MX = Villain Sue?

[Dr_Mario64]

At some points you get the feel Terra moments was a thing but they seem dropped now. </3
DDD more or less rendered MX's "nobody enforcer" as one member once put it.

Cause disney magic! [jk]
Joking aside Xehanort will likely be his own downfall. He's not the most powerful and he underestimates the heart repeatedly. I look to see his downfall to be an ironic one brought about by his own personality.

Which is a pretty bad mistake; considering how extensively he's studied the heart in the past. I'd honestly expect more from the oldest, wisest Keyblade Master in history.

 

[Smithee]

He's also a big hypocrite, blaming Eraqus for favoring Light too much while he himself clearly favors Darkness too much. Not to mention filling the Realm Of Light with Darkness, but not the Realm Of Darkness with Light.

So much for Balance; in the end, he's just another generic Dark Is Evil trope example (And he wonders why Eraqus became Light-absolute in the first place.).

 

[Chuman]

He's also a big hypocrite, blaming Eraqus for favoring Light too much while he himself clearly favors Darkness too much. Not to mention filling the Realm Of Light with Darkness, but not the Realm Of Darkness with Light.

So much for Balance; in the end, he's just another generic Dark Is Evil trope example (And he wonders why Eraqus became Light-absolute in the first place.).

really makes you think, eraqus of light, xehanort of darkness, influencing terra's heart who in turn influenced riku, who eventually was able to balance light and darkness.

 

[Smithee]

Couldn't agree more with both of these. In Birth by Sleep he was fine, the game was his origin story and all. It was meant to show us who the "Xehanort" of KH2 was. But bringing him back in DDD along with him, and by extension Nomura, basically saying "lol Oh yeah. Those other guys were just my puppet. I was doing it all along, it was all me" completely undermined the previous villains.

I'd even say it took what little of personality we got to see of them. MX also shoehorned Apprentice and Terranort entirely. In the opening scene we see Apprentice in the process of making everyone heartless. That pretty much rendered Apprentice Nort moot cause whether his memory loss was real or not is now irrelevant.
If it was real he just got taken over by MX (finally) and went on a crazed spree which then falls back on it all being MX instead of Apprentice.
And if the memory loss was fake then that also renders it moot cause then there was no apprentice at all just Xehanort posing in Terras body.

Terranort and Apprentice Nort was reduced to "stepping stones" to Ansem-Xemnas who themselves was rendered less of individuals and just MX puppeteering the whole time.
Then anything of possible uniqueness or future mystery was taken away cause MX himself came back rather than Apprentice or even Terranort.


Minds well give up on those now. TnT

It's comparable to the Pokemon anime making Ghetsis rushed and generic all the way to Hell and back.

 

[Chuman]

it'd be cool if any single one of the xehanorts had ulterior motives that gave the finale some flavor, i'm still rooting for terra to shine because he was played majorly. all of TAV was in hindsight (although aqua unintendedly contributed) but being that terra is technically a xehanort, he should get some planning time.

 

[Smithee]

Oddly, even YMX is better than MX, despite them being the same guy, because YMX at least has that interesting moral grayness that Ben Diskin mentioned.

 

[Chuman]

Oddly, even YMX is better than MX, despite them being the same guy, because YMX at least has that interesting moral grayness that Ben Diskin mentioned.

yep. that's the thing about young villains, that sweet, little bit of innocence that can make for a convincing villain, walking the line of "should i?" and "shouldn't i?" until they become aizen and all hope is lost.

however, i'm always fond of "old villain who wants to atone" but that ship really has sailed, hasn't it?

 

[Dreaded_Desire62]

yep. that's the thing about young villains, that sweet, little bit of innocence that can make for a convincing villain, walking the line of "should i?" and "shouldn't i?" until they become aizen and all hope is lost.

however, i'm always fond of "old villain who wants to atone" but that ship really has sailed, hasn't it?

Well, you don't really know. Master Xehanort and his clones could all end up being all the above.

 

[Chuman]

Well, you don't really know. Master Xehanort and his clones could all end up being all the above.

