You're telling me Zane didn't lose his memory switch until he blew up whilst fighting the Overlord? Is that seriously what the show went with? You know, I'm not really shocked. It does help me continue my suspicions of Doctor Julien, a man who always made me uncomfortable but who died too soon for me to ever get a positive read on him. His debut episode left more questions than answers, and I couldn't form any connection with him. If I were writing the show, I may legitimately have dedicated a season to exploring his backstory.
Honestly, we should have had that season. Tie it back into my idea of revisiting the Skulkin. Considering Samukai held Dr. Julien hostage after making him build technology for him, I need to know the secretive connections these two had. I feel like Dr. Julien living a weird life in the woods as a hermit makes me distrust him more. He made weapons for the Skulkin and he hid in the woods. I don't care what order those happened in, I feel like a man living in the woods had to be hiding from something.
You know my idea? He was a war engineer in his youth, our Dr. Julien. He was a bad man once, and he did bad things. Made weapons of war. Guns and tanks and more. But he eventually realized the evils he was commiting, so he betrayed his benefactors and fled. He was already old by this time, so a few years after running away he built himself a son. That son helped him to rediscover his humanity, at least as much as he could do. And that son was Zane. The memory switch existed as a precaution, in case Zane ever learned that his father used to be a war criminal. That's why he wouldn't remove it. But he did truly love Zane. And I guess he loved the Echo Zane he built, although I imagine Echo's existence helps prove all my theories. Dr. Julien needed Zane to give him a sense of humanity back. When he lost his first son, he made a replacement model. But he never loved the replacement like he did the original.
Is this plotline too intense? I don't think so. It teaches us some valuable lessons. People are complicated. People can be good and bad all at the same time. And war is bad. That's really the core message that even this morally complicated Dr. Julien would have learned. War is hell, and he would make it no more. He learned from his crimes, and he grew more of a conscience. Not enough to abandon his replacement child, but enough to not want to make weapons anymore.
