Episode 43 - Sacrifice

This episode has been a long time coming. Ever since she was first mentioned in 'The Episode With No Name', Daemon was set up as a foe that was supposedly a much greater threat than Megabyte. A threat that didn't just threaten Mainframe, but the rest of the Net as well. The previous three episodes have backed up how much of a threat she is as she has managed to infect the majority of systems on the net and has even managed to infect some of our heroes. Now Daemon is heading to Mainframe herself to infect it and use Bob to access the systems she hasn't been able to infect yet. Will Mainframe prevail, or will the entire net bow before Daemon?

The episode begins with Daemon, accompanied by Matrix, AndrAIa, Mouse, and Mike the TV, heading towards Mainframe with the Guardian Armada in tow. In the Principle Office, Dot suggests changing the access code to prevent Daemon from accessing Mainframe, but Specky says that it's not possible to do so due to how tough it is to crack Mouse's encryptions.

Outside, Enzo is playing catch with Welman while the gateway gets constructed. Enzo doesn't seem to be off put by his dad being a null monster, and tells Phong that he finds it cool. After Enzo runs off to play with Frisket, we see several ABC's place a second Firewall over the first, something to slow down Mouse's hacking and delay Daemon's entrance to Mainframe. Welman tells Phong how proud he is of Dot and Enzo, commenting that Enzo has 'grown so much'. Phong braces Welman and says that he needs to tell him something about Enzo.

Elsewhere, Bob is looking at the Firewall, and is then joined by Hexadecimal who offers to help. Bob says that she can't help due to her not having her powers any more since becoming a Sprite. Hex then kisses Bob who tries to tell Hex that he's not interested but can't quite find the words. He mentions Dot, but Hex says that Dot only wants to be friends with him. As she tries to kiss him again, the first Firewall is disabled - Daemon is due to arrive.

Bob and Hex join Dot, Enzo, Phong, and Welman at the Principle Office. Hexadecimal instantly starts playing with Enzo and Frisket, but Dot doesn't approve. Hex then says that she simply adores children, but could never eat a whole one (although this turns out to be a joke). Then the system announces an Incoming Game. Dot asks Enzo to go into the game and stay there, switching his icon to Game Sprite mode and not coming back until he's as big as Matrix. She asks Hack, Slash, and Frisket to accompany him. Bob isn't too happy with this idea, and tries to talk Enzo out of it by pointing out that he's not Matrix and doesn't have to do this. However, Enzo is happy to do this, but doesn't seem as happy to part with his family.

Dot tells Bob that she wants him to hide in the Net so that Daemon can't get to him, which he's also reluctant to do. Welman tells Dot that the Gateway is ready, and Bob realises what Dot is planning to do - she's planning to use the gateway to fragment Daemon's code across the net and destroy her. With Daemon gone, the systems under her control might begin to recover. As Bob doesn't seem keen on leaving, she asks Bob to act as bait.

Once the Firewall goes down, Dot orders the troops to blow the Guardian Armada out of the sky, but Daemon enters the system unaccompanied. As she arrives, she is delighted to see Bob, but when she's sees that Hexadecimal is now a Sprite, she reacts with utter disgust and calls her a 'disgrace to her kind'. She floats down to the ground just as Welman prepares to activate the portal, but when she touches the ground, everyone gets infected and Welman is reduced to a pile of nulls. Daemon brings down a zoom room which reunites the Mainframers with Matrix, AndrAIa, Mouse, and Mike. Hexadecimal begs for Daemon's forgiveness, but she tosses her aside with her powers, sending her into a wall.

Elsewhere, the Game ends and we see that, rather than doing what Dot instructed, Enzo decided to win the game. Hack and Slash act surprised at this, but Enzo explains that he wasn't prepared to part with his family. Then Hack and Slash notice the pulsating green energy throughout the system. Enzo asks Hack for binoculars so he can see what's going on. He views the top of the Principle Office, and can see that Daemon is using Bob to create portals, which is severely weakening him. Enzo then realises that Bob was right, he's not Matrix. He then changes his outfit to a Guardian outfit, and declares that his function is 'To Mend and Defend', and that Hack, Slash, and Frisket are going to help him.

Slash attempts to stop Daemon, but ends up being sliced to pieces by Mouse. Enzo, Hack, and Frisket confront Matrix and AndrAIa, who hope to take Enzo to Daemon. Enzo orders Frisket to bite Matrix, which causes him to get angry to the extent that he threatens to hurt Frisket. Enzo uses this anger to his advantage - reminding Matrix of his hatred of viruses and Megabyte. This allows Matrix to somewhat come to his senses and he changes his icon from Game Sprite mode to his usual Guardian icon, which cures him of the infection and allows him to cure others. They find Hexadecimal outside the Principle Office, and Matrix reluctantly cures her, which allows Welman Matrix to reappear in his null form.

In the War Room, Matrix, AndrAIa, and Hexadecimal observe Bob creating portals. This horrifies Hexadecimal, who decides to go to the core to get the firepower needed to take on Daemon. Eventually, Bob has opened portals to all systems that Daemon couldn't access before, allowing her to infect them. This causes Bob to collapse on the ground, now almost completely transparent. Dot runs over to embrace him, and Dot admits to Daemon that she loves him. Daemon reassures Dot that 'The Word' will bring peace to the net, and that nothing can stop that now. Then, Hexadecimal, now a virus once again, but now with golden accents on her suit, bursts out of the building and screams 'GET AWAY FROM MY SPRITE!'.