KH isn't really known for it's morally challenged, convincing villains who do what's right. so far they've all wanted kingdom hearts, however, the reasons haven't been revealed. there has been some speculation that xemnas wanted kingdom hearts to get back ventus and aqua, i think it was confirmed that was why he sent the organization to castle oblivion.

 

[DoctahFaz]

I predict Master Xehanort will be his own undoing as Gram said. Whether through betrayal from one of his vessels or negligence, he has made mistakes throughout the entire series yet has always been able to have a backup plan and/or improvise. That luck and flexibility can only last for so long. When it's all said and done, I think it will be a big risk to rely on his own versions of himself throughout time as they are all manipulative and selfish like him, opening the door to be a victim of the very type of deceit and betrayal that he has committed on others. (I think the YMX and Braig scene in Re:coded implies this, perhaps) MX has an uncanny ability to be prepared for every possibility, but he also got pretty lucky along the way as well, especially with the failure of Eraqus, Terra, and Ansem the Wise to realize what was going on behind their backs before it was too late.

I don't take AS strong of a view regarding DDD making Xemnas/Ansem or even the Apprentice irrelevant just because MX said it was him pulling strings the whole time because we have to keep in mind; he wasn't controlling them but rather he IS THEM. The post-BBS/pre-KH1 part of the story remains grey, but I think that there is a certain beauty to some things being left unsaid and to the imagination; here's my theory I've been thinking of recently of it all until we're told otherwise: immediately after Aqua defeated Terranort and he appeared with amnesia in Radiant Garden, I think Master Xehanort truly had amnesia, but like when YMX returned to Destiny Islands after time traveling, the memories of his past actions remained etched in his heart until they were awoken once more by the experiments conducted on him by Ansem the Wise and the Apprentices; they obviously didn't know (except Braig) that they were dealing with one of the most evil Keyblade Masters of all time who had taken over someone else's body.

After he and the other Apprentices betrayed and banished Ansem, I think it was safe to say that MX was back completely and, through both his prior knowledge and new knowledge gained as an apprentice with the others, he knew the attractiveness and viability of turning 13 Nobodies into vessels to represent the 13 Darknesses in the correct way (13 vs. 7 method) to forge the X-Blade. To split himself (and the others) into Heartless and Nobodies, he'd be able to start forming those 13 Darknesses (via Xemnas) and also develop yet another backup plan (via Ansem in time travel) in case it didn't work out. And he knew that once he had his 13 Darknesses, it wouldn't matter if he used the 7 Princesses of Heart or the 7 Guardians of Light to clash with as long as he had his side accounted for.

 

[ChibiHearts249]

it'd be cool if any single one of the xehanorts had ulterior motives that gave the finale some flavor, i'm still rooting for terra to shine because he was played majorly. all of TAV was in hindsight (although aqua unintendedly contributed) but being that terra is technically a xehanort, he should get some planning time.

I'm going back to this comment. Isa, anyone? Braig? His own younger, past self?

No matter how it happens, Xehanort WILL be the one to cause his own downfall. I just feels like the most fitting and satisfying thing that could possibly happen.

 

[Smithee]

And don't even get me started on him crapping all over TAV's sacrifices and credibility as heroes.

As a BBS fan, I actually felt like Nomura was reaching through the screen and slapping me in the face when MX did that.

 

[Samhain]

And don't even get me started on him crapping all over TAV's sacrifices and credibility as heroes.

As a BBS fan, I actually felt like Nomura was reaching through the screen and slapping me in the face when MX did that.

That's because Nomura has no idea what he's doing.
He ruined a good saga.

 

[Rolands]

I don't think his intelligence is too ridiculous. He's smart, but not unbelievably so. And I'm not sure why you think he makes everyone around his stupider? It's not like the KH crew were ever master planners, they largely solved each game's dilemma by attacking the problem head on.

I will grant you that time-travel and recompletion served to rather unfairly bolster his advantage. Although even without those things, he could've just planned to put one of his heart fragments in someone else before his demise to keep his ambition going.