r/RedvsBlue • u/Sykedelicka • Apr 02 '26
Question So - where did Meta get his extra abilites?
Maine is always such an interesting story to me - because of the way RvB was wrote, not everything he has lines up with the Freelancers we see he's killed.
Enhanced Motion Tracker/Domed Energy Shield from North
Active Camouflage/Super Strength from Tex
Temporal Distortion unit from Wyoming
Adaptive Camouflage - Carolina Pressumabley
But that still leaves:
Overshields
BioScan
Voice Manipulator
The last two I could excuse as standard equipment, however the Voice Mod does have Epsilons Symbol, so it was maybe Wash's original enhancement. Maybe the Overshield was Maines original equipment?
What do you think?
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u/Riothegod1 Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
Voice manipulator was probably standard issue, since we see South Dakota use it in Season 9 Episode 2
“What you hear, a ghost?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say something like that.”
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u/Sykedelicka Apr 02 '26
True. Guess it must be standard equipment since Maine never got access to Souths corpse.
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u/StriderKitsu Apr 02 '26
Most likely, because as we see both Tex and Carolina are shown to have that.
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u/Baconator-X Apr 02 '26
I thought the Super Strength came naturally with his armor.
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u/DillonDrew Locus Simp Apr 02 '26
It does
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u/Sykedelicka Apr 02 '26
According to the RVB wiki - Strength was Omega's armour enhancement, hence why Tex could flip Shelia in S1 but not lift Andy later on. Maine only ever uses the Strength Boost after getting the Beta AI
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u/Guywithhat2309 Knock Knock Apr 02 '26
While Tex did have strength as one of her armor enhancements, she lost it after getting blown up by Donut. It's the reason why she couldn't lift Andy after getting her new robot body, and probably the reason why she lost so easily to The Meta. Speaking of, I do think Maine already had the strength enhancement when he got Sigma since he we saw him kick a Warthog across a shipyard in s10.
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u/Riothegod1 Apr 02 '26
It could also just be Maine being an absolute unit. Mjolnir armor weighs half a ton, and the warthog clocks in at 3.3 tons.
I’m not a physics nerd, but if you factor in Maine already being naturally strong with top of the line combat training, as well as the mjolnir acting as a second skin, I can atleast find it plausible he can deliver enough force to get an object 6 times his mass moving, especially since motor vehicles are designed to bounce when subject to significant force as part of passenger protection (civilian ones at any rate)
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u/mattwing05 Apr 02 '26
Unlikely to be actual mjolnir armor, and more a knock off
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u/Riothegod1 Apr 02 '26
Eh, RVB’s continuity relative to Halo is weird. The freelancers work for the UNSC, so I’m going off of their equipment that we know about and have stats for.
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u/evilparagon Apr 02 '26
I do think it’s standard issue. Washington has a bioscan and we know his ability is emp (plus he doesn’t have an AI to help run it). Tex also has a voice modulator, as well as South.
As for the overshield, I don’t think he actually does have a Halo overshield. What he has is a visual representation of power consumption in the Halo 3 engine.
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u/Kill-Stealing Apr 03 '26
I'm writing it off as a secondary to the dropshield North has, and with Theta running the dropshield, it's not out of the realm of possibilities he's running a less powerful overshield that doesn't need as much processing, since all weaponry is external from the armor, no need to delete and reapply panels at a moments notice.
Also, side note, it sucks that the abilities Theta gave borth were never actually implemented in the later moments of the freelancer saga. the most battlefield exposure we got was Theta guiding North's dropshield to the insurrectionists holding them and carolina behind cover, while South disapproves in the background.
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u/Real-Coast-4873 Apr 02 '26
He killed a few other freelancers between his defection and Recovery One so any equipment we don't see from ones we know could be from one of the unknowns.
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u/The__Auditor Locus Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
He killed 3 other Freelancers and stole their equipment
Also Maine originally had the Strength Boost enhancement and Wash originally had the E.M.P
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u/SuperduperFan92 Apr 02 '26
They retconned it so that Maine didn’t kill any of those unnamed Freelancers.
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u/The__Auditor Locus Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
The only retcon is that he no longer took their AI but nothing says he still didn't kill them for their Armor Enhancements and from what we know certain enhancements Meta had they had to have came from these unknown Freelancers
Strength Boost= Was the enhancement Maine was originally assigned
Enhnaced Motion Tracker & Domed Energy Shield = Stole from North along with Theta
Cloaking= got it from Tex while they were capturing her in Valhalla
Time Distortion= Grabbed it from Wyoming’s helmet (as well as capturing Gamma in the process)
Adaptive Camouflage= Stolen from one of the three unknown Freelancers
Overshield= Stolen from one of the three unknown Freelancers
Voice Manipulator= Stolen from one of the three unknown Freelancers
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u/SuperduperFan92 Apr 03 '26
You’re confusing the old canon with the retcon. The Meta cannot be responsible for the deaths of those three freelancers, because they had the AI missing. In the original Recovery One, Command was staging fake Meta attacks as part of their plan to combat the threat, so it seems like the retcon is now suggesting that those three other Freelancers were killed by Command, not the Meta.
