So I recently had a Bionicle-related fugue and binge-read the Bionicle Adventures books. I will probably be starting Bionicle Legends soon, but for now, I'm taking a break.
So anyway, the Shadowed One's whole thing of getting aged 3000 years is... weird. Like it doesn't make a huge amount of sense, because this is Bionicle, a series where even the mostly-organic characters have such monumentally huge lifespans that they make elves look short-lived.
By the point that Teridax power-bombs TSO into Voporak, TSO is already tens of thousands of years old, and shows no signs of slowing down. By his own account, he existed before Mata Nui made the Makuta species, and his whole empire started with a passive grudge against the Great Spirit's favouring the Matoran and later the Makuta.
Now, there've been fan-made explanations (I don't know if they're Greg-approved or not, but as a committed "Fuck forum retcons" guy, I don't particularly care, forum posts are supplemental at best) for why getting rapid-aged for what's barely equivalent to five years fucks up TSO so badly. The most common one is that this is a Tolkien-esque "translation," and the real answer is that TSO's mechanical parts just experienced 3000 years of no maintenance and he's rusty and breaking down. And that's all well and good, except surely if those parts can be maintained, they can be repaired.
The thing is, I actually think the answer is that TSO was barely inconvenienced by it in the long run, and was actually making a mountain out of a molehill.
I've made no secret of the fact that I don't think much of TSO. I've said before that I think Icarax should've killed him in 2008 instead of Botar, whom Greg clearly still needed, and I've made fun of him crashing out and starting a war because Dume understandably didn't want hired killers setting up shop in his city. I think he did a decent job as a one-off bad guy in Time Trap, and after that he was mostly superfluous, with his one contribution after said book being accidentally turning Zaktan into bees and giving up on killing him, presumably out of sheer confusion.
From then on, he's confined to the serials, because a random combiner model from 2005 was never going to actually matter in the main story ever again, and the end result is that he ends up feeling like a Teridax clone that Greg can do whatever with, except Teridax usurped the throne of god and TSO has a woman frozen in his basement.
But, having read Time Trap, along with TSO's self-written profile in the Dark Hunters book, and taking into account the events of the Toa-Dark Hunter War, I've walked away with a bit of a different view of the guy. I now see him as kind of a preening egomaniac whose pride was wounded far more than his body.
TSO's pride, and his overreactions whenever said pride is wounded, are well-established. As said above, he starts a war with Metru Nui because the extremely lawful Dume told him to fuck off, which ends with his army of professional killers being driven off by guys that don't kill at all. He starts another war with the Brotherhood because Teridax ate two of his least-effective guys, a war that the Dark Hunters have no hope of winning- it's noted that they only ever managed to mildly irritate the Brotherhood, who were simply too busy enacting their plan to topple the Great Spirit himself to care about exercising the modicum of effort to take the Hunters out.
I think, more than anything, TSO was humiliated. In a fit of bruised ego, he picked a fight with the most powerful being in the universe, managed to do some decent damage, and then got bodied. Teridax used his own sidekick as a weapon against him, and as we'd later find out, didn't even really use his good stuff. Terry's no slouch in physical combat, sure, but he really excels with his powers- it's something that Melding Teridax notes in Reign of Shadows, Prime Teridax expects that his counterpart will fight the same, and rely on his powers, whereas Melding Terry prefers to simply smash bad guys' faces in with a big hammer.
So the fact that Teridax just throws hands instead of breaking out the Kraata powers is an indication that he never really got serious. He no-sells everything TSO throws at him, picks him up, and drops him on Voporak, and that's it, fight over. The best that can be said for TSO's performance in the battle is that he made Teridax a bit mad. Even clipping his wings doesn't mean much against a teleporting shapeshifter.
And that ego is another way that TSO mirrors Teridax, because Terry has a giant ego all of his own. The difference between them, I think, is that Teridax is a performer, whereas TSO craves respect and gets mad when he doesn't get it.
Teridax loves having an audience to be impressed by his genius or horrified by his cruelty, preferably both at the same time. He sets up an execution for the Barraki instead of just killing them mid-battle, he gathers the other Makuta to witness his coup against Miserix, he puts on a show for the Toa Metru in Legends of Metru Nui, he does it again for Vakama in Time Trap, for the Toa Mata in Mata Nui Online Game, for Takanuva in Mask of Light, his tactic for delaying the Barraki from catching up with Matoro in Downfall is to grandstand about being the one who stopped them before, and he imprisons Helryx in Dwellers in Darkness so that he has a captive audience. It's even what does him in eventually, trying to kill everyone else in front of Mata Nui is what gives Mata Nui the chance to rally and knock him into the path of the incoming moon.
The thing is, I don't think Teridax has ever had a single doubt that he's the best. There's not a single drop of insecurity in him. He is the greatest and he knows it, his grandstanding is about showing that off to everyone else.
TSO, however, desperately needs respect. He's powerful, yes, but it's not enough. Hence the Metru Nui debacle, he decided that being a highly successful crime lord was his ticket to the big leagues, and when the designated face of the big leagues (Dume) didn't kowtow to him for his criminal enterprising, he started a war over it.
His defeat in Time Trap is his lowest moment, because he does it again. His pride is wounded by a slight against his organisation, he starts a war over it, and this ends badly for him. And whereas the Dark Hunters were at least winning for a while against the Toa, the war with the Makuta is immediately off to a bad start. The first exchange of the war is a battle between the leader of the Dark Hunters and his most powerful lieutenant, and the leader of the Brotherhood, and Teridax wins handily. The level of mistake that he's making here is immediately apparent, because the conflict begins with his humiliation in combat at the hands of Teridax.
TSO rules through fear. He says as much in Dark Hunters (the book), he visits terrible punishments on traitors and those who challenge the Hunters. The chain of command within his organisation is decided through fear. Lariska is essentially his heir apparent because the other Hunters know to fear her, and she fears him. But he has to put effort into achieving that. Meanwhile...
Teridax doesn't need to make threats. He doesn't need to even imply them. He has the Kraata power to invoke fear so badly that it can make the bravest people drop dead on the spot. Also unnecessary. Just by existing, just by being himself, people fear him.
Even getting bested by rookie Toa hasn't done anything to slow him down, the one character who decides that his defeat at the hands of the Metru is a big deal is Icarax, and Teridax quickly re-establishes the pecking order as soon as Icarax steps out of line.
Everything that TSO is trying to be, Teridax already is, effortlessly. And that's why it burns TSO so badly when they clash, and Teridax finds him wanting. All the work, all the effort that TSO puts into his reign of terror, and it's almost undone on the spot by someone for whom it all comes naturally.
The physical damage is less severe than it's held up to be, and can be repaired. But the mental wound is a permanent scar that will never heal. It sticks with him and burns away and he tells himself that it's about the debilitation of the rapid aging but it's really not. It's that he picked another fight that he's not going to win and paid the price.
Also, if TSO was actually severely weakened by this, Darkness would've shanked him. Like, the Dark Hunters have a guy whose entire thing is perching above TSO's throne and murdering him if he ever shows the slightest weakness. That didn't happen. He was fine.
