We open our episode with nulls crawling around Lost Angles. In Hexadecimal’s lair, Hex shows Scuzzy and Mike the TV that she has a portal to the supercomputer in her looking glass, and gloats about how Megabyte would react if he knew how easy it was to get there. She laughs about how he may have the smarts, but she has the power. However, this gloating bores her, and she tells Mike to entertain her. First his “Bride of Franken-nome” program annoys her because she’s seen it already, so Mike changes it to an opera singer in mid scream. The scream is so loud that it causes Hexadecimal’s looking glass to break. Something from inside the glass grabs Her.
Meanwhile at silicon tor, Hack and Slash are busy taking care of Megabyte’s pet null, nibbles. I guess their constant failures at defeating Bob has finally shaken Megabyte’s faith in the two, so he’s demoted them to a job where they couldn’t possibly mess things up. This also appears to be the first episode for Scott McNeil as Hack, taking over for the original voice actor Phil Hayes from this point on.
At the principal office, Bob, Dot, and the others are experimenting on nulls. They’re trying out a theory known as a saved game, hoping that if a game still has the data of the sprite who was defeated in it, it can be restored inside, and if the game can be won, they could be restored. Since nulls avoid games, they need to think of other ways to restore them, to which they haven’t had much luck.
Back at her lair, Hex is still being held by whatever is inside her looking glass, as a strange black creature with long tentacles latches on to her and begins to merge. All of the nulls in Mainframe react to her pain, and begin to freak out, causing a noise that only AndrAIa and Frisket can hear. Most of the nulls that are free head to Lost Angles. This includes Nibbles, as Hack and Slash just foolishly let him leave.
Bob and the others decide to follow the nulls, but tell AndrAIa to stay behind because she is still too new to Mainframe. Even though her hearing was able to pick up on the nulls before they did. Hex and the creature have now merged, turning her all black with a grey mask. Before she can attack Mike and Scuzzy, all of the nulls begin to latch themselves on her. Hack and Slash arrive on Lost Angles, and even go into camouflage mode in hopes of not being caught by Hexadecimal. They are caught by Mike and Scuzzy, who are trying to escape from something Mike is calling “nullzilla”. The others make it to Lost Angles and we see just what Nullzilla is.
A giant walking blob of nulls that have the merged Hexadecimal inside them, trying to protect Mainframe from her. They’re feeding on her energy, while also causing a rampage through Mainframe. However, since Hex has transfinite powers, it will take a rather long time to drain her, which is no good for Mainframe. Hack and Slash try to find Nibbles within the giant mass, but have no luck. While that goes down, Phong manages to have a plan in such a situation. This requires our heroes to suit up.
In their bug outfits, Bob, Dot, Enzo, Frisket, and Mike can control their different bug vehicles in a parody which seems both a reference to Power Rangers and Voltron. They have to use the vehicles to make a giant robot, which at first they have no idea how to merge. But of course, giving a signal all at once, we get our giant robot that is ready to battle Nullzilla. Or it would if they knew how to even control the thing.
Nullzilla rages around town, and easily flattens Hack and Slash, because of course, Hack and Slash are idiots. The robot battle with Nullzilla doesn’t go so well at first as attempts to destroy it prove useless. Phong suggests they use the destructo-matic, a giant axe that can cut through the nulls. But it’s soon discovered that the destructo-matic wasn’t even taken with them. He has to get it to them, and the only one who can is AndrAIa, who flies it to the robot.
With the destructo-matic, they easily manage to remove the nulls from Hexadecimal. And even with all the spilled nulls Hack and Slash are still unable to find Nibbles. Bob and the others thank AndrAIa for her help, while a weakened Hexadecimal tries to recover. Nobody however knows what happened to whatever possessed her in the first place. Back at silicon tor, Nibbles returns to Megabyte. The virus is pleased to see the null her refers to as “father”. But Nibbles wasn’t alone, as the creature that attacked Hexadecimal attacks Megabyte, and the episode ends with Megabyte now merged with the creature.
Nullzilla is another great episode from this season. We learn a bit more about the world, as we now know that Nibbles was apparently the father of Megabyte. What that means, we’ll learn later in the series. But for those still waiting for an answer, let’s just say it seamlessly connects with another major event mentioned previously. This episode also gives us more Hexadecimal, which is always a good thing. Too bad for the most part she was covered in a giant blob of nulls. Buttake what you can get I guess.
AndrAIa is also well used in this episode. We get to finally see some of her abilities outside of the game, including a heightened sense of hearing. She still refers to Enzo as a guardian, but it will soon be revealed that she knew all along he wasn’t really one, and mostly did it because she likes him enough not to embarrass him. Her early handling in the series is well done that it doesn’t feel forced, and that despite being new to Mainframe, she fits perfectly in with the rest of the cast.
The previous episode of the series focused a lot on games, and the importance of them. This was the episode that gave a lot more information on nulls. Even though nulls and nullification were mentioned in previous episodes, this was the first time that we learned that there were efforts being done to try to recover the data of nullified sprites.
And finally the ending of the episode with the giant robot was great. While as a kid I thought this was obviously a parody of Power Rangers, now I know that this was really a Voltron reference. It was a fun scene with some great humor to the silliness of the whole thing. And of course Mike being a gnat led to some genuinely funny moments, especially his tiny vehicle.
“Nullzilla” keeps the ball rolling for season two, and is another classic episode that’s still fun to watch after all these years. But we certainly ended on a rather scary note that will lead to our next episode with more merging, more returns and more revelations.