#antidermis

According to Greg Lore, Teridax was destined to take over the MU. This is a controversial element, a lot of the fandom really don’t like the idea that Destiny was so immutable that even the story’s main antagonist was ultimately just following the plotted line laid out by the Great Beings, but there’s a part of this that has the potential to make Teridax significantly more interesting.

There’s some lore floating around- I’m uncertain if it’s been confirmed or not, but I like it so I’m going to for it- that Teridax wasn’t just a Makuta. He was a Great Spirit AI, intended to be given control of a second Great Spirit Robot, but when it became apparent that the planet would blow up before they could even make headway on the construction of GSR 2, the Great Beings just crammed Teridax’s AI into the GSR 1 and hoped that he would absorb the same information as Mata Nui did on his travels throughout the galaxy.

This may have had something to do with Teridax being granted Metru Nui as his region. We don’t have the full details of Miserix’s selection process, and how he decided which Makuta got what, but I would not be surprised if he read it in the stars that Metru Nui was where Teridax belonged. Certainly makes it more interesting than “Terry gets the MU’s most important location because of nepotism.”

I’ve seen it suggested that the purpose of the Ko-Matoran being astronomers and scholars was to make sure Mata Nui was studying the cultures of the galaxy and learning from them, that their observations of the stars and writing it down was how Mata Nui took on and processed that information. Shit just got a little scrambled when sentience was factored in.

Being close to the core processor, and having access to the information that Mata Nui was taking on board would certainly be benefits to giving Teridax Metru Nui.

Still, the whole “Teridax is MU 2 AI” thing does kinda contradict the established canon that Mata Nui created the Makuta within the MU, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not.

First of all, we have Vezon’s multiversal journey. In one of the AUs he lands on, he finds that Makuta is the GSR and Mata Nui is his scheming, ambitious brother. This shows that the Makuta name was something the GBs already had before Mata Nui ever made the species. The difference between this universe and the prime one isn’t just “The names are switched heehoo”, it’s that in this one, they decided to make Makuta the one in control of the GSR 1, and Mata Nui the passenger... and Mata Nui turned out just liked Teridax did in the main universe. Well, as much as we can tell from Vezon’s perspective, anyway.

This is the strongest evidence, IMO, that Teridax existed before the GSR was launched, and before the Makuta species was created.

Also, in this case he’s just called “Makuta”, and it’s not a species name. I’ll get to that later, for now we’re just going to look at Teridax the individual and not worry about his brothers and sisters. The Makuta species is an additional layer I’ll factor in after we’ve got the gist of how this changes Teridax himself.

Layer 1: Teridax the Individual

Here is my theory: Teridax was an AI before he was a Makuta, but he doesn’t remember it. He was crammed into Mata Nui’s brain, and when the Makuta were born, either Teridax slipped in himself, or Mata Nui intentionally tried to give his brother a body so that he could at least live as his own entity.

Still, downscaling from a GSR AI to a regular MU resident had... consequences, and Teridax lost most of his conscious memory of who he had been before. As far as he was aware, he was just a Makuta.

Still, there was a part of him that did remember. The thought that he should’ve been so much more than this would linger in the back of his head for millennia, gnawing away at him. He was a god forced to be small, for reasons he could no longer remember or understand.

Imagine if you were crammed in your entirety into a microbe and made to exist entirely within the body of another human. You weren’t able to understand why, but you knew you were meant to be more than this. Wouldn’t that just drive you crazy?

Yeah.

I don’t particularly like the idea of Destiny being this immutable force within the Bionicle story, I prefer to think of it as just “What the GBs made the characters for, and they’re somewhat predisposed to carrying that out, but post-awakening they’re fully capable of consciously going against it. That said, I have to admit that the idea of Teridax-the-diminished-Great-Spirit makes him way more interesting to me than Teridax-the-generic-evil-overlord-who-wants-power-for-power’s-sake.

It doesn’t really change his characterisation much, but it gives him a lot more depth and explains some of his actions, like styling himself as Mata Nui’s brother post-Cataclysm. There’s also the detail that the GSR AI in the AU Vezon visits is called Makuta, not Teridax. Which brings us neatly to the Makuta species.

Layer 2: The Brotherhood

As stated above, Pre-MU Teridax wasn’t called Teridax. He was just Makuta. Which raises a few questions, not all of which have answers.

Were the Makuta AI and the Makuta species linked before the former became one of the latter?

Did Mata Nui name the Makuta species after the Makuta AI, perhaps?

Are the Makuta species in the Great Spirit Makuta universe called the “Mata Nui species?”

My take on this is that... the Makuta species wasn’t an intentional creation on Mata Nui’s part. Makuta Teridax was intentional, but when his AI was put into the Antidermis pool, it was... refracted, and created 100 different individuals. They were given the purpose of maintaining order and stability within the Matoran Universe, because that was part of Mata Nui’s intent in giving Makuta a body within the MU to begin with: Makuta would take care of the inner workings of the MU while Mata Nui focused on his mission.

Having 100 of them rather than just one didn’t really stop the plan much, but what Mata Nui didn’t know was how badly Makuta’s AI had been shattered by the process.

This image from Bionicle: World always confused me as a kid. I wasn’t sure why the Makuta were being depicted as three Teridaxes. I mean I got that it was because the rest of them didn’t have designs yet, but now...

I think that this image represents them as they were originally formed. Originally, they all looked like this. When they were born, they were physically identical besides maybe masks. So Mata Nui didn’t realise that Makuta had been broken apart by the Antidermis, he just thought they were multiple incarnations of the same entity.

