can you talk about ubercorn and glitch as a duo?? i personally LOVE their dynamic/lore!! :D
(ALSO RHUGEAHWA I LOVE THE INFORMATION YOU GIVE ABOUT GO JETTERS ITS SO COOLIO!1!1)
Anyway so ignore that really long hiatus Iām back for real this time. Had some āØstuff⨠to take care of. Longer post to apologise. Also just so you know sometimes names will not be capitalised. The names just donāt register as names for my phone so it autocorrects to a lowercase and I canāt type the names four times every time on this post. Anyway!
Ubercorn and Glitch have a dynamic which evolved throughout the shows run, and honestly it is interesting. All throughout my stupid fan projects/AUs I do with friends and whatnot I tend to forget these guys because theyāre not āmain charactersā but they have charm!
In S1 glitch is painted as a very one dimensional villain. I honestly donāt believe thereās a lore reason for this, but season one was meant purely as entertainment for younger children, keeping to a formula of ābad guy needs to be badā and didnāt want to try and venture into the territory that a villain could be misunderstood. For the sake of this essay (and a lot of others) I do not consider every part of season one as canon and use discretion to find the reasonable parts. Having said that, Iāll get onto their actual dynamic in chronological order.
As children, presumably the same age as the main cast of four now, ubercorn and glitch attended the academy as children. I unfortunately cannot tell you what they studied, as even when I rebalance old photos to try and figure out what colours the uniforms are, they donāt seem to add up to any of the modern ones. Which makes sense! They likely went to school back in the 1970s and I can imagine the academy uniform would have changed in 50 years.
There doesnāt seem to be any other characters with Ubercorns uniform so it may have been unique to him, maybe a course specialising to him seeing as he is a non human entity? Glitchs uniform looked to be mostly aligned with the uniform Kyan wears but itās debatable if he was in those classes as he also has proficiency in other skills. (It is possible to study more than one subject at the academy/specialise in it, Lars is referred to as also studying botany in some official splash). In the very final episode Birthday Surprise glitch is shown to still be extremely flexible and athletic, above average in skill. Which means he may have actually been in that athletics course at some point in his GJA career. The uniform may have also been the one for the smarts based course Foz was on but the colours donāt seem as accurate to that.
In their academy days they appeared to be very close friends for most of it. Although it seems that they had a āteamā (scrapbook in birthday surprise) it doesnāt look as though they were as close to them as the main team is to each other. Most of ubercorn and glitchs time was spent in a duo together. They frequently went on āmissionsā that went wrong, such as things crashing or breaking, (Svalbard seed vault confirms this) but theyād always figure something out together in the end. They used to refer to themselves as the ādream teamā which is honestly really sweet.
At some point though, things fell apart. There is a common (theory? I think itās canon? Saying? Idk man) that glitch was expelled, but I cannot find the canon source for this. It is canonical that he was ānot a good studentā but I donāt believe this to be fully true and will do an essay on this later should anyone want it. Either way things ended sour between these two. As of season two they were on tense terms. Glitch seemed to enjoy being better than ubercorn or frustrating him, and the dynamic did not seem healthy. It appears that instead of just falling distant there was likely some form of argument or event that caused a sudden falling out and bitter end to the dream team dynamic.
The show (excl S1 for reasons stated above)
Glitch adopts a āme firstā dynamic for a lot of season two, but the show is a little more generous in giving him an actual personality and sides to him. You start to see why he is the way he is, and he even helps out in some episodes, proving heās not all bad. The show moves away from the traditional āvillain bad hero goodā cliche a little in season two and it paves the way for an amazing final season. During season two certain episodes either allow you to sympathise with him by giving more on his backstory (such as the compass navigation episode) or outright let him become a hero for a while (map reader episode).
Season three is where things really do start to pick up and I have more to say here. Several episodes go the extra mile to blur the lines between hero and villain and instead paint glitch as a flawed *person*. Not a joke or a villain. Thereās several episodes where he has the main cast of kids best interests in mind, where heās right and trying to do good for people, and so on. Thereās also episodes in S3 (and S2 but less so!) that paint the kids as not perfect, they show traits that are impulsive, selfish or reckless, traits that were previously only considered a bad thing glitch had, and it works even more to develop his personality. It also gives ubercorn more forgiveness and patience to his old friend than previous seasons. Heās less likely to immediately point fingers at glitch and will happily correct the kids if theyāre wrong in their accusations! After Tala reveals glitch to be her uncle in the season three premier ubercorn seems to be a lot less harsh on glitch, possibly because heās trying to set a good example?
Season three focuses a lot more on ubercorn and glitch and their friendship, you start to see a little of where it went wrong. It seemed like Glitch had some deep running jealousy of ubercorn and how āperfectā he was, and became self conscious of his own failures. Ubercorn never believed himself to be superior though, heās always been a humble person, and he thought highly of glitchs unconventional intuitions and ability to fix things in a whim, and as a result never saw that glitch was feeling this way.
By late season three itās clear the two have mostly patched their differences, likely due to the current cast of kids. They spend more time together and ubercorn even trusts glitch to help with teaching the children/taking them places sometimes (which, by the way, never ends well, he lost a child in a shopping mall and then almost accidentally drowned three others in a lake, and Iām not sure why ubercorn thinks itās a good idea to let him keep looking after them š). Heās much more forgiving and takes humour in glitchs mistakes instead of insulting them.
While itās impossible to know what happened after the shows run ended, it can be assumed they made up. After glitch HQ broke (meteor mayhem) glitch had to stay at the academy at least for a while (he was still there as of the final episode of S3). Maybe he settled down at the academy, or maybe ubercorn and the kids helped him build a new HQ. Either way, all the evidence points to a happy ending for the dream team.
Final thoughts/notes that didnāt fit anywhere here
I honestly think in part the current generation of kids ubercorn is teaching helped this relationship heal. Had ubercorn not gone into teaching, or not had his current class, things may have ended differently. A lot of the initial meetings and interactions were forced as a result of a mission or lesson involving the children after all.
I also feel like Tala attending the academy may have had a HUGE part in it. Itās possible seeing glitch had a relative who not only wasnāt awful but who saw the world and more in glitch made ubercorn rethink how he felt about his old classmate. Seeing how Tala is still so proud of her uncle despite his imperfections would have likely changed how ubercorn felt about glitch. Maybe ubercorn was only thinking in black and white until now, or maybe he simply didnāt stop to think past whatever negative feelings he felt. But that was challenged and broken down upon him realising not everyone sees things as he does. Maybe he had to talk with glitch to set up boundaries and figure out things relating to Talas relation (that she did want to keep secret seemingly) when Tala enrolled in the academy and thatās why they were more friendly as of S2-3 (likely when she started at the academy).
Anyway thatās it for now!