portal hopping shenanigans. The Piglin Chief also hands him some Warped Fungus, still erroneously thinking Blue likes it after his Discreet Dining Disposal in the first episode.
- Call-Back:
- When King's son checking out the booth for the Minecraft Emulator, he makes the same excited hand gesture that the Fighting Stick Figures and Purple did way back in The Witch, before they entered the portal to the parkour course.
- Herobrine possesses Red again, but this time while on the heroes' side.
- Dartboard of Hate: After King's breakdown following the loss of his child, the next scene shows him furiously throwing knives at a flyer for the Minecraft exhibit, followed by a chair, then him furiously punching the flyer himself, before it inspires his Start of Darkness.
- Defiant to the End: When King has Skellington in his clutches, he just keeps firing arrows at King until he's completely absorbed into the Dual-Block.
- Everybody Lives: In the end everyone is alive including King, who had a Heel Realization, Red's pig, who respawned once the Master Blocks were send back to Alan's computer, and the other two Titan Ravagers, whom King resurrected.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Inverted. When everyone sans Green is still suspicious of Purple after things return to normal, Red's pig sniffs Purple and then jumps happily, giving them the all clear.
- Evil vs. Evil: Herobrine, the Big Bad of the original Animation Vs. Minecraft video, fights off King, the Big Bad of AVM Shorts Season 3, for a good while during the episode. He later possesses Red again in order to save himself.
- Failsafe Failure: You would think something with the potential to crash as horribly as the Minecraft Emulator did would have some sort of emergency kill switch, or at least some way to open the doors to get the hapless player out.
- Found Family: King comes to accept Purple as a surrogate son; Purple in turn sees King as the father figure he didn't have.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When King opens up a book of Minecraft mysteries
, some of the pages that appear for a brief moment are direct references to the many adventures and encounters the main cast have experienced, with the book containing a picture of a sky block platform and text containing information about "jumbo ravagers". - Fusion Dance: Once Herobrine starts losing the battle against King, he fuses with Red to take him on similar to how Possessed Red took on his friends in the original vs. Minecraft.
- Heel–Face Turn: King has one as he realizes he's come to care for Purple as a son and can't stand to see him die the same way his actual son did.
- Helpless Window Death: As the glitching and collapsing Minecraft emulator pulls his son in, the most King can do is helplessly bang on the sealed doors.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Purple is shown struggling to figure out how to use the Dual-Block staff to undo the damage before King manages to get it back. The Stick Gang later have the same problem, forcing them to race through the collapsing Nether to get back to the portal with it.
- It Won't Turn Off:
- Once things start going wrong with the emulator, the stick figures running it try to flip the lever back to off only for it to jam. Further attempts end up breaking it.
- Similarly, the Stick Gang can't figure out how to stop the Dual-Blocks from destroying Minecraft. Fortunately, the Second Coming remembers that bringing a Master Block through a Nether Portal while active undoes whatever it was responsible for, so everyone goes back to the portal leading to home to undo the damage.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- It's not said outright, but the body language of the stick figures running the emulator after it crashes horribly, taking King's son with it, definitely imply this.
- As King is racing after Purple, who had been blasted into the void by the staff, King thinks back to all the times he treated Purple like a pawn, clearly regretting it now that he's realized how much he actually cares about Purple.
- He has a bigger one once he sees a vision animated on a wall depicting him mercilessly attacking the "monster Minecraft block" for killing his son and ignoring the fact that he's actually harming several innocent creatures who live in the game in the process. The vision of King even resorts to smacking the Minecraft block with his son's body, symbolizing King losing sight of his original goal of avenging his son and only focusing on Minecraft's destruction.
- Mythology Gag: During the scene where King is watching himself beat up the Minecraft block as it starts spitting out all the creatures he harmed in the process, the Ghast gets knocked into Yellow's arms, likely a nod to the Actual Short "A Ghast Friend"
- Near-Villain Victory: King has all but won having managed to absorb every mob inside the staff with the only one opposing him being the Stick Gang and Purple. If it wasn't for his Heel Realization upon seeing Purple's sacrifice, he would have kept the destruction up until nothing is left.
- Non-Giving-Up School Guy: Herobrine comes through the portal to retrieve his wayward students, though he at least has the sense to cast that aside for the moment once Skellington explains the bigger problem.
