I made a post with a theory regarding the William and his xanafied clone scene in CLE, it’s a scene that never made sense to me until I came up with the idea that maybe the reason why William seemed to want to join the clone at some point might be because he was “hypnotized” by it... Of course, I explain a lot more about that in here , I would greatly appreciate if you clicked it and showed the post some support or critique (I accept it)
(to make a long story short for why you are seeing this and not the post I am referring to, the post has refused to appear on the code lyoko tags since I first posted it, first couple times it was my fault, then it merely refused to appear again, been trying to make this post reach anyone else beyond me and some other people I show it to for more than one year, and only came up with the idea to write a post like this today, yay for my amazing mind *sigh*)
Theory about the William and his Xanafied clone scene in Code Lyoko Evolution
Small Warning: This is gonna be quite long and there will be mentions of manipulation/mentally influencing someone/hypnosis and near d*aths bc yk code lyoko stuff
So, it all happened when I was reading the official script of episode 15 (the image above is a little part from it), more specifically the part where the xana-william clone appears and “manipulates” William and William “joins the clone” and then he “turns against” it. This scene was always extremely confusing to me. Was william faking joining the clone so he could take care of him? Was william really believing the clone´s awful speech (yes it´s bad and I can make another whole post about why it is)? Why was Yumi so sure that William had joined the clone?
So many interpretations and none of them make sense, until I found this sentence: “Completely under the control of the clone” “. What´s so special about it you might say? Well, it finally made me understand how this scene could make actual sense.
First, I need to admit that this sentence could not be that literal, it could mean “he was successfully manipulated by the clone and is now doing what he wants”, but I prefer to interpret it as “he was mentally controlled by XANA again”.
Something else that points to this which I discovered only after a while but is important is that in the original script (in french), right at the start of the scene when William sees his clone the script reads: “William est comme fasciné par cette présence. Il ne bouge plus, comme hypnotisé.”. Which can be translated to: “William is fascinated by this presence. He does not move, as if hypnotized.”. Reminder, the definition of hypnosis is: “the induction of a state of consciousness in which a person apparently loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or direction.” And yeah it says “as if” but it can be still interpreted more literally (btw, Thanks to WindySilver for bringing this to my attention on discord).
“But how would XANA have any control on William’s mind without the scyphozoa?”, you may reasonably ask and, well, I can kind of answer how.
In episode 9 of code lyoko evolution, XANA sends a spectre that can clearly mentally influence people in certain ways. When Sissi bumps into it she´s really disturbed and the clone does something to her that makes her act weirdly and like her mind is not there. When Ulrich and Yumi see it, the spectre does something with it´s eyes and then they’re in a trance and they can´t move. And now I say, if XANA did a spectre that can put them in a trance or disturb people’s minds somehow (it all comes down to it being able to mentally influence people), is it that far-fetched it is that he creates a clone that can mentally influence someone in a more intense way and that had already been under XANA’s influence before?
(Yumi managed to escape from it’s effect after Ulrich shaked her a bit, of course, it’s not something without it’s flaws, likewise the indirect control i’ll explain is also flawed hence William being able to break out from it.)
Anyways, I shall now go into detail in the scene and interpret it with this theory in mind and I hope you can see how it makes sense for me.
The scene begins, the clone gives it´s speech that is supposed to manipulate William into joining XANA willingly, or at least it so appears. I believe the speech is just not able to manipulate someone in the more extreme way XANA intends to (maybe someday I’ll make another post on that), but, in this case, the clone wouldn´t need to manipulate William through his words only so that wouldn’t exactly matter, although it depends how exactly the effect passes, by seeing a certain thing in the clone, hearing it, being touched by it? Unfortunately, I’m not sure how to answer that. But, we can assume this speech is suppose to trigger the influence the clone has on him.
