After over a decade of waiting, Samurai Jack’s quest to defeat the dark wizard Aku has finally come to a close. That’s right, Genndy Tartakovsky’s series about the samurai trapped in a dystopian future ruled by an evil wizard premiered its last episode this past Saturday. Nostalgia lovers everywhere finally got to see their favorite animated samurai’s journey back to the past come to the end.
The show returned after a 12-year hiatus, only this time to a late-night slot on Adult Swim as the content of the show was no longer appropriate for an evening slot on Cartoon Network. Samurai Jack, much like it’s original viewers, had matured. The show took on a darker tone and was allowed to depict more savage deaths and a lot of bright red blood. The final season gave us a more tragic side of Jack’s quest to get back to the past and introduced us to both new characters and brought back some old favorites as well. For those of you who haven’t seen the new season at all, there are spoilers ahead.
Jack has been stuck in the Aku’s dark future for 50 years now, and yet he cannot age. Aku evades him and every single one of his failures to defeat the dark wizard makes him lose hope and grow weary. He also begins to let his anger and rage get the better of him. As a result of allowing his negative emotions to consume him, his sword, the only weapon capable of destroying Aku, abandons him. The Jack that we are being exposed to over time is more relatable and realistic in a sense though. The decades of struggle have made him into a broken and haunted man, his spirits crushed after so much failure. Yet, Jack never loses hope or forgets his purpose and even learns to use the technology and weaponry of the future.
Along his journey to defeat Aku, he is also faced with a new group of enemies, the Daughters of Aku. These young women are from an all-female cult that worships Aku like a god, and were conceived when the high priestess consumed Aku’s own essence. Their mother trained them from the time they were children as warriors with a sole purpose, kill Samurai Jack. Jack encounters them on multiple occasions and is forced not only to fight them, but to kill them in order to survive. Soon all but one of the sisters have been killed, their leader, Ashi. Ashi tries numerous times to kill Jack after all of her sisters have perished at his hand, but she fails every single time. As times passes though, she grows to realize that Jack is not the enemy, and she becomes his greatest ally and the two eventually develop feelings for each other.
During the final battle with Aku though, Ashi realizes that in the presence of her father, her body is not hers to control and Aku forces his daughter to fight Jack, transforming her into an evil monster who will not stop until she kills the samurai. Realizing that he now has everything as he wants it, Aku broadcasts that he has captured Jack to the entire planet; thinking everyone else too weak and frightened of him to retaliate. The people and creatures of Earth, from the canine archaeologists to the ravers to the Scotsman (now a ghost) and his bonnie lasses, and several other people who Jack saved in his travels, are greatly angered by this and come to save Jack from Aku.
Meanwhile, Jack fights to save Ashi from being completely lost to Aku, and after much struggling she is able to gain control of her own body, and begins fighting her father alongside Jack, who now has his sword again. She also realizes that she was the same powers as her father, and opens a vortex, sending them back into the past several seconds after Aku had sent Jack ithrough the vortex that sent him into the future. It is back in the past that it all comes to an end and Jack finally destroys Aku, restoring the peace. It all seems like a perfect happy ending, Aku is gone, and Jack and Ashi are set to be married. It isn’t until she is walking down the aisle though that the truth hits. Since Aku was destroyed in Jack’s time, Ashi was completely erased from existence, and she disappears, leaving Jack heartbroken. In the very last moments of the episode Jack is seen still mourning Ashi’s disappearances, as he does this a ladybug lands on his hand and he smiles, reminding him of one of his encounters with Ashi from the future.
The finale episode was well-written and I enjoyed all the action, suspense, and passion that came with it, but if there is one word that sums up this whole episode, it’s bittersweet. I knew the moment that Jack delivered the final blow that Ahsi would have to disappear, but I did not expect them to milk it like they did. When Ashi did not disappear right away it got my hopes up that both Ashi and Jack could have the happy ending that they deserve, but then she disappears as they are just about to be married, making it all the more tragic. This came of as very deceiving to the audience and made many all the more upset about Ashi’s disappearance. Other than this one thing, the ending was what I would have expected for the ending of Samurai Jack. The ending showed us that Jack was finally at peace with himself and it left us with no questions to anyone else’s fate. As I realize now that this show has ended, I realize that another part of my and many other people’s childhood has come to a close.