- No Ontological Inertia: The moment Second Coming brings the Dual-Block into Alan's PC, the entirety of the Minecraft world rebuilds itself to the state it was before King started destroying everything, even reviving all the characters it consumed. It even rebuilds the Stick Gang's structures outside of the Minecraft world on Alan's desktop! The merging of the Dual-Block is even undone, as it violently splits into Alan and alexcrafter28's Minecraft icons soon after.
- No-Sell: Downplayed. The Sticks are shown to be resistant to King's Minecraft-destroying beam due to not being Minecraft entities, but it's shown that prolonged exposure can gradually vaporize them.
The Sticks are still computer programs themselves, after all. - Oh, Crap!: A subtle one from Herobrine when he takes a step back and realizes that King has figured out how to assimilate Minecraft entities into his staff. Afterwards, Herobrine notably stops engaging King directly, only sending his Steve clones after him, keeping his distance, and entering Red's body as a last-ditch effort to protect himself.
- Ominous Visual Glitch:
- As the Minecraft emulator in the flashback began breaking down, King's son's body slowly began to bug out before getting sucked into the vortex.
- While the stick figures are resistant to the Minecraft icons' dark energy due to not being native to Minecraft, it's strong enough to cause them to temporarily glitch if they're blasted at for long enough. Purple in particular exposes himself to the beam for so long that he loses his grip and starts evaporating as he floats backwards.
- Read the Fine Print: Downplayed. While the waiver that King signs to allow his son to enter the Minecraft emulator has no fine print or ridiculous clauses, the general gist of it should have raised alarm bells had King taken the time to read it (which he clearly didn't, unless stick figures have an insanely fast reading speed).
- The Reveal: It turns out King wants to destroy Minecraft due to the game being responsible for the death of his child when a play session went horribly wrong.
- Revenge Before Reason: This episode centers around this theme and King eventually overcoming it: A Minecraft exhibition took his son's life, so King vows to destroy Minecraft in its entirety in revenge, regardless of how many innocent lives have to suffer and fall from it. King eventually realizes this, specifically in his vision after being consumed by the Dual-Block's beam.
- Sad Battle Music: The music playing during Purple's final charge towards King is called Purple's Last Stand.
- Season Finale: This episode concludes Season 3.
- Self-Destructive Charge: Purple forces his way through the staff's beam towards King despite increasingly glitching out in clear agony. He fails to make it to King, but seeing Purple in that state reminds King too much of what happened to his son, forcing him to drop the staff and vainly run to save Purple.
- Shout-Out: Purple handing down his crown to Red's pig is a tribute to Technoblade.
- Spoiler Cover: The thumbnail shows Herobrine on the Stick Gang's side, revealing that he'll be joining the fight at some point.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The ending credits show how the characters are doing:
- The Warden has joined Herobrine's class as its newest student and is destroying the Sneaking Lesson both literally and figuratively.
- The Titan Ravagers and villagers have made peace together and are attacking the Witch.
- King and Purple peacefully sit at the park where King and his child used to play.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: King lost his son when a Minecraft emulator crashed with his son in it; his subsequent actions have been out of a misguided desire for vengance against Minecraft as a whole.
- World-Wrecking Wave: Zig-zagged. The World-Wrecking effect that destroys Minecraft starts out as an overhead vortex that starts pulling objects upward (if it absorbs a Nether Portal, anything near the paired portal also gets sucked in). It transitions into a proper wave of light that gradually sweeps through the Nether, which is joined by other waves coming from other directions that eventually meet at Alan's portal.
- World-Healing Wave: Zig-zagged. The World-Healing effect that restores Minecraft retracts the waves of light that previously wiped out the Nether, causing the blocks to reappear. Some start out still in disarray, but gradually recoalesce into their old structures. A large stream of light emnates from Alan's portal, restoring large structures and previously absorbed Nether Portals. It also restores and sends through streams of mobs/items that were on the other side of those portals. Mobs and sticks that were in the Nether are launched out directly on the ground (without damaging them). When the Minecraft Game Icons finally split, the beam dissipates and spits King, his staff, and Purple out of the Nether portal.
- Zerg Rush: Herobrine uses an army of Steve Clones to take on King. It works pretty well until King figures out how to absorb the clones into the Dual-Block.
