In the previous part, Glitch Bob was frozen in a crystallized state and near death while our heroes were dealing with a far more pressing matter of the wedding of Dot and the other Bob. This all goes well enough until Glitch Bob is restored, and eventually turned back to his original form while the other Bob was Megabyte in disguise all along. Turns out long exposure to the web turned him into a Trojan Horse virus with the ability to change his shape. Now he’s loose in Mainframe, and our heroes are left clueless. That sets the stage for the final part of this four part saga, “Crouching Binome, Hidden Virus”.
The episode opens in the principle office as our heroes watch the footage of Megabyte taking Speccy’s form. Turbo suggests a viral team to deal with the problem, but Bob being the pacifist he is, tells him not to bother, believing Megabyte can still be cured. Though Bob’s counter argument is an interesting one. If he had gone by the guardian’s original plan to delete the viruses, then Hexadecimal wouldn’t have been alive during the invasion by Daemon, therefore Hex wouldn’t have cured the net from her infection.
So, how did Megabyte get Bob’s code in order to take his form? Turns out that when Megabyte crushed Glitch before sending Bob to the web, he was able to get some of his code in the process. Since both of them had a guardian protocol in them, it helped them to survive the web.
Outside the principle office is a group of angry formerly infected Binomes known as Neo-Virals. They want to be viral again now that Megabyte is back. They’re quickly stopped thanks to binomes that look like the Blues Brothers. If the issue of former virals wasn’t a problem, leave it to Mike the TV to spread fear over Megabyte’s return to Mainframe. Bob thinks it might be Megabyte in disguise. Since he was able to fool them before, Scanning his code wouldn’t work, so the only way to stop him is to outsmart him.
Dot is still not happy about being duped easily by Megabyte, and feels bad for betraying Bob. Despite Mouse claims he’ll forgive her, she’s still doubtful that she deserves that forgiveness. Bob shows up and tries to talk with her, and Dot still doubts that it’s not the real Bob. Bob tries to convince her that he’s the real one.
At Al’s diner, Mike talks with the neo-virals who are still trying to start a revolution. But since they’re a bunch of drunken burnouts, that’s not really much of a revolution. It turns out that this Mike is Megabyte in disguise, and asks for his neo-virals to submit their P.I.D codes, which they have no qualms about doing.
Bob, Matrix, and the others drive off with the gateway command in hopes that this will lure Megabyte into the open, since Megabyte’s ultimate goal has been to enter the supercomputer. The CPU forces are shot out of the sky by Megabyte’s army, and the virals snatch the command. He manages to open the gateway, and it seems like everything is going according to plan, but it turns out to not work for him. He fell for a phony gateway command. Bob and company shoot it out against the virals.
Despite being targeted, Megabyte shifts, but this turns out to fail, as Megabyte is shot into a tear, and warped into a prison through a portal. It turns out that Megabyte has finally been jailed once and for all. With Megabyte trapped inside a firewall, Bob tells him that the real gateway command is locked inside the core. Which is clearly the smartest move to do. Tell your enemy about the location of the one object he needs to take over the net, instead of just dismantling the thing considering the damage it’s caused.
Bob won’t delete the virus, and hopes to scan him to reprogram him through a viral scan. Something Megabyte refers to as a fate worse than deletion, and asks who is the real monster, him or Bob? The heroes celebrate their victory as Mouse finally plans to make her leave from the system, telling Dot to finally go to Bob.
However, the scan shows that there’s no code. Megabyte was never there to begin with, as he used an Alias. He’s really in the war room, and it’s possible that anyone in the room could be the real Megabyte. Megabyte finally emerges from his Frisket disguise, and begins to drain the energy from everyone. Before he can drain AndrAIa and Mouse, Phong intervenes, giving everyone time to escape. He also manages to infect Wellman’s robotic suit.
All of the doors are locked, with our heroes trapped like rats in the hallways of the Principle Office. From inside the loudspeaker, Megabyte gloats about his victory, and that there was no set plan for conquest. This is about revenge, and that since viruses are predatory by nature, he’s ready to function by his code. Megabyte ends the episode by telling the sprites to prepare themselves… for the hunt.
How will our heroes escape? How brutal will this hunt get? Can Mainframe be saved? The answer is…
We don’t know. Because this was the last episode of ReBoot. Despite the plans for a 13 episode season composed of three four part sagas and a musical episode, budget and a shift in the proposed deal caused only eight of the episodes to see air. A planned spinoff kids show called “Binomes” was also killed off before it could see the light of day as well.
So, there you have it. The show that was once saved from cancellation on a cliffhanger would be cancelled again on a cliffhanger with nothing to save them this time.
And it’s a shame too, because the final part of “My Two Bobs” actually is a far better episode than the three that preceded it. Yeah, it feels too much like the show was just going back to basics with the return of the viral army, and Megabyte back in control again, but it still felt really epic, and they left us on something that would have actually been cool to see. Much cooler than a whole story about mistrust, love blindness, and trying way too hard to recreate the “good old days”. It’s a shame to see this series just die off.
Despite the death of the series on television, multiple plans have went underway for years involving a planned revival of the series. For years, Rainmaker had plans to revive the series through movies, even once again banking on a trilogy story, but nothing would eventually see the light of day. There is also an official ReBoot web comic known as “Code of Honor”, which chronicles the events following the hunt.
Now since I originally wrote these articles, there have been news of an official reboot of... well, ReBoot underway called "ReBoot: The Guardian Code". Am I excited? Honestly, not really. It all comes down to the premise being about kids in the regular world being able to enter the computer world to battle viruses. I swear I've heard that premise before...
Nah.
Although to be fair, until actual footage of the show materializes, I'll truly be able to make the judge on this series.
And with that, I’m officially done with the Rapidly Reviewing ReBoot series. Revisiting this series was a treat. While I can admit that not every episode was as amazing as it once was, this show still holds up incredibly in terms of writing, action, and comedy. The CGI hasn’t held up perfectly, but that can be forgiven as the show was the first of its kind in terms of a fully CG series. It’s still a great series that is definitely worth watching for both the nostalgic former fans, and a new younger generation. So with that said, I hope you enjoyed this review series, and had an alphanumeric time remembering ReBoot.