YMMV / The Ultimate Enemy

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • Don't let your school's horror stories about the Achievement Test of Destiny get to you. Study and do your best, but don't let it stress you out or drive you to do desperate things. It's not worth losing your sanity over.
  • Unpleasant and even painful emotions like stress (over a test) or grief (over lost loved ones) are hard to deal with, but they're part of what makes you human and it's important to learn to cope with them rather than try to take some easy way out (like cheating on a test, or trying to cut yourself off from your emotions), as it can rob your humanity or ruin your life. (Though that one might have been intentional.)
  • Don't disrespect retail workers. The plot kicks off with Mr. Lancer using the Nasty Burger to scare kids into buying into the Achievement Test of Destiny, and the Nasty Burger manager (a former Casper High student who failed the C.A.T., but became a Self-Made Man) as an Anti-Role Model. When the manager tries to protest that his job is important too because he keeps the Nasty Sauce cold to prevent it from exploding, he becomes demoralized when he realizes no one cares. This is partly what spurs Danny into wanting to cheat in the first place because the scare tactic worked a little too well. Later, when the Nasty Burger restaurant is trashed, none of the employees want to stick around to ensure the Nasty Sauce doesn't get too hot because they're not paid enough to care. Finally, after Mr. Lancer catches Danny cheating on the test, his insistence on informing Danny's parents right outside the Nasty Burger as a Visual Metaphor for Danny's future is what gets them all caught in the blast zone in the Bad Future. One could easily argue that if Mr. Lancer (and society at large) respected fast food workers and the work they do a little more, it wouldn't have created the Disaster Dominoes that led to the Bad Future.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Did Future Vlad willingly help Danny get back to the present, or did he intend to go through with his intention of destroying Danny to change the future, only to end up removing the time medallion instead?
  • Similarly, what were Vlad's real intentions behind separating Danny from his ghost half? Obviously creating Dark Danny wasn't part of the plan, but did he want to eliminate Danny as a threat by removing his powers, or did he genuinely want to help Danny with his grief? When Danny first arrives at Vlad's doorstep, Vlad looks devious at first, but when Danny doesn't react and instead just looks solemnly at a picture of his old friends and family, Vlad's expression changes to one of concern. He also doesn't appear too thrilled about removing Danny's ghost half.
  • In regards to Dark Danny's origin, was Danny's Ghost Half corrupted by the evils of Vlad's? Or was it the other way around?
  • Why did the surviving future humans presumably vilify Mr. Lancer? On one hand, they might have figured out that Lancer was indirectly responsible for causing Dark Danny to be born. On the other, a more plausible reason is that they blame Lancer for causing the deaths of most of the Fenton family, who are the only ones capable in hunting ghosts, including Dark Danny. Given that they are using the Fenton's technology and Valerie and her father are taking residence at their former home, the latter reason is more likely.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In this version of events, Danny was originally destined to destroy most of the world. Come "Phantom Planet", he becomes the one who saves the world.
• Narm: When Danny demands Clockwork name one evil thing he's done, the first thing Clockwork shows him is Jazz getting upset when she realizes "Danny's a cheater!", while the second is Dark Danny taking out a city block. While this is supposed to show that the slippery slope of Danny's action leads him down a dark path, Jazz's overdramatic line delivery, the questionability of calling cheating on a test "evil", and the sheer contrast of severity in cheating vs mass destruction can come across as this.
• Tough Act to Follow: The Ultimate Enemy is unanimously seen as the best episode of the series. Of the remaining episodes in the show's run, only Reality Trip and D-Stabilized come remotely close in fan reception.