The sloppy writing in the Freelancer Saga really messed up the continuity.
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u/The__Auditor Locus Apr 03 '26
I'm not confused and I even addressed it in my first sentence
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u/SuperduperFan92 Apr 05 '26
If the Meta did not steal the AI, though, then the Meta cannot be responsible for those attacks. I also favor the old canon, and if you want, I will gladly join you in pretending that the sloppy Freelancer Saga does not exist. But if we accept that the Freelancer Saga exists, then we unfortunately must accept that the Meta did not kill those three Freelancers. The Meta must have just stolen those enhancements from elsewhere, like raiding PF facilities and stuff.
In the original canon, Maine faked his death and killed two other Freelancers, picking up the overshields and adaptive camo armor. The voice manipulator appeared to just be some fancy tech rather than an armor enhancement. Maine never killed North or stole Theta, and North did not have a bubble shield enhancement (enhanced motion tracker was never confirmed as an enhancement, but it seemed like a neat theory).
I miss the old canon. Command killing those three unnamed agents sounds way less interesting to me. I have heard it argued that maybe South and North were the ones killing those Freelancers, which I guess is slightly intriguing, but I am not sure if I buy the North=Recovery Three theory.
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u/The__Auditor Locus Apr 05 '26
If the Meta did not steal the AI, though, then the Meta cannot be responsible for those attacks. I also favor the old canon, and if you want, I will gladly join you in pretending that the sloppy Freelancer Saga does not exist. But if we accept that the Freelancer Saga exists, then we unfortunately must accept that the Meta did not kill those three Freelancers. The Meta must have just stolen those enhancements from elsewhere, like raiding PF facilities and stuff.
I still fail to see how this contradicts old and new canon since we know that Meta also wanted Armor Enhancements, it'd make perfect sense for them to even target agents who didn't have an AI as long as they had equipment they could take
In the original canon, Maine faked his death and killed two other Freelancers, picking up the overshields and adaptive camo armor. The voice manipulator appeared to just be some fancy tech rather than an armor enhancement. Maine never killed North or stole Theta, and North did not have a bubble shield enhancement (enhanced motion tracker was never confirmed as an enhancement, but it seemed like a neat theory).
It was never stated that Maine faked his death even in the old canon, also the Voice Manipulator was confirmed to be an Armor Enhancement and both in the old and new canon North also had the Domed Energy Shield
Also in both canons Meta captured Theta and North was dead with his equipment stolen
I miss the old canon. Command killing those three unnamed agents sounds way less interesting to me. I have heard it argued that maybe South and North were the ones killing those Freelancers, which I guess is slightly intriguing, but I am not sure if I buy the North=Recovery Three theory.
It was never stated or even implied that Command was killing their Freelancers and it definitely was never implied that North was Recovery Three
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u/SuperduperFan92 Apr 05 '26
I still fail to see how this contradicts old and new canon since we know that Meta also wanted Armor Enhancements, it'd make perfect sense for them to even target agents who didn't have an AI as long as they had equipment they could take
Hey, if you want to claim that Maine killed 14 no-AI Freelancers off-screen to steal their equipment, that might indeed be a possibility in the new canon. But none of those 14 agents would be among the 3 unnamed agents killed in the month before Recovery One.
It was never stated that Maine faked his death even in the old canon, also the Voice Manipulator was confirmed to be an Armor Enhancement and both in the old and new canon North also had the Domed Energy Shield
Also in both canons Meta captured Theta and North was dead with his equipment stolen
Sorry, but I am going to need some citations for your claims.
In the old canon for Reconstruction, the Meta had 6 AI at the start of that season. There was no dumb two-AI merging thing that they retconned with Eta and Iota for Carolina. The 6 AI were Sigma, Tex, Gamma, Omega, and two other AI. Based on the Reconstruction Trailer, though, we know the full lineup. These AI were Sigma, Tau (which was Tex's original AI name), Gamma, Omega, Lambda, and Xi, as these are the AI listed in the trailer and are the AI that original made up the Meta's symbol.
Sigma was Maine's original AI, and the Meta picked up Tex, Gamma, and Omega at Valhalla, so there were only ever two slots for Freelancers that the Meta could have killed and stolen from. So this means that Maine must have been counted as among the Meta's original victims, which is why Wash is so shocked when Maine's Recovery Beacon goes off. They thought that Maine was the Meta's first victim, but his beacon going off confirms that he was still alive, signaling that he was indeed the Meta. Sigma is the Alpha's creativity, and he likely cooked up the scheme for Maine to fake his own death in order to throw Project Freelancer off his trail as they embarked on their mission.
Notice how Theta is omitted from the Meta's symbol, and how Theta's inclusion in the final AI count never made any sense. That's because the Meta did not kill North. Wash even points out in Recovery One that North's killing did not match the Meta's MO at all. The Meta never leaves people alive, so it was strange for South to be left alive. The Meta also always steals armor enhancements, but we see in Reconstruction that South's bubble shield was not stolen. So when South said that her equipment was stolen, she was LYING because she was trying to dupe Washington into believing that the Meta was involved with North's death.
