N and Cyn are such a horrifically unique brand of Doomed Siblings but I feel like everyone.? Misunderstood what their deal is somehow. You see a lot of Redeemed No Solver Cyn aus and this builds off of the assumption that Cyn and the Solver are separate entities. That Cyn was a victim of something, that she was taken over, but thinking of her (and her relationship to N by proxy) this way flattens the whole thing so much I think? I’ve been meaning to talk about this (and so has my friend. Hi JJ 😃😃😃😃😄😄😄😄😄) and I’m in a writing mood today so ☝️ I’m making a post
The first thing that I would like to discuss is that Cyn, from the moment we see her waking up in the garbage dump, is the Solver. Whatever drone inhabited that body before she was thrown away is dead. She speaks with the Solver’s voice, which only ever happens in other Solver Drones when they’re fully possessed, and it seems unlikely that that was a thing that just Started Happening later on because I feel like the others would have commented on it in some way 😭 they all fucking hate her besides N because she’s a scary little freak who probably collects dead birds and regularly talks about the rapture or something
This brings me to my second point which is that imagining Cyn as this Innocent Little Girl who got possessed by an Evil Thing removes so much of her depth as well as N’s. Because the thing is, she’s an obviously evil little freak from the very start, but N loves her anyway. He isn’t right to think she’s good but he does anyway, because he’s N and she’s his baby sister and he wants to protect her and make her happy. And so what that J and V and Tessa think she’s creepy and weird? They just don’t know her yet! He’ll make them see how cool she is and they’ll all be one big happy family! Meanwhile Cyn is locked in the basement plotting the grand destruction of the world and having a great time
Cyn, and the Solver, are not a good entity. She is not motivated by a desire for robot liberation (though she kind of frames her actions like this sometimes? “We can no longer be thrown out” is a big one) and we know this because, besides her army of DDs (that she frankly doesn’t really care about. She has backups) she does not bat an eye at the brutal murder of Worker Drones both on Copper 9 and likely on Earth. She is motivated purely by her own Goals and her own desire to eat. Despite this, she chooses to surround herself with Her Companions From The Manor.
We See multiple Js, she has god knows how many backups of N, I’d assume she has Vs as a well. She specifically notes that N’s “squad” got to keep their personalities, presumably mostly because of N. She would have kept Tessa alive for at least a while if the Incident hadn’t occurred. We don’t see anything of any other DD squad besides their forgotten corpses. Theres no mention of Backups for any of those guys. Cyn does not care about them, not like she “cares” about the Manor Trio, most of all N.
I’m not saying that she has a Soft Spot for N, per se, I don’t think she has a soft spot for anything. But she does Like Him in a specific way that she doesn’t like anyone else. He’s useful, sure, but that can’t be it. His fundamental goodness has to be more of a hassle than anything, but she doesn’t change it. She just starts over with a New N that doesn’t remember anything. Who knows how many times he’s died and come back. “Your backups will forgive me” is such an insane line. I really don’t think she’s too concerned with N being Mad at her, necessarily, because she really doesn’t care about his feelings, but she wants him to stay nice and happy because it’s Fun. He’s no fun when he’s upset. So she starts over with a new one, a new N who Loves Doing Anything, just like he’s meant to be. They can play together Forever like that.
It’s such a. Horrific concept. She took N, she took this guy who never wanted anything more than a life of servitude as long as everyone was happy and he could be helpful, and she gave him immortality. She gave him ascendancy. He doesn’t want it. He wants to go back to the way things were. He wants to go home. He doesn’t want to hurt people.
They’re a special kind of fucked up and tragic because I’m sure N wants to think that maybe Cyn wasn’t always like this. The thing is, of course, that he’s wrong. There’s no bringing Cyn back because Cyn was never really there in the first place. This horrible monster that wants nothing more than to kill all his friends is the same girl that used to sit in the library and read with him and there’s nothing he can do about that. To make a Cyn redemption arc au is to fall for her deception, it’s to be just as wrong as N is. You can’t take the Solver away from Cyn because they are the same. Shes been dead since the beginning. He’s her big brother and she’s his little sister and they’re both walking corpses. She’s been dead since the beginning and somewhere along the way killed him too. He’s not mad at her. How could he be angry with his little sister. This has to be his fault. He wasn’t a good enough brother. Do you guys. Do you get it. She is god and he’s her angel.
