WMG / Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Jester is a demon who shares Arkham's body

In a few spots throughout the Temen-ni-gru, we see images, carvings, and reliefs of Jester, which should be impossible if he is Arkham and has only been in the tower as long as the other characters. Also, even for a demonically powered human, both Arkham and Jester pull some impressive demonic feats, and have incredible knowledge of the tower, at least to me more than one book could possibly give him, and even refers to himself as "We" in the sacrificial chamber. My theory: Jester possessed Arkham's body, granting him power and knowledge of the tower, which he himself inhabited long before the games proper.

The events of Devil May Cry 3 are a somewhat-skewed retelling of the Legend of Marion Marshall, from the Last Remnant. (Beware, possible spoilers)

The legend goes that long ago, a woman named Marion Marshall had the power to bind the Remnant Ark above Elysion (and others) and travel to the Sacred Lands. She also had an affair with the Imperator, among other things.

DMC 3 might just be some random retelling of what happened, with Lady— known in this legend as Mary Marshall— binding the Temen-Ni-Gru (the Remnant Ark, or should I say, Remnant Arkham) to serve as a medium between the regular town and the Demon World (the Sacred Lands). With her blood (Marion's Blessing), she bound the tower to be able to travel to and from the Demon World/Sacred Lands, and possibly seal some evil in a can. Over time the legend changed, and Mary was known as Mary Ann (Mary being her real name, Ann taken from Kalina Ann) and eventually Marion Marshall.

Vergil is the "Imperator" Mary had an affair with, or he with her over the Queen of Glenys, who is actually Alice from the manga. With Mary's power to bind Remnants pretty much in his possession, he changes his title from Imperator to God Emperor and starts razing a few towns. After finding out about said affair, and losing the kingdom to the God Emperor, Alice's hatred for him is so great that it spans ages, maybe hinting at who "The Ladies of Bloody Alice" really are. ....What? Don't look at me that way!

The events of Devil May Cry 3 are horribly exaggerated, and at worst, are made up entirely, by none other than Lady.

Doesn't anyone find it weird that while she is the one narrating this story— Prologue all the way through to the Epilogue, presumably— we are playing as Dante? Lady is not omniscient, and she was trekking through the tower on a near-entirely different path, only meeting with Dante for (at most) twenty minutes in a story that technically spans two or three days starting from sundown when the tower is raised, followed by nightfall all the way through mission 13, the next day at around mission 15, nighttime again by mission 17, and day again by the end of the game.

The only solution here, is that the entirety of Dante's story, what we're playing through, is something she made up to justify where exactly he was while she was grapple-hooking and biking her way everywhere in the most non-linear fashion available. It also explains the weird gaps in her location. There was no real way she could have gotten to the bottom of the tower at Mission 9 from her spot in Mission 7 which was with her Kalina Ann lodged into the side of the tower after somehow surviving a fall that should have killed her from the sudden stop (see: Gwen Stacy). She was too far down to climb up to where Dante was standing, and obviously too high up to finish her fall down. It is very likely she was sidetracked the old fashioned way and, while narrating the story to some hapless listener, made that part up.

Let's look at the rest of this story, shall we? Clowns? Hollywood-esque movie-magic action scenes? Her having survived all of these weird occurrences in the choppiest, weirdest, and as stated before, non-linear fashion possible? Clearly, we're dealing with a girl so upset over the loss of her mother that she's retelling an event six shades of silly as a form of escapism or to make herself feel better. At best, the tower isn't even as big, spacious, or weird as it seems in the game.

Alternately, Dante could have just told her his side of the story, which explains why she can narrate it to you, but then he falls into Unreliable Narrator status too. Really, kicking ass with a motorcycle? Demon swords that can talk? Being able to stop or slow down time, but somehow not having that ability ten years later (read: in DMC 1)? Clearly, we're dealing with a guy so upset over the loss of his mother (and brother) that he has to make himself look the regular Hollywood Badass Longcoat to make himself feel better.

• Or instead of being traumatized and trying to make up unbelievable stories to feel better, they're just regular boasting show-offs. Dante'd definatly be the type to make up the most incredible story for laughs, at least. If Lady did, I could imagine it be to reel in customers for better business if not just for showing off.

Nevan is actually a singer/dancer/performer.

It explains why you fight her in an opera house, why her moveset involves spinning around, and why exactly she turned into an electric guitar. The fact that her conversation with Dante sounds similar to what one would hear at a brothel just happens to completely overshadow any other talent she could possibly have, leading people to the wrong assumption that she just naturally propositions people for sex.

To be more exact, Nevan is a Dearg-Due / Dearg-Dul.

A Dearg-Dul is like a succubus, but not. Instead, it's an Irish female vampire said to seduce men and lead them into underwater chambers where she drains their life force (their blood as opposed to sexual energy), sometimes in exchange for creativity. That is to say, her victims are inspired to write songs and works of literature that no one will read anyway since they're imprisoned and killed soon after. This explains why Nevan is in an opera house to begin with, why the opera house is located behind a waterfall, her red hair, her Irish name, why she turns into a guitar, and why she still attempts to suck Dante's neck, rather than his— ... you know.

