It’s now time to cover the finale of the Daemon Rising 4 part saga. In the last episode, we finally saw the events that led to the destruction of the 2nd city, the birth of Megabyte and Hexadecimal, and Bob’s arrival to Mainframe. We learned a bit more about Bob’s pacifist mindset, and his initial game plan in Mainframe to try and turn both of the viruses good. But aside from those pieces of backstory, Mouse and Matrix would end up infected by Daemon, and she would use Mouse to finally remove the firewall that protected Mainframe. Now Daemon is seeking Bob, her messenger. The only guardian left that can create portals to ensure total control of the net. Will she succeed? Let’s find out with the final part of Daemon Rising, entitled “Sacrifice”.
We open the episode as Daemon and her forces are arriving to Mainframe. At the principle office, Wellman is working on the gateway device, as another firewall is in place with the hopes of slowing down Daemon’s arrival. Little Enzo seems to be perfectly fine with his nullified father, but Wellman is still unaware about Matrix. Meanwhile, the still sprited Hexadecimal is still trying to come on to Bob, to the absolute shock of the guardian. But this is cut short as the firewall is breached and Daemon has arrived.
Dot’s plans seem for the most part, rather odd, especially to Bob. As a game cube is dropping, she tells Enzo to enter the game, and to do exactly what caused his older form to become Matrix in hopes that he’ll return to save the city. She also tells Bob to leave the system through a portal. The gateway that’s assembled will be triggered when Daemon crosses it, which should destroy the virus, but unfortunately still leave the net infected. Since Bob won’t partake in leaving the system, he will now be bait to lure the virus into the gateway.
Daemon finally enters Mainframe and meets with Dot and the others. She insults Hexadecimal for turning against her kind, to which Bob states that she isn’t “her kind” anymore. Before they can trap the virus, she infects the system, and everyone in it. She also brings back Matrix, AndrAIa and the others. Hex seeks forgiveness, but Daemon responds by sending her flying into the principle office.
As the game cube leaves, it turns out that Little Enzo did not leave with the game as Dot had intended for him. He’s finally come to the realization that he’s not like Matrix, he isn’t a renegade, he is still sworn by the guardian protocol to mend and defend. Atop the principle office, Bob is creating the portals for Daemon to infect. Slash tries to interfere, but gets… well… slashed. Enzo tries to talk sense into the fully infected Matrix and AndrAIa, but it seems fruitless.
Enzo orders Frisket to bite Matrix, making the renegade start to remember his hatred of viruses, and realize how Daemon’s infection could cause him to hurt the ones he cares about. Enzo also reminds Matrix about the field upgrade Bob gave him to fight viruses. He changes his icon back to normal, which manages to heal him from the infection.
With Matrix and AndrAIa healed, the trio check on Hexadecimal, who is crying over being rejected by Daemon. Despite Matrix’s contempt in helping a virus, she’s still the only one who may be able to fight Daemon, so he heals her. She sees that Bob is finally out of energy, just as the infection is finally complete. Hex goes to the core to seek the firepower she needs to combat her.
This firepower turns her back into a full virus, as she attacks Daemon. What follows is a brawl between the two viruses all through Mainframe. Despite Hex’s best efforts, Daemon proves the stronger. But this brawl is cut short, as Daemon’s time has come. Daemon explodes, causing the entire net to be infected by her touch. It’s finally revealed that she was a cron virus, meaning that the entire net will crash if this isn’t healed.
With the core power running through her, Hex has gone full on loopy again. She dances with the weakened Bob, who tells her that when the countdown reaches zero, everything will be deleted. Hex won’t stand for anything destroying the sprite she loves, and asks for a way to fix it. Wellman tells them that the only thing that could travel faster than the infection is a benign virus.
She downloads the cure from Matrix’s icon, and offers to sacrifice herself to save the net. She also touches Enzo’s icon, leaving something to remember her by. She tells Bob that she always loved him and for Dot to take care of him as she enters the gateway. She spreads throughout the net, curing everyone from the infection of Daemon. Hexadecimal, a virus once thought of as a villain, dies a hero.
The episode ends as Dot tries to tend to the weakened Bob, and asks for him to marry her. But before the two can finally discuss a wedding, they’re interrupted, by the surfer and…
Bob?
Daemon Rising really could have served as a strong finale to the series. It takes all of the threads left unwound by the history of the show and tightly wraps them up, giving us a really well thought out history to the events of the series, as well as giving us one last interesting virus in Daemon. Unlike the tyrant mentality of Megabyte, or the chaotic nature of Hexadecimal, Daemon was a virus with a belief that her word would bring unity to the net. That unity being a net-wide crash, but unity nonetheless.
This four parter brings into question if Bob’s mindset of “healing viruses” makes him more or less like a virus himself. I went into detail about that in the last review, but it still holds strong. Bob’s mindset of being able to cure viruses doesn’t sound as different as a virus’ mindset of infecting sprites, and the line of Hex not being like Daemon’s kind shows his own prejudices against viruses, believing that they should give up their codes and beliefs to like like that of sprites and binomes. It comes off as a strange case of racism when you get down to the core of the subject.
But I guess that belief of turning viruses benign must have some merit to it, as Hexadecimal would eventually sacrifice herself to save the entire net. But like I’ve always believed, Hex was never fully evil. Her actions seemed more heavily involved on what entertained her. The most evil things she ever did was create a bug that turned the system to stone (though it was activated by Megabyte), hack into the principle office paint program to turn the system into her art canvas and her alliance with Megabyte which would lead her to almost blowing the principle office up. Other than that last one, she never really feels evil, just someone who likes to watch things go into a state of insanity. And in the end, she dies a hero, which proves my point even further about her.
Everything to this point in the series does feel like the show has nothing else to really say, and anything else would really just be pointlessly adding to the show. So you can imagine my feelings about the next four parter. So, next time, we’ll get into the controversial four parter “My Two Bobs”.