hi trafficblr. i cannot believe i have to explain watchers in the year of our lord 2021, but alas, martyn inthelittlewood has thrown a bat at the quietly humming hornets nest that lives in my brain and i’m now mentally unstable. so without further ado, here’s the complete Luna Explains Watchers And Grian’s Relationship To Them In Evo (please be nice to luna he binged grian’s series in like a month over summer break because hyperfixation brain go brrrr and nobody else’s because he’s the worst) HERE WE GO
grian did a series called evolution smp back in 2017, before his entrance onto hermitcraft, with a bunch of other friends of his, including jimmy, martyn, big b, pearl, taurtis, system zee, and nettyplays!
that series introduced the concept of the watchers, angel-like beings who facilitated the portals between versions for the evo smp, because evo was basically like time traveling through updates, from the very first multiplayer functioning update to the end update! i say until the end update, but that’s not where it really ended for most people. that’s where it ended for grian.
grian was the admin and owner of evo smp until around mid 2017, when he left the server due to drifting interest and a feeling that it was taking over his channel. now. this is where the watchers come back into play.
the watchers and grian had. a weird relationship. the watchers enjoyed testing players, giving riddles and gifts and little dungeons for them to find the next version portals and to give them goals. their most explicit goal for most of the series was find the end.
now as you may know. grian is a little shit. and in his evo days, he was even MORE of a little shit!
he had the only mob farm on the server and used it to get frankly insane amounts of gunpowder, and with a little desert locating, he gave himself a nearly unlimited supply of tnt. to give you an idea of how he used this tnt, there was a war between the police and the mafia. netty once said that she feared grian more than both the police AND the LITERAL FUCKING MAFIA. and he wasn’t even INVOLVED IN THE CONFLICT
grian also used clay as the primary building block for his base. that seems minuscule but i promise i’m gonna get back to the watchers it’s important for you to remember the clay,
so the watchers like fucking with players, right? they like testin em. giving them great challenges. making em better people. from what i have just said do you think evo grian would be considered a good person
grian decides to steal clay from the watchers’ temple. clay that was put there explicitly to test who would take it. the next day, he wakes up to obsidian covering every single one of his chests and a statue of an angelic woman in the middle of his base with a sign that instructs him to mine all the clay in the statue and burn it to purge himself of his greed
guess what grian does to the statue! you’ll never guess!
yeah he explodes that shit. oops.
he says EXPLICITLY that he will not listen to the watchers. he considers them bossy and authoritarian and rather than burning the clay he blows up the entire statue with frankly excessive amounts of tnt
SO. we have established that evo grian is a sacrilegious little bitch at this point right (the statue incident is not the only time he does this but it is the most memorable one)? grian’s evo series ends with a dragon fight where all of the players go to the end and are split up to each fight the dragon alone. they all beat the dragon, presumably, but when they step through the portal, they are not greeted by the usual end poem…
instead, the blue and green text at the end are the voices of the watchers, who speak directly to the players— they’ve chosen grian, of all people, to join them in the watcher’s realm, and the poem and series ends with him saying goodbye to his friends and home, a new blood red text entering the changed poem. and that’s all the canon evo stuff! it seriously ends so… suddenly, on grian’s end? jimmy had just pranked him before they set off, one of his buildings in downtown evo was in ruins from the tnt, and he just. vanished entirely. never returned to fix anything ever again.
now, the listeners! i admittedly don’t know much about the listeners, but from what i know, jimmy and martyn piqued their interest. after grian was taken, the players returned to evo, searching for new chunks to call home since the older chunks were becoming increasingly glitchy and corrupted from constant updating. except jimmy. jimmy was plucked up by the listeners and made to do a quest in the abandoned evo world before finally being sent back to the rest of the server, where he and martyn reunited. the listeners appear to be a rebellious faction of the watchers, and knowing what we know now, we know that the listeners were right to tell the evolutionists not to trust the watchers. the listeners warned the evolutionists that the watchers weren’t as peaceful as they seemed, and it seems like they’re right.
“so, luna,” i can hear you saying, because i’m epic as hell and can sense all your lovely questions before they’ve even been asked, “that’s all cool and all, and your nerd shit is crazy, but what’s that mean for last life?”
well!! a few things.
1. martyn is either a listener or still listener-aligned. (you’re more of a… listener.) i think it’s more of a player-patron situation rather than he IS one, just because i think it’d fit better.
2. martyn has been used as a pawn by the watchers to enforce the game and curses they started. they admit to being the ones behind the boogeyman curse (3, 2, 1– all it took) and they had a vendetta against scott because he defied their curse. and scott won. take that bitchass angels haha L
3. the watchers had promised martyn that all of his allies would be safe (impulse, mumbo, jimmy… make it to the end), excepting, notably, grian.
4. oh yeah grian’s straight up not supposed to be in last life and also is a runaway watcher (oh. HIM. he was only meant to watch). so like after evo something happened and he booked it outta there and straight into a death game. or he made the game but went rogue when he decided he didn’t want to go through with it. diversity win???
5. oh boy the watchers are EVIL. we have actual evil watchers now that’s. crazy HDKSFJ in evo they were only presented as calm, angelic beings; it’s only in fanon that they took on that more sinister side, but, well! it’s not just in fanon now i guess!
hopefully this post helped some people! i did my best to stick to canon with the summary. i also went off memory and my own knowledge exclusively, so! if you have any corrections or additions, just rb this post with them and i’ll put them on my blog :^D! happy finale day guys and what the fuck, martyn, if you’re seeing this. this is everything i’ve ever wanted but also i’m devastated how could you.
