Ninjago Theories

Honestly I just really don’t care anymore. Tearing apart this show is exhausting; usually it ends up being a lot of work with few (if any) rewards. It’s also not encouraging to see “544 messages” every time you open your Tumblr inbox. (And that’s only from this blog, not any of my other sideblogs.)

Long story short? I don’t have time for long-form theories anymore, and it’s exhausting to even think about trying to write one of them. I’m literally a college sophomore now; I don’t have time to spend two to four hours typing out a theory in a concise way. (Heck, I need to do that with actual class essays, and I still don’t have time for it.)

For anybody who’s still curious about my theories, I’ll point you over to my Ninjago sideblog, @birchwoodswolf, where I do still occasionally post little theory tidbits or whatever if I think about it and I have the time.

Just a few days ago, I actually figured out a complete, concrete and relatively airtight system for how Ninjago’s elements generally work. I’m in the process of making a post about it right now.

Well, I’ve been saying it for a while now, but the Hagemans have finally forced themselves into a situation where the game has been reduced to Cloud Kingdom or Bust. Unless if Chen miraculously escaped the same way Clouse did, I don’t think there’s any way to avoid using the Cloud Kingdom.

(Chen escaping the Cursed Realm doesn’t really make sense for a lot of reasons, especially considering that Clouse was alone for his entire journey from wherever-he-ended-up-in-Ninjago to Stiix. If he’d mentioned anything about wishes and Clouse wanted to or had the ability to bring Chen along, Chen would want to come along. Clouse probably didn’t want to, for one thing. He and Chen are almost perfect mirrors of Skales and Slithraa back in S1: Clouse knows he’s better than Chen and wishes to dispose of him when he can. Considering that Clouse has magical capabilities far beyond anything Chen is capable of (if he’s capable of anything at all), he was probably able to easily escape the Cursed Realm, and left Chen behind. Chen doesn’t have the ability to escape by himself; my guess is that he and Garmadon both drowned inside the Preeminent. If Chen returns, the Cloud Kingdom will have to be involved.)

As for Pythor, the story is more... complicated. It’s difficult to say exactly what angle they’ll take here. However, as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t make sense for Pythor to willingly turn against the Ninja again. After Chen’s deception was revealed and Pythor was honored by Arcturus, the all-time greatest general of the Anacondrai tribe, I think he’s going to stay good for a long time. The only question in this case is, for one, whether he’s being bribed somehow (because if someone had a good enough incentive, Pythor would probably take it - I can’t think of a good incentive, though, honestly), or if he somehow died offscreen between the end of S4 and now.

It’s been leaking from Cartoon Network Asia for the past few weeks. It still isn’t out in the US, and it won’t be until... March, I’m pretty sure? I don’t know exactly. Either way, the entire season’s out - if you search “Ninjago episode 55″ on YouTube, you should be able to find it.

Sorry, man, but no can do. I made this blog so my friends and I could have somewhere to post theories that isn’t Deviantart. It’s chaotic enough on here without having to worry about other people’s posts - me and Lince disagree on our interpretations of things almost as often as we agree, and it’s difficult to come to an informed consensus when we can’t talk them out very much (we live 7-8 time zones apart). Adding more people into the equation isn’t going to help anything.

I’m one of what is likely a minority of fans who really, really hopes Ninjago will end after S7. A villain team-up season like this usually signifies that the writers are running out of ideas; unless if they start to utilize another entity, like the Cloud Kingdom (and I still don’t know why they haven’t - they’ve been avoiding it like the plague, which is disappointing), there’s not much more they can do with the elements that they already have in place. On top of that, it’s getting more difficult to include new elements, as the lore is already starting to become quite dense and incomprehensible from the weight of everything packed in it already.

As it stands, though, there’s no end in sight. I can’t remember where the source was, but LEGO has apparently said that Ninjago is one of their “evergreen themes” that releases sets every wave. A large part of what’s driving the set sales - which is the #1 factor in how long a theme lasts - is the TV show. Ninjago is immensely profitable for LEGO. If Ninjago wasn’t as successful after the pilots, and then after S1 and S2, these last four seasons wouldn’t exist at all. If Ninjago’s popularity suddenly crashes, it’ll stop being an evergreen theme, and the TV show will end once and for all.