Hexadecimal and Daemon then engage in a deadly battle that causes several of Mainframe's buildings to be reduced to rubble and debris. During the fight, Matrix uses his icon to cure Bob, Dot, Mouse, and Phong. The battle comes to an end when the final sand grain drops into Daemon's hour glass, causing her to explode in a green light that spreads across the entire net. All those infected begin counting down in binary, much like Daecon did last week. Bob says that once the countdown reaches zero, the entire net will be destroyed.

Hexadecimal picks up the weakened Bob and tries to dance with him. Bob tells her that they don't have time for this since everything is set to be deleted. Hex wants to find a way to fix this, which Welman tells her the only way to spread the cure is through a benign virus, but it's a one way trip. Hex isn't bothered by this since it means Bob will survive. She grabs the cure from Matrix's icon, and then changes Enzo's icon to a red and black colour, which she says means he won't end up like Matrix. Before she sets off, she tells Bob that she has always loved him, and asks Dot to take care of him before asking Welman to activate the portal.

The portal scatters Hex all throughout the net, causing all those who were infected to return to normal. However, Bob is still weakened from opening the portals. Dot tells Bob that she loves him and asks him to marry her. The two prepare to kiss, but at that moment, a Web Portal arrives, and out comes Ray Tracer and... another Bob wearing his traditional Guardian outfit. As he steps out of the portal, he says 'Marry him? I don't think so!' We then cut to the credits where we get a rendition of the ReBoot theme with Hexadecimal doing the narration.

For the most part, this is a very satisfying conclusion to the Daemon arc brought up in Season 3. The conclusion feels a little bit rushed, but asides from that, this is a great episode which presents the show with it's highest stakes yet (and arguably the highest stakes that it ever reached). When watched as a whole, this arc feels like a genuine ReBoot movie (which is fitting as that's what the initial intention was).

Daemon this time around gets a little more depth. Up until now, she's been presented as a character who genuinely believes what they are doing is right and noble, and that their function is for the 'greater good'. She treats everyone with compassion and never appears to get angry, even when the Mainframers are resisting her infection. However, this changes once she sees that Hexadecimal is no longer a virus and has now become a Sprite. For the first time, we see her treat someone with utter disgust, describing Hexadecimal as an 'abomination' and a 'disgrace to her kind'. Even when Hex gets infected and she asks Daemon to forgive her, Daemon refuses to grant her such forgiveness and tosses her aside. But when Hex becomes a virus again, Daemon does offer a truce, since them being viruses means they should be friends. From this, we can take this to mean that Daemon believes that a virus should always stay a virus as it's true to their nature, and anything else is unnatural.

Hex herself completes her arc through sacrificing herself out of her love for Bob. She had no second thoughts about her self sacrifice since while it meant she would die, Bob would survive, and that was more important to her. She also makes a choice to become viral again by getting power from the core. This was something that, again, she did to save Bob. While it turned her back towards insanity, she's still not the same as she was since she's developed since then. It also puts Bob's views on viruses being converted to Sprites into perspective somewhat. Yes, she became a sprite, but as this episode shows, that wasn't a permanent change. Plus while she might have changed in appearance and lost her powers upon becoming a sprite, her personality didn't change too much. And like I said last week, her becoming 'good' was her choice rather than one made for her, which it would have been if it came down to converting Daemon or even Megabyte into a sprite...

The fight with Daemon and Hexadecimal is truly spectacular, being of the same calibre as the fights we're now used to seeing on the big screen in Marvel movies. This isn't too much of a stretch, since this sequence was storyboarded using panels from superhero comics.

Young Enzo's decision to emulate Matrix may have seemed like a simple comedic sub plot when it was first introduced a couple of episodes back, but this episode makes that plot point an integral part of the plot since Enzo decides to become his own person and realises that he's not Matrix, This decision is what drives him to help Bob and the others and free them from Daemon's infection.

One thing I love about this arc is how it gives Bob and Dot more focus after they were absent for a lot of the previous season. Bob has to grapple with the fact that using the powers he gained from merging with Glitch will cause him to fragment, but he can't bring himself to stay out of the conflict since his function is to help. This is an arc that carries over into the next arc, so I'll talk more about that in the next few weeks.

As the systems Command.Com, Dot finds herself responsible for planning the attacks on Daemon, but as well as this, she has to contend with her father's sudden return. Seeing the destruction of the Twin City at the start of the arc was a great move since it not only allowed us to see what happened, but presenting it as a dream of Dot's shows that she still has PTSD relating to the incident. Her plan to defeat Daemon ultimately fails, but she's facing an unknown threat, leading her to make some tactical errors. However, her sending Enzo into the game was a smart move since it meant that Enzo wouldn't get infected when Daemon arrived. Whether or not she knew that Enzo wouldn't actually stay in the game is unknown, but with the situation as desperate as it was, she was left with limited options to deal with Daemon.

As a whole, this arc is somewhat on par with Season 3 and has some of the best moments in the series. Two of the series biggest plotlines are resolved, but as we end, we get given a big new plot point - a second Bob. Where did he come from? Is he a copy of Bob? What if the Bob that Matrix found in the Web was the copy?

Next week: Dot struggles to decide which of the two Bobs to marry in 'My Two Bobs'