Besides that, it´s important to note that William doesn´t really move or speak throughout the speech, even when the clone attacks Yumi (sure, William may be shocked as hell but c’mon not reacting when his friend is hurt by a imitation of him in his darker days? Doesn’t exactly sound like him in my opinion), the only time he speaks after the clone´s speech is when he tells Yumi to shut up after he “joined” the clone.
And let’s remember, who also barely spoke? Xana-William (sometimes he said some sentences but he didn´t speak much let´s be honest).
We can interpret William not moving and being silent as an attempt from his part to fight against XANA´s control, there even is a small part where the clone says “Here you’re a king.” and William shakes his head which could mean, once again, fighting against XANA´s control and he even has his eyes closed like he’s deeply thinking. But then, unfortunately, he ends up joining the clone/being mentally influenced again anyways.
Yumi also tries to “wake him up” but it doesn´t work and she runs away while the Williams (since the clone looks like William I´ll just say it this way) run after her. We get a chase scene, Jeremie also tries to tell William that they´re a team and that they consider William their friend, then the clone says something along the lines of “Take a side” to William and it´s like he snaps out of it (and he finally speaks again and normally), and says that he´s chosen to fight against the clone. NOW, he was able to choose, before he wasn´t able to, and why would that be? Because his mind was under XANA’s influence.
In here, this would be him breaking control after Jeremie and Yumi´s supportive words and his own internal fight. This could be compared to the scene where Yumi made Xana-William remember that he wanted to fight against XANA and with the Lyoko Warriors in episode 76 of Code Lyoko, but in here since XANA doesn’t exactly have a direct influence over him and William has all his memories intact, Jeremie and Yumi´s words are enough to let him fight for control and win (and this time without going through a lot of mental pain, like in episode 76, and yes I don’t believe that was an act, it wouldn’t make sense for him to pull that one again with no Aelita and after he already tried it in episode 69, maybe I’ll also make a post about that scene someday).
After this Yumi runs to the tower and the Williams fight. And let me just quickly highlight how weird the clone acted in this part, he could have easily devirtualized William twice after William tried to devirtualize it but instead it just goes after Yumi and lets the boy there like he´s going to stay on the floor and not go after the clone to devirtualize it? I still can´t understand the clone´s actions, the plan to influence him failed so it doesn’t even need to take sympathy on him for the sake of that so ye I am confusion.
If someone has a reasonable explanation for this please tell because I literally can´t understand.
Anyways, William devirtualizes the clone, Yumi deactivates the tower, and all ends well. In the end of the episode, we get a scene of Yumi thanking William saying he saved them all, but, wouldn´t this not really make sense if William had truly joined XANA willingly for that bit and then, suddenly, he realized the obvious, that “oh I guess my friends are better than this dumbass artificial intelligence”. But what if Yumi noticed that he was literally being controlled and noticed how he internally fought to break free from XANA´s control for them?
I hope this made sense, I´m not trying to say that my interpretation is the correct one, especially since this is literally in the official summary:
(I can´t believe that “the words of his clone reach him” like it says above but okay)
It´s just that even if William was that badly hurt (In my defense, I haven´t watched all of code lyoko evolution yet so I don´t know what even exactly happened to him that was so bad), why would he, even for a second, willingly join the thing that took months away from his life, that took his grades, took his friends, didn’t let him see his parents and mind controlled him and used him (I know a year passed or whatever, but this is not the type of things someone forgets easily).
Why would the best option for him be join the clone, why would he even for a second believe in an artifical intelligence that wants to kill him, his friends (who were traumatized by XANA thanks to several near-death scenarios) and a hell lot of other people? It doesn´t make sense, even if he is extremely dumb and egotistical, it doesn´t seem realistic at all (unless William secretly wants to murder everyone, which is unlikely but- who knows)
On a last note, there’s also the possibility William was pretending and faking everything but that doesn’t really make sense for me-
Sorry if the post has mistakes, feel free to give your opinion, to agree or to disagree, (this post was written months and months ago so kinda old already but it holds up to my present opinion still tbh)
Have a good day/night!