Ultimately, it all boils down to the fact that LEGO treats the episodes as nothing more than 22-minute commercials. LEGO doesn’t care about what would be a good place for the story to end. As far as they’re concerned, if they’re still making money off of it, it’s Good and they Need More. Ninjago’s story, judging from what we know about S7, would probably best be capped at seven seasons (as I said earlier). More likely than not, though, that’s not going to happen.

I’ve talked about this in-depth on my blog several times. Basically, he realized that there were absolutely infinitesimal odds that Zane would even want to search for him, much less actually find him. Julien made Echo to keep himself sane. He had no bad intentions; solitary confinement does shit to people, and he was alone in the lighthouse for years.

Julien lost all hope that he’d ever see Zane again. It was the only reason that he probably allowed himself to make Echo. When Zane actually did come back, against all odds - because TLV is the largest series of coincidences we’ve ever seen on the show, when you think about it - Julien was forced into a very, very tight spot with no right answer. He had exactly no room for error - one wrong move, and he’d alienate everyone around him.

By not involving Echo in the situation at all, it eliminates most, if not all, of the potential chaos that could result from the encounter. There’s far too much potential for hurt feelings and there’s not nearly enough time to explain them away. The only bad thing that could result from Julien leaving Echo in the basement (at least on Julien’s end) would be that Julien would have to live with a guilty conscience that he left him behind. If he’d let Echo get involved, who even knows what would’ve happened? Zane would probably never look Julien in the eye again.

Now, I’m not saying he made the right choice, because there is no right choice; I’m also not saying he made a good choice, because there is no good choice. I’m saying that Julien made the best choice available to him out of several bad options.

Oh yes I do~

Anon, you forget that people would riot if I stopped posting on this blog :) Because it’s happened before :)

See, the thing is, Turner is actually a plot hole, mostly because I don’t trust the Hageman bros to know their own show anymore. I have, once and for all, accepted that I know the show better than the writers do. (And LEGO’s still not paying me to run the theory blog, which adds a huge amount of undeserved hype for the show. Come on, if I have to watch the writers ruin everything, I at least want to be earning a bit of cash for it.)

Turner has powers over time, not speed. The thing that I take issue with with Turner is that it’s all just a little too convenient to have the Elemental Master who can control time get stuck in a sword in an alternate timeline.

Naturally, they’re never going to explain this. I’ve accepted that. But the Elemental Masters are never going to come back in canon, either - they’ve gotten their one-season-of-interaction, so it’s time for a new cast of characters to come along. We’ll fall in love with them, and then they’ll disappear into Side Character Hell once they’re no longer useful.

Because his character has a crazy amount of potential to do so many cool things with the show! He has the power to change anything - he can set up any kind of cool scenario for the Ninja to work their way out of. And he can also fix whatever problems the Hageman bros can’t think of reasons to fix themselves.

They really should be using and abusing the kind of power they gave themselves with Fenwick, but they’re not, and it pisses me off! Other authors would kill for this kind of power over their plots, myself included! But the Hagemans have this power and aren’t using it!

The debate here is not “Was the finale good?” (Because yes, yes it was.)

The debate here is not “Were there any other potential ways out of the situation we were presented with?” (Because yes, yes there were.)

The debate here is “Was the writing lazy?”

(Because yes.)

(Yes it was.)

Ever since S4 aired, I’ve been slowly-but-surely growing to support the idea that LEGO Ultra Agents takes place in the same world/realm as Ninjago - the continents are probably extremely far apart such that neither realm has ever made contact with the other, but it would potentially explain how Chen actually found Toxikita, Paleman, etc. in the first place, and how they’d all already reached their True Potentials.

(Keep in mind, though, that Stiix could be a port for other reasons, possibly because there are more port cities scattered around that we haven’t seen. If there’s one port, there’s bound to be more, and a port would definitely help stimulate the economy in or around Stiix and other port towns.