• This...makes PERFECT sense!
• As an added note, vampires of her kind are said to surface on either the anniversary of their death, or on the full moon. What do we see in Mission 8? The full moon needed for her to appear in the Opera House. Also, they tend to be attracted to poets and musicians. Dante is named after a poet. What does he do as soon as he attains Nevan as a guitar? Rock the fuck out. Out of nowhere, almost as if he were compelled to do it. She can work her magic very well.

Lady is a Slayer

Or a potential who has unlocked most of her power through her unique background. I'm not sure whether the DMC timeline has ever been matched to actual dates, so this would depend on whether DMC 3 is before or after the activating of the Potentials in Buffy.

The (boss) demons Dante defeats try to possess him after the fight.

They want to take control of him, because someone who was able to defeat them in a fight has GOT to be really powerful. The reason they don't end up succeeding is because, well, Dante is stronger than them, meaning he can contain and control them, instead of the other way around, and manifest them into weapons (or abilities). Even Agni & Rudra and Nevan were attempting this; they only pretended they were going to help him to get a chance at possessing him or taking control of his body. This is also why Nero didn't get any new weapons when he defeated bosses - he's weaker than Dante, so he wouldn't have been able to contain the demon's soul and would have just been possessed.

Lady isn't human.

She fights despite, and then outright ignores, a pretty serious injury. She has Arkham's inhuman eyes, and he was an actual devil at that point. She may just be a descendant of the priestess, but who says the priestess was human? Devil May Cry 2 established that there are half-bloods running around that are descendants of allies of Sparda, and that there are indeed devils worshipped as gods with part-blood priestesses. Not to mention that this priestess was supposed to be powerful enough that Sparda couldn't have done it without her, and there's no precedent for magic that's human instead of demonic in the series. So either the priestess was just that special, or Lady's a partblood.

• If we assume Arkham was already studying to become a demon when he met Lady's mother, Lady is obviously a part-blood. Her demonic heritage can't be as strong as Dante's or Vergil's, but it's still enough to explain her extraordinary speed, reflexes, aiming skills and recovery. The assumption makes sense, since I can't really see Arkham marrying, then aspiring to be a demon, then finding out that his wife is the descendent from the woman Sparda sacrificed. Plus I like the irony behind Lady forsaking and spitting on anything demonic, while her father's heritage might be the only reason she actually stood a chance against the dangers of Temen-ni-gru.
  • Material Archive: Note of Naught, the DMC 3 artbook proves that Arkham, not Kalina Ann, is the one of Lady's parents descended from the priestess. She got her part-priestess blood through him, and he turned into a demon later on by sacrificing his perfectly normal wife.

The Temen-ni-gru is the DMC3 version of the Tower of Babel.

According to the biblical story (possibly influenced by Etemenanki, "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth"), back when humans spoke one language and came to the land of Shinar (or just Mesopotamia if you want to be general about it), they resolved to build a city with a tower to connect Heaven and Earth, either as a monument to their God or just because, I forget which. God came down to see what they did and decided he couldn't let that happen, so he confused them all by separating them and their languages and making them unable to understand/interact with each other.

According to this story, humans wanted to build a tower connecting the Demon World (Arkham called it "Heaven" in the manga at one point) and Earth as a monument to Mundus/Evil. Sparda went over, decided he couldn't let that happen, and got to kicking some ass. He sealed the (Japanese) Seven Sins, stuck the (Greek) Cerberus in mission 3, the (Hindu) deities Agni and Rudra in mission 5, the (Irish) vampire Nevan in mission 8, the (Hebrew?) Leviathan . . . somewhere, the (Old English) Beowulf in Mission 11, the (also Greek) Geryon in mission 12, and so on and so forth. Point is, he split each boss demon into their own area so they wouldn't be able to interact with each other, scattered the humans, and stopped them from building the axis mundi by sealing the tower into the ground rather than just leaving the thing in ruins.

It's likely that in the DMC continuity, the story of the Tower of Babel was based on the actual event of Temen-ni-Gru being built and sealed, given how much alike◊ they both look.

In DMC 3 the haywire neo generator has another special ability.

It has the ability to suck the life force out of a defeated opponent. Explaining why every enemy drops green orbs everytime you kill them ONLY while you have the broken haywire generator.

DMC3 is coming to the Nintendo Switch in December 2019

The gap between DMC1 and DMC2's release dates is around three months, which could point to DMC3 being released on the eShop sometime in December. As for when it could be announced, the Game Awards are also in December, so DMC3 could end up being announced there... along with Dante being announced as the last Fighter's Pass character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

• Confirmed, but for February 2020. The Switch port adds the ability to switch styles and weapons freely (like in later games) and a local co-op Bloody Palace where both players can work together as Dante and Vergil.

If DMC3 is going to have an RE Engine remake in the future, Capcom might probably hire Owen Hamze (the face model of V from Devil May Cry 5) again as the face model of Dante and Vergil

Just a wishful thinking/theory on the possibility of this game being remade in the RE Engine, but it probably makes sense as a Continuity Nod if a younger Dante and Vergil looks identical to V from DMC5 considering the fact that V looks like a young adult/teenager(?), yet is the personification of Vergil's human half, and Dante and Vergil are still Always Identical Twins in DMC3.