Still, the reason the Makuta are Like That, the only reasonable way to work in the supposed “Curse” of the Makuta species in my eyes, is that the Makuta species is actually the Makuta AI split across multiple individuals, fragments of the whole who forgot what they were meant to be and were left with a deep-rooted trauma spawned from being forced to be so much smaller than they were designed to be.

Some of them were affected more deeply than others. Miserix, and those that sided with him, were able to find purpose and satisfaction at their lot in life. But Teridax, who contained the largest portion of the original Makuta AI (I’ve always liked to think that he was the first one that emerged from the Antidermis Pool, personally), well, he didn’t take is so well.

And what’s the smoking gun?

This line from Destiny War.

"I... we are the essence of the Makuta species. We know what they were meant to know, but have forgotten. We see the error. The flaws. So much to repair; but it cannot be done. Spherus Magna, the Shattering. The three that must be one; the two that must make them one. He must remember, he must be made to see, or the journey of 100,000 years will be for nothing. He hides beneath, preparing to meet his destiny. We must go there, we must right the wrong. So many wrongs before the Shattering can end." — Antidermis through Brutaka, Destiny War.

The memories of their purpose didn’t just disappear. They were left in the dregs of the pool, and when Brutaka absorbed it, he was possessed by the remainder of the Makuta AI, the parts that did know what they were supposed to be, and they in turn tried to remind Teridax before it was too late.

But then, I do see why people prefer Makuta to be his name. I do see why people hold dear the original take on Makuta as a primordial, one-of-kind counterpart to Mata Nui... I’ve somewhat tried to reconcile these different takes, as shown with the origins of the Makuta species- And likewise, for YaBr I’m going with the idea that Teridax dons the Kraahkan around the Metru Nui arc, ascending to a god of shadow as a dark parallel to Takanuva... Going from Makuta Teridax to JUST Makuta, kind of like Ganondorf to Ganon.

There’s this idea that for a while, Teridax evolved into the shadowy, unique, and godlike Makuta persona we see in the Mata Nui arc... And after Takanuva removes the Kraahkan (“Let’s take a look behind that mask!”), which would fit speculation that Makuta had been corrupted by it in early drafts, THEN we return. Then we return to Teridax the mortal schemer, to reconcile these two takes on the same villain as almost different people and personas, because they kind of were?

The ‘Makuta’ we see in 2001-03, that was an amalgamation if Teridax and the Kraahkan, the latter a more neutral elemental force that Teridax corrupted... Which then adds to Takutanuva being a fusion that is overtaken by the Light of Takanuva, with this brief ‘redemption’ for Makuta, as part of the original drafts, moreso for the Kraahkan as it is reunited with the Avohkii and remembers its true purpose, two masks and a Toa suppressing Teridax’s will to focus on the Destiny they mutually agree to.

But on the other hand... Yeah, Makuta is a cool name. And I don’t have the creative power in me to think of a new name to replace Teridax, that’s on the same iconic level as Makuta. And the more I think about the meta of how things were revealed, changed, and clarified, I realize...

...Makuta doesn’t have to be the name of the species? Makuta being part of a species makes sense, but nobody had to take the name away from him and turn it into a title that 99 others shared. We could’ve kept the name Makuta for our personal main antagonist, while giving a new name to the species he was clarified to be a part of!

I’m thinking of doing that. Our villain is still THE Makuta, the only one, but he’s also still a member of a species that rises up, so I can better reconcile these things. Granted, this means sacrificing the storyline behind the Antidermis as once its own Great Spirit, the unlived glory that Teridax wants to live up to... His need to be unique and the only one, his role as an impostor and thief, these are fun motifs for his villainous character. Retaining Makuta as always HIS name takes that away.

So I’m caught between these two ideas... And also I need to make a new name for this species, if I decide to do so. Luckily there’s less pressure for it to be the perfect villain name, so... I’m thinking of something like Kraftyr? The Kra- prefix alludes to their Shadow, but it’s also a pun on Crafter, which fits the original role of the Makuta.

After all, the first depiction of Makuta explained that Creation and Destruction were two sides of the same coin, and for all of their edgy talk of how they loved to destroy and kill, the Makuta proved their proficiency in creating life, in the Rahi. So emphasizing their true role through their name seems sensible.

Of course, the Kra- prefix is a bit weird, because the way I’ve written things for YaBr, they weren’t always Shadow-aligned... It was only when their Antidermis dissolved that, by some quirk of chemical makeup, they began to align towards Shadow instead. The name Kraftyr would contradict this by implying they were always Shadow elementals and meant to be, but I could change that too, maybe Shadow was always incorporated as a binding element to stave off the dissipation, given its power to absorb.

Also, the name Kraftyr kind of reminds me of Kraft Mac and Cheese, which is a bit corny. So I’d have to change the pun entirely, or maybe the spelling... Kraughter, rhyming with Laughter? But it looks more like it rhymes with Slaughter, which I guess is symbolic in its own way. Maybe I’m overthinking it.

In the end, what do you guys think? Should I keep the idea of Makuta as a species name, once belonging to a true brother of Mata Nui that actually cares for his mission (like the original depictions of Makuta as his godly sibling who was well-intentioned), with Teridax as our fittingly disappointing impostor? Who wants to be the ONLY Makuta, to ascend to godhood and deny his mortal aspect and background, even killing his own friends who represented his vulnerabilities?

Or should I maintain the original love for Makuta as THE name for our villain, and go for the utilitarian philosophy of just making a new name for the species? Maybe retaining the lore of the Antidermis coming from a precious Great Spirit, who might have a new name as well, or perhaps our Makuta subconsciously/intentionally named himself after the being they all came from, because again he wants to be that. He feels cheated of what should be HIS destiny, that entitled villain.