The "secret to destroying evil," AKA the stupidest, most infuriating plot twist of my childhood.
Even when I was a kid who watched cartoons because I liked bright colors, I hated this subplot. Now that I'm an ancient old crone, I can articulate why it not only contradicts the entire point of the second season, but it also directly opposes all the show's most prominent themes.
Xiaolin Showdown has a somewhat unique spin on Good vs Evil. On the surface, it's pretty black and white: the good guys know they're the good guys, the bad guys know they're the bad guys, and everyone involved seems perfectly happy where they are. However, the show swiftly introduces a twist: anyone on either side can switch teams. Raimundo joins Wuya, Jack joins the monks to defeat Wuya, and then both boys switch back. None of these characters are good or evil due to an innate nature; they're all choosing to be where they are, and they are free to choose otherwise at any point.
Enter Chase Young, who tries to exploit exactly that by convincing Omi to join the side of evil. He spends an entire season attempting and failing to do so. At one point, he and Omi utilize the Eagle Scope and Fountain of Hui, and Chase Young makes Omi promise not to look up "the secret to destroying evil," whatever that is. Omi gives his word, but he later reveals that he peeked and saw the answer anyway. Put a pin on all that; we'll come back to it.
Enter the Ying and Yang Yoyos, which separate a person's "good" half and "bad" half, therefore removing one's choice to be good or evil. These Shen Gong Wu reveal something the audience could have already guessed by now: every single character has both good and evil within them. Omi, our incorruptibly pure goody-goody protagonist, turns evil. Jack, self-proclaimed evil boy genius, turns good. The show makes it extremely, brutally clear that every single character (when whole) is capable of good or evil.
Anyway, Omi is coerced into joining Chase Young, his friends get his good chi back, and then the monks win Omi's freedom back. Here, Omi laments that he didn't utilize what he learned about "the secret to destroying evil."
Here, dumb child me has to ask, "Well, what is that secret?"
Now I know this is a kid's show. The writers aren't about to drop some Big Philosophical Truth about destroying the entire concept of evil. They can keep that answer a secret from their audience... except no, they can't, because how can there BE a secret to destroying evil when the entire show has repeatedly spelled out that everyone is capable of evil? The only possible answer I can think of is to destroy everyone capable of evil, aka everyone, period. As a kid, that was where I thought the show was going: if Omi had broken his word and attempted to destroy evil, he would have destroyed everything because you can't have one without the other.
But no, we get the show's dumbest plot twist instead: Chase Young reveals that he was holding the Reversing Mirror the whole time, and Omi actually saw the secret to destroy good. Despite all the themes in the show regarding choices and capabilities, there is, apparently, a way to "destroy evil," a way that is the opposite of how to "destroy good."
At this, dumb child me frowns at the family's 12 inch tube TV and says, "WHAT?"
Maybe this could have worked if the writers had been interested in exploring what those secrets are. Some mass worldwide spell regarding one of the Yoyos, perhaps? But nahhh, this whole idea about destroying evil or good gets dropped forever, and neither Chase nor Omi ever bring it up again.
You might be asking why this subplot in particular irritated me so much that I'm now writing an essay about a show that aired twenty years ago. Well, I rewatched the series earlier this year, and I asked myself what this subplot is here to do. What is the point of it existing if we're going to keep its actual subject matter a secret from the idiot child audience?
For one, it does add to the themes about good, evil, and choice when it comes to Omi. He breaks his word to Chase Young and "peeks" at the secret to destroying evil, revealing that he's not so above it all. However, he corrects this behavior and then refuses to utilize what he saw, even when his friends suggest that he do so. He chooses to maintain his integrity, a character trait that Chase exploits in the very next episode. All of this works just fine.
But why end this whole nonsense with the Reversing Mirror plot twist? Why does the whole thing end with Omi learning he was right all along, not only about the importance of keeping his word (which nearly doomed the planet, mind you), but also about Chase Young still having good in him?
Aha, there it is. The point of this plot twist was to keep Chase Young ~morally ambiguous~.
Up until the season finale, Chase Young had been a mysterious opponent. His goal to tempt Omi is clear and shown multiple times, but for a long while, he seems like he'll play fair. He literally says, "One can only be evil if one chooses to be." For the whole season, what seems to separate him from the other villains is his refusal to cheat, which makes him appear honorable and possibly even redeemable in Omi's eyes. However, despite his insistence that he always has the upper hand, he continuously fails to do the one thing he's trying to do: tempt Omi to the side of evil.
Therefore, as soon as the Yoyos show up, Chase Young drops the facade. Now that Omi believes he's honorable, he can lie and cheat all he wants. He abandons the whole idea about "choosing to be evil," tricks Omi into giving up his good chi, coerces him into eternal servitude, turns him into a cat, and steals his dots for himself. (Would now be a good time to point out that Wuya did not betray Raimundo the same way?) In the end, Chase Young chooses to be just as evil as all the other villains. All his displays of honor and reason were there because those are traits that Omi values, and his goal was to gain Omi's trust. Once he no longer needed said trust, the qualities disappeared.
So now the writers have a problem: with Chase Young no longer the "honorable," possibly redeemable villain, one of the most compelling elements in Season 2 is gone. How can they get that back for Season 3? How can they convince their idiot child audience that our favorite lying lizard hypocrite is, in fact, still honorable and not a lying lizard hypocrite?
Their answer, apparently: reveal that Chase Young was tricking Omi into witnessing the secret to destroy good, something that not only exists, but is also apparently the opposite of destroying evil. Let's introduce the dumbest, most illogical concept in the show and then drop it immediately and forever, all for the sake of getting Omi to say, "That was very good of you," minutes after escaping cat enslavement.
i love it and hate it when a character in a story is so obviously created to be cool and awesome and then i do think they're cool and awesome. like fuck, yeah, ok, they're fucking epic. swag as hell. you got me you coolbaited me ok? i'm coolbaited.
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
call me crazy but i think public transportation should explicitly also be for actively drunk/high people. so they don’t, you know, drive under the influence.
i literally don’t care how afraid you are of drunk people. if they’re behaving well enough then there’s no reason to kick them off the bus.
if you can’t recognize it’s better for society for drunk people to have a way home that doesn’t involve them driving and potentially getting people killed then you just kind of suck actually.
i'm the guy who writes the books that the protagonist in supernatural horror movies frantically reads somewhere in act ii. job's pretty easy. lot of "legends of vampires have recurred all throughout human history" and "demonologists agree that the quickest way to un-summon a demon is to trap it in a cursed object". no citations of course; they don't pay me citation money. i had to learn html back in the early aughts when everyone started seeking their supernatural info on websites they found via top search engines like FINDLER and WEBSIGHT but that's died down now which is great because i didn't have it in me to pick up css. currently working on a new book about horses that are evil. it's called HORSES THAT ARE EVIL in all caps so the protagonist can find it quickly to yank off the library shelf. it will be published 35 years ago.
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