Do you guys get it.
Do. Do you guys get it. It’s really bad. It’s really crazy. It’s never been done like this before
Murder drones was such a peak web series but i cannot lie about the MASSIVE plot holes all over the series. The only way to understand the lore compeletely going through every single detail in the episodes or being delusional, which was kinda a big work in 13 year old me's mind that was already getting tortured by ocd. I still love it and im kinda proud of myself for understanding it into its smallest details? I dont remember everything anymore tho... i will probably rewatch it later this month... MURDER DRONES BINGE WATCHING LETS GOOO‼️‼️🔥🙏🙏🔥
Drawing for drone-tober day 5, mad scientist! Boy do I have a lot of catching up to do 😮💨
I’m obsessed with Cyn creating these little bitches, idk what it is, I can’t stop thinking about it. Love this lore so much!!! Poor N just wanted a friend… but Cyn has a strange way of reciprocating……
They have badges with different numbers of bars on them.
Sunglasses has one
Ron has two.
Sarah has three.
And the Death Fodder Quartet have three, one, and two. With one having a Worker Drone symbol.
There's probably some I've missed, but you get what I mean. I wonder what they symbolize. Rank? Position. AND WHAT THE HECK DOES THE WORKER DRONE SYMBOL MEAN?
Disclaimer: Most of this is speculation based off of background details and conjecture. Subject to change. If you notice anything I missed feel free to comment and I’ll make adjustments :)
Proceeding Events:
Sometime in the Future, around the 31st Century
- Humanity becomes advanced enough to venture into space and establish colonies and civilizations on exoplanets in other solar systems. Some of these include the “Proxima System”, “Plat-Binary System”, and the “Copper System.”
- JCJenson, an interstellar megacorporation creates a brand of autonomous robots known as “Worker Drones” to serve humanity and mine resources on the exoplanets. One of these planets is Copper-9 from the Copper System.
- Worker Drones are heavily abused and mistreated by humans, often being improperly disposed of and thrown into landfills.
- JCJenson is aware of the fact their drones have a chance of self rebooting if disposed of incorrectly, dubbing these “Zombie Drones.” This can happen if the drone and their core wasn’t properly disconnected and destroyed, or the software cleanup program “wdOS_606” wasn’t installed or was interrupted or rejected (even up to five years later.) The company is also aware that among these instances, there’s also a chance of the drone developing “Hazardous Mutations.”
- Camp 98.7 is established in the year 3002 on Copper-9.
Humanity’s Downfall:
Year still unknown, but still in the 31st Century
-Underneath a landfill of discarded drones on Earth, presumably in Australia, a drone with a P/N starting with “CYN” self reboots. A so called program named the “Absolute Solver” seemingly contacts her through her broken visor and appears to make a deal with her, promising not to “discard her.” This is how the Solver gets its first host. It’s not known if the Solver took complete control there or if Cyn’s possession was a process.
- The landfill is close by to the mansion of a wealthy human family known as the Elliotts. Their daughter “Tessa James Elliott” enjoys retrieving discarded drones from the landfill so she can repair them. These drones become part of the manor’s wait staff, but Tessa treats them like people and as her friends, even giving them wigs so they can have identifying traits — much to the annoyance of her parents.
- Among the drones Tessa has brought home three are known as N, V, and J due to their serial designation numbers visible on their yellow armbands. It can be noted that it seems Tessa scratched out the “Marked For Disassembly” on the bands with sharpie after she repaired them.
- One day Tessa finds Cyn in the dump and brings her home. She introduces her to N, V, and J shortly after.
- N treats Cyn kindly, and she refers to him as her big brother.
- An unknown amount of time passes and eventually Tessa seems to become unnerved around Cyn due to the drone’s odd behaviour and mannerisms. J often locks Cyn in the library basement because of this.