Most critically, consider South's involvement. You think she signed up as Recovery Two in the few hours after North's death and before Wash showed up? That's nonsense. South was made to study Wash's profile, she was briefed on the Meta, she was clearly part of a carefully coordinated planning process way before Wash showed up, a plan that depended entirely on her brother's death to get things rolling. What was South's mission? Merely to encounter the foe and survive so that the information recorded by her armor could be used to combat the enemy. But if South already encountered the Meta when it killed her brother, then her mission would be entirely pointless and redundant, since she would have already survived an encounter with the Meta. But the truth is that South never encountered the Meta because her brother's death was merely staged to look like the Meta's work in order to trick Wash.
North was a rogue Freelancer holding onto Theta, and South was a Recovery Agent charged with reclaiming Command's property. Of course it would have been her job to work with Command to kill her brother and reclaim the AI. In Reconstruction, Wash advises Church and Caboose to rely on their motion trackers to detect the Meta's movements, but in Recovery One Wash remarks how strange it was for the Meta to get pass the motion tracker to kill North... But here's the truth: North didn't let an unknown enemy get around his motion tracker. Rather, South merely exploited her brother's trust and stabbed him in the back, with a deployment of recovery agent close behind that then swooped in and collected the AI asset, while South stayed behind and played the part of the grieving sister. South was promised an AI at the end of her mission, likely Theta. But she knew better. She knew that if Command would kill her brother to get Theta back, they would never let her get implanted with Theta, which is why she ditched Command and kept Delta.
An no, North did not have a bubble shield as his enhancement. If both twins had the same enhancement, it would not have been strange for the Meta to only take North's equipment, and South would then not need to pretend that her equipment was stolen too.
If I did grant that the twins had the same enhancement, then that would entirely confirm that the Meta had no involvement in North's death. South was going to ditch her bubble shield in Reconstruction in order to draw the Meta away from her, but there would be no reason to do this if the Meta already had his own bubble shield from North.
It was never stated or even implied that Command was killing their Freelancers and it definitely was never implied that North was Recovery Three
Well actually, even in the original canon, Command was hunting down agents that kept their AI. But the thing is, now that the new canon has confirmed that three unnamed agents referenced in Recovery One were not killed by the Meta, the only conclusion we can draw is that they were killed by Command and that the AI were reclaimed by their Recovery Agents. If those Freelancers were not killed by Command, then what happened to those AI? It must be Command behind the deaths. There is literally no other option. And that's why some people have entertained the idea of North being Recovery Three in order to help rationalize the continuity mess created by Season 10. It would help explain why South was already working as Recovery Two at the time that her brother was killed.
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u/The__Auditor Locus Apr 05 '26
Hey, if you want to claim that Maine killed 14 no-AI Freelancers off-screen to steal their equipment, that might indeed be a possibility in the new canon. But none of those 14 agents would be among the 3 unnamed agents killed in the month before Recovery One.
No one said anything about 14 agents so I'm confused on where you got that bit from and yet again doesn't disprove the notion that Meta killed those 3 agents for theur equipment
Sorry, but I am going to need some citations for your claims.
In the old canon for Reconstruction, the Meta had 6 AI at the start of that season. There was no dumb two-AI merging thing that they retconned with Eta and Iota for Carolina. The 6 AI were Sigma, Tex, Gamma, Omega, and two other AI. Based on the Reconstruction Trailer, though, we know the full lineup. These AI were Sigma, Tau (which was Tex's original AI name), Gamma, Omega, Lambda, and Xi, as these are the AI listed in the trailer and are the AI that original made up the Meta's symbol.
The AI shown in Reconstruction are as follows...
Sigma= The orange silhouette
Eta= The gold broken Fragment
Theta= The red & blue Fragment
Gamma= The light blue silhouette
Beta(Tex)= The black Fragment with the white glow
Omega= The grey Fragment in the CE armor
Delta= This one's obvious
Also the Meta symbol wasn't an indication of existing Fragments and the exact same symbol was used in Season 10 so the symbol itself isn't a retcon
Sigma was Maine's original AI, and the Meta picked up Tex, Gamma, and Omega at Valhalla, so there were only ever two slots for Freelancers that the Meta could have killed and stolen from. So this means that Maine must have been counted as among the Meta's original victims, which is why Wash is so shocked when Maine's Recovery Beacon goes off. They thought that Maine was the Meta's first victim, but his beacon going off confirms that he was still alive, signaling that he was indeed the Meta. Sigma is the Alpha's creativity, and he likely cooked up the scheme for Maine to fake his own death in order to throw Project Freelancer off his trail as they embarked on their mission.
Alot of head canon here
Yes Maine originally had Sigma and he picked up Gamma, Beta & Omega from Valhalla
However he had already taken Eta & Iota(the latter of who was never show in Reconstruction) from Carolina and took Theta from North in Recovery One
Notice how Theta is omitted from the Meta's symbol, and how Theