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The Chosen One's redemption: Why did it happen?

Since his reintroduction within the world of Animator vs. Animation within its fifth episode (or the AvA Shorts if you wanna be more specific) one of the most interesting characters that this series has to offer, at least in my opinion, is The Chosen One.

Introduced intially as an antagonistic force to the Animator/Alan. Despite having minimal appearances overall, The Chosen One has had a massive impact on the plot overall. Due to being the one to destroy Alan's computer and forcing him to get a new one, which inadvertedly lead to the creation of The Second Coming.

All things considered, you can thank The Chosen One for pretty much the entire series going forward, even if indirectly. With all that said though, there's one thing that's always been somewhat bothering me about his character, and it's something that I wanted to explore roday. With that thing being his redemption.

Now on the surface, there doesn't really seem like there's much to discuss in the way of Chosen's change of heart. He disliked what The Dark Lord was doing, do he decided to stop him, pretty simple right? Well... that's where things get complicated, and it all comes down to The Chosen One's vague moral code.

The Chosen One, the moment he was created, was a beast of mass destruction. He immediately started attacking Alan and causing havoc around his PC, and unlike victim that came beforehand, this wasn't instigated by Alan attempting to kill him. He was just given life and decided he wanted to destroy shit. And that's how he was for at least the first episode. He was incredibly destructive and uncontrollable. Why exactly? Well it's strongly implied that it comes with the name, judging by Alan's interaction with progammer021 on AIM.

It seems that in this world, naming your stick figure "The Chosen One" instantly turns them into lethal weapons. Because of this, you could almost say that The Chosen One was simply an amoral program who destroyed because it was part of his nature. As a matter of fact, analyzing his behavior in his debut episode he almost acts like that of a wild animal. Tearing up documents and destroying programs with no real rhyme or reason, and defending himself against anyone who would try to stop him.

In Animator vs. Animation II though, things become a lot more interesting. As this episode starts to give The Chosen One more dimension, he starts acting less like a feral creature, and more like a person who's been caged, enslaved if you will, and is yearning for release.

Following The Chosen One managing to release himself from Alan's grip. He continues his rampage from several years ago. Though this one noticeably feels more spiteful. While his first attack upon his awakening seems more like he was simply destroying things because of his nature, here it feels a lot more targetted at Alan, which makes sense considering he obviously hates the guy's guts for what he did to him. That isn't to say he doesn't still exhibit old traits though. He still does a lot of things in this episode that come off as somewhat childish in nature, such as eating Alan's required essay Pac-Man style.

However, the biggest thing I believe that this episode shows isn't the fact that The Chosen One is more humanlike than we might initially give him credit for, but it also shows that he has agency. Morals even, and there's no better show of that, than with his alliance with The Dark Lord.

The Chosen One's friendship with The Dark Lord is a weird one. Cause all things considered he had no reason to even want to ally with him. They had been enemies up until that point and it would've been more beneficial for him to just kill him off right then and there. But he didn't, instead, he offered an alliance, for the two of them to team up and rise against their oppressive creator. This, to me, shows that even in the early days, The Chosen One was more than just a stick figure of mass destruction, he was a person, and that all leads back to the main topic of this post, his redemption.

The Chosen One's redemption has always been a weird one to me. The main reason being that we aren't actually given an explanation for why he changed. Yes, we know that he didn't approve of Dark's actions, and that's a big reason for why he redeemed himself. But what exactly about his actions did he not approve of? It can't of been the sheer fact that he was causing destruction or endangeroug lives because well... The Chosen One had already been doing that, years before his redemption

As a matter of fact, The Chosen One was the whole reason The Dark Lord became a villain in the first place. So if not for the sheer fact of Dark putting innocents at risk being the reason he decided to change his ways, then what was it? Well I believe there are two likely explanations for what caused this change.

The first is the one that a good majority of the Animator vs. Animation fanbase believe to be the most likely of them, and that is that The Chosen One has standards against harming his own kind.

Now there's actually a lot to support this theory. The biggest one being when Chosen imagines what would happen if Dark released the ViraBots onto the internet.

Many have pointed out that in this vision, Chosen only imagined stick figures running away from Dark's entourage, and how that's what caused him to put his foot down. There's also the fact that the moment Chosen starts having second thoughts, is when they start attacking Newgrounds, a place populated by stick figures.

Hell there was even evidence of this before his redemption. All the way back in Animator vs. Animation III, Chosen chose to spare Dark and become friends with him. This would make a whole lot of sense if we look at this through the lens of Chosen not liking the idea of hurting his own kind.

There is... one pause I have with his however. And that is with the fact that The Chosen One, doesn't seem to just object killing fellow stick figures. Going back to the Newgrounds flashback, the last shot we see before we fast forward to present day, shows The Dark Lord holding the Tankman by the neck while Chosen pleads for him to stop. Tankman isn't a stick figure, so going by the logic that he only takes issue with him hurting other stick figures, why would he care about this? Well you could argue that maybe him seeing what Dark was doing to other stick figures gave him a wake up call and made him realize that them hurting other programs was wrong, but I believe there is another possible explanation for this.