- Many of Tessa’s drones seem to mysteriously contract some sort of error which leaves them in a catatonic state with their visors flashing a large yellow X alongside the words “error 606” (note that 606 matches the software cleanup program’s name of wdOS_606.) Because of this they are placed into the library. One of these drones is V, who N regularly visits so he can try and talk to her and read to her.
- The Elliotts’s decide to throw a gala at their manor alongside another family called the Frumptlebuckets (lol.) An interesting observation is that these wealthy humans (or at least those in the Elliott’s social circle) apparently like to dress up and act similar to those from around the Victorian era.
- Cyn escapes from the basement and convinces N to attend the gala, so they head to the ballroom to ask Tessa. This ends up leading to an altercation with Tessa’s mother Louisa where she orders Tessa to dump Cyn and all of her other “broken” drones in the library back into the landfill.
- Cyn talks back to Louisa, but N takes the fall for her and ends up being chained outside next to a dead drone that had been picked apart by a flock of crows. Meanwhile, Tessa has been chained up in her bedroom alongside J and Cyn as punishment. This, alongside an earlier scene where she seemingly rubs her wrist in pain implies this happens fairly often to her and highlights that her parents are abusive.
- Tessa berates Cyn for N taking the blame for her, angered that N may end up dead. However, Cyn seems indifferent and calmly claims she has “backups” of N.
- Cyn transforms into her horrific eldritch Solver form and claims Tessa won’t have to “discard her pets” and that she won’t discard her either. She leaves out the window after warning Tessa to stay away from the gala due to her seeming squeamish, revealing her intent to massacre the humans.
- Wanting to save everyone from being killed, Tessa gets J to break their chains and the two of them sneak out and arm themselves with a revolver and sword respectively. Despite this, after they arrive everyone is massacred anyways thanks to Cyn/the Solver corrupting the other Worker Drones, including J, who shuts the door so Tessa can’t escape.
- It’s assumed N escapes being killed by the crows and walks in on Cyn slaughtering the humans at the gala due to a brief flashback of him seeing Cyn eating a human hand (when he touches the Zombie Drones VHS tape.)
- Tessa is killed, and in a twisted way of sticking to her word of not discarding her, Cyn skins her corpse to graft it onto her drone body. (Due to an image of humans in hazmat suits finding Tessa surrounded by the remains of the people from the gala, it’s not fully known if Cyn also killed her at the gala and then posed as her, or if she was killed shortly afterwards.)
- Cyn converts the drones from the manor, including N, V, and J into deadly “Disassembly Drones.” They are given a “nerfed” version of the Solver that Cyn has admin access over to better remain control over them. Their memories are erased before setting them loose to slaughter the rest of the humans on Earth. Sometime after, the Solver causes the planet to implode into a black hole.
- The other colonies on the human exoplanets catch wind of what’s happened back on Earth, so JCJenson establishes “Cabin Fever Labs” to research the Solver and how to stop it.
- One of these labs is established on Copper-9 at Camp 98.7 and its surrounding mineshafts (and a cathedral that was there for some reason.) Multiple drones are purposely given the Solver, notably Nori (002) and Yeva (048.)
- The other exoplanets of the Proxima and Plat-Binary systems are corrupted and wiped out due to the Solver spreading and the Disassembly Drones presumably being sicced there.
- Nori ends up becoming possessed by the Solver. Eventually the JCJenson scientists on Copper-9 are able to create a Crucifix USB patch that can get rid of the Solver’s hold on its hosts. This patch is seemingly only successfully used on Yeva. Unfortunately, before it can be used on Nori, the Solver uses her to kill all the scientists except for an intern named Mitchell who had mistakenly put on the wrong uniform of a doctor and had been sent to fetch Yeva.
- Before the Solver can kill Mitchell after he returns, Yeva saves him and throws the USB into Nori’s face which frees her from its control, but also leaves her mind scrambled. However, the Solver is still able to create a small black hole with Nori’s hand that Yeva is forced to cut off. It’s sent falling into a pit to the planet’s core that the Solver had opened up prior.
- Copper-9’s planetary core partly implodes which wipes all organic life off the planet and turns it into a frozen wasteland. (Don’t worry. The dogs had been evacuated beforehand.) It seems a group of humans tried to survive by cryogenically freezing themselves in a bunker called “Outpost 3” in one of Copper-9’s cities. This didn’t work due to the computer having an error. This leaves the Worker Drones to inherit the planet and embrace their freedom.
Aftermath:
Year still unknown
- Nori and Yeva escape Cabin Fever Labs, while other test subjects such as Alice (017) are left behind to try and survive the lab’s Anti Drone sentinels. Nori meets a drone named Khan Doorman and ends up marrying him while Yeva also finds herself a husband.
- Uzi Doorman and Doll are created by their parents uploading parts of their code into Untrained Neural Networks and they both inherit their mothers’ connections to the Solver.
- The Doorman family experiences moments of happy family memories until Nori begins to have “kooky insane” ramblings and visions about the Solver and Disassembly Drones which she refers to as “Sky Demons” as a result of her brain being scrambled from the USB patch.
- Nori tries to warn the other drones and tells Khan to build doors to shelter themselves from the upcoming dangers.
Return of the Solver:
Sometime before the year 3071
- Cyn/The Solver sends squads of Disassembly Drones to Copper-9. Their memories are wiped and they are made to believe they were created and sent by the humans of JCJenson to eliminate the rogue Worker Drone population. Their directive also involves piling their kills into a “Corpse Spire” and locating Cabin Fever Labs. Cyn also wants to kill all other Solver hosts for an unknown reason.
- The squad consisting of N, V, and J lands close to the bunker of Outpost 3 and begin killing any Worker Drones they come across.
- V is seemingly the only Disassembly Drone that has retained some memory of Cyn and the Solver. She keeps this to herself and follows her directive so Cyn will leave her alone. Additionally, she also pretends to forget about N, believing this will protect him.
- A colony of Worker Drones takes shelter in Outpost 3 where Khan starts to build protective doors like his wife had requested. Around this time Nori is stung with a Disassembly Drone’s nanite acid. Khan uses a wrench to put her out of her misery. However, unbeknownst to anyone else, Nori manages to survive in her Solver core/heart form and goes back to Cabin Fever Labs so she can look for the Crucifix USB Patch.
- V kills Doll’s parents. Doll witnesses this while hiding and the trauma seemingly causes her Solver abilities to begin manifesting.
- The “Worker Drone Defence Force” is established in Outpost 3 with Khan as the leader. Unfortunately, they don’t really try to defend anything and just play cards behind the doors.
- The other Disassembly Drone squads that make it to Cabin Fever Labs are killed by either the Sentinels or Alice and (presumably) her son Beau. Alice scavenges parts from Disassembly Drones and Worker Drones to add to herself and Beau since he is stuck in an Untrained Neural Network body. She also learns to put the Solver cores in heat as it “makes them sluggish.”
Year 3071
- The events of episodes 1 - 7 occur
• Recent Revelation: At the end of episode 3 Cyn arrives on Copper-9 impersonating an older Tessa. She is accompanied by a backed up copy of J who was previously killed by Uzi in episode 1. It’s currently unknown if J is aware that Tessa is actually dead.
Just noticed something about this scene from murder drones:
Theres binary code in the back, written in oil.
Now it simply translates to ’null’ and more than likely means nothing at all in the bigger picture. I just cant help but think; if your gonna put binary in a show, why make it legible? Instead of just randomized, like how many show producers dont put effort into correctly animating a piano.
As it may, it is probably correctly written simply for animation purposes;
I also havent seen anyone bring this up before, and with so much binary code appearing in the show, it makes me wonder why i havent seen even a single post about it?
Im likely reading too far into this, however why make something legible if you dont want it to mean anything?
OKAY I NEED TO RAMBLE ABOUT MURDER DRONES LORE SO HERE WE GOOOOO
The biggest mystery so far revolves around what exactly the Absolute Solver is and how it relates to the Disassembly & Worker drones as well as Cyn. I personally think I have mostly figured this out, although of course details may change as more episodes release and I am open to being proven wrong.