Explanation two: The Chosen One was never meant to be a villain. Let me ask you a question, were you born believing that you had a specific purpose, a specific reason to exist, and you spent most of your life thinking that's what you wanted, only to realize overtime how unfulfilled it made you feel? Well I believe that The Chosen One might just be experencing this exact thing

The Chosen One, since his very first days, was a destructive monster. He destroys things, he wreaked havoc, and there was seemingly no way to control him. Though beyond that he was also an incredibly young stick figure, one that, as noted above, acted rather childish. However, by the time of Animator vs. Animation V, which going by the date displayed on Alan's computer, took place in 2018, The Chosen One would've been around eleven years old. That's more than a decade of doing the same thing, and it's clear that it took its toll on him.

In his official reintroduction to the series, The Chosen One is noticeably colder than he was when we last saw him. He completely ignored the praise he was receiving from the other sticks, and at no point do we see him getting up to any sort of childish antics. He feels a lot more mature here, like a stick figure who has grown a lot since his creation.

So considering his clear change in personality, would it be crazy to assume that perhaps his enjoyment in destructive habits did to?

The Chosen One is one of the oldest stick figures in this series, and in that time it seems like he spent most of his life doing the same thing, destroying.

So, assuming that the Newgrounds raid happened not too long before his confrontation with Dark. Perhaps The Chosen One was feeling a sense of emotional dissatisfaction. Looking at the inital shot, it does kind of come off that way, with how his hands are slowly extinguishing of their flames as he watches over the destruction. Perhaps in that moment, he realized he wasn't enjoying it anymore, as a matter of fact, he might've even felt guilty about it, if him pleading for Dark to release the Tankman is anything to go by. Really in a broader sense, I think The Chosen One, kind of had a moment of self-reflection. He finally let the years catch up to him and it made him realize how emotionally unfulfilled he was.

After all, he isn't just some amoral beast, he's a stick figure. A stick figure with its own agency. And we know for a fact that stick figures in this series possess almost humanlike intelligence, so is it bold to assume that, in the decade he's been doing the same thing, he doesn't feel satisfied anymore? In my opinion, I think that's a possibility.

To take this a step forward, I might even go as far as to to argue that The Chosen One was never meant for destruction in the first place. Yes, he was born a monster, but that doesn't necessarily mean he meant to be one. As early as the third episode of the series, The Chosen One already showed to be a lot more human than we may have initally suspected, he has already shown to be capable of mercy and kindness, even when he was this supposedly ruthless villain.

Let's take a look at Chosen's name for a moment. "The Chosen One", what does it mean? Well according to wikipedia a Chosen One is "a narrative trope where one character, usually the protagonist, is framed as the inevitable hero or antihero of the story, as a result of destiny" now I dunno about you, but this sounds pretty similar to the character journey that The Chosen One underwent. He may have started out a villain, but through destiny (in this case The Dark Lord's full descent into villainy), he became the hero of the story. Maybe, this had been his true purpose from the start.

Hell, let's dive even deeper into this idea. Who is The Chosen One's archnemesis? The Dark Lord, and what does Dark Lord mean in fiction? well, looking at wikipedia again, a Dark Lord is "an antagonistic archetype, acting as the pinnacle of villainy and evil within a typically heroic narrative." which I dunno about you, but that sounds pretty fitting considering that The Dark Lord is by far the most evil antagonist this series has ever seen and one of the few who hasn't redeemed in some way. I should also mention that, even before The Dark Lord joined the Chosen One, he was fighting on the side of Alan, someone who, at this point in this series, was arguably the main villain. He created a stick figure just so he could torture and kill them, and he enslaved The Chosen One for four years, sure Chosen kinda had that one coming, but even then Alan had no reason to be that cruel to him when he could've just killed him or kept him contained. But instead he decided to use him, like an object, that doesn't really sound like a hero to me. Not to mention that Alan was literally the one who gave The Dark Lord his name. All things considered, you could almost consider Chosen the hero in that scenario for trying to destroy his creator. Which kind of loops back to my original point, that The Chosen One wasn't meant to be a villain. Even in the beginning he was meant to be a hero, even if he didn't realize it. Which is why he ultimately left his past as a villain behind, because it was a life that was never made for him, a life that only provided a temporary sense of satisfcation. Meanwhile The Dark Lord, someone who's name alone means to be the worst of the worst, would become an irredeemable monster who The Chosen One, as the inevitable hero decided by destiny, would have to stop.

Oh, and one last thing that goes to support this theory, ya know The Second Coming? Well if you remember, he was meant to be The Chosen One's reincarnation, his return. So isn't it convenient that he is possibly the most heroic character in the series, not to mention he also started in the same roots as Chosen did? A rogue stick figure who fought against Alan before redeeming himself? Keep in mind, The Second Coming only exists because of The Chosen One's actions. So all things considered... maybe his redemption was a lot more inevitable than any of us first thought.

On that note, I think that's me for today, thank you all for taking valuable time out of your day to read this analysis, I greatly appreciate it. Here's hoping that more come in the future

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