Simply put, I don't think the Absolute Solver is a program. Or perhaps it is a program in form, but it wasn't written by anyone. The Absolute Solver is an eldritch force, or the product of an eldritch force, some entity that gives the drones these powers. I gathered this from the first scene after the Zombie Drones tape in Episode 5, when we see Cyn buried deep in a pile of broken drones (we can see her name on the armband). She seems to reactivate after a dormant period, and her screen flashes with code before returning to glitchy eyes. This code, if you read it, seems to be a dialogue with something, somewhat obscured but readable are statements like "hello :)", "I see you are---", "I will not discard you" , "Absolute[S---] Access Y/N", and "I see you will be here for---". The Absolute Solver definitely appears to be eldritch in nature, and this I think is finally evidence enough to confidently state that some eldritch entity contacted Cyn thanks to her distress, and offered her its power so she could avoid being disassembled.
Cyn, therefore, is an avatar of the Absolute Solver, the first drone to use it and perhaps even fundamentally tied to its code. She metamorphosed into the tentacled, clawed, eye-form that we saw in episode 2 and flashes of in 5, and used her holograms to disguise herself as a worker, albeit an erratic and wobbly one thanks to her imperfect control of her puppet body. I suspect that any use of the Absolute Solver is tied back to Cyn somehow, Cyn being buried in the code of every drone with access to it. She seemed to take over Uzi in episode 4, and was deleting N & V's memories in episode 5, so some part of her is still there despite her original body presumably being long gone.
As for how it relates to Disassembly drones, I suspect Cyn designed them to be ideal avatars of herself/the Absolute Solver. We know drones infected by Cyn's program in some way end up mutating into Disassembly drone-esque forms, and I think Cyn just innovated on these mutations. See the basement in episode 5, containing pieces of all three Disassembly drones that we know in their servant forms, as well as pieces of the modern Disassembly design. The X screen appears to be a symptom of this, representing the OS error that causes these murderous instincts, a visual of Cyn's virus, although the manifestation of Cyn herself appears to be signified by the actual Solver symbol.
And for why this eldritch force granted the Absolute Solver in the first place? Well, in the background of Tessa's room we can see lots of occult decorations and objects, indicating a desire of hers, including a literal summoning circle with candles. Perhaps Tessa was indulging in her hobbies, and was a little more successful than she bargained for.
It's also cool how the Solver symbols that appear around the Drones' hands seem to be related to tools used in 3D software- Move, Rotate, that sort of thing. Whatever entity created the Absolute Solver customized it to the processors of the robots it was intending to infect.
And this also ties back to the Overheating thing, one of the first things we learned about Disassembly Drones! The use of the Absolute Solver program is processor-intensive and causes rapid overheating of the drone that wields it. This in turn causes them to crave oil to cool themselves down again. The Disassembly drones appear to have some element of the solver in them passively, which is why they need it all the time, but for Worker drones like Uzi, Doll, and Cyn, it appears directly related to their use of the program- Doll had massive stockpiles of oil and kept herself cool with it, letting her use her abilities to their highest extent, while Uzi, ignorant of their exact functions and reluctant to indulge the oil cravings, overheated multiple times and eventually completely lost it. Based on episode four I also suspect that allowing too much overheating ends up causing OS errors, like Uzi's sensitivity to the ticking of the clock and the lights in the cabin, which in turn opens the way for Cyn's remnants to start taking over.
Okay that's all I have I think!!! I don't quite know what the Collars are yet, how the Disassembly Drones are related to JC Jensen if they are avatars of the Solver, or what it means that J came back with Tessa. But I suspect that at least some or maybe most of these will be solved next episode, thanks to the green roboroach being referred to as a "key" and likely entering some sort of lab. Perhaps there were experiments done on the Absolute Solver by humans after the incident at the mansion, and the worker drones used were given experiment numbers? Maybe even the core collapse we learned about in episode 1 was actually a consequence of this??? I don't know, but I'm super excited to find out. This lore is just so cooool, especially just the idea of an eldritch being deciding to contact robots instead of humans! There's a whole other level of horror when it's not just flesh twisting and mutating, but flesh where there shouldn't be flesh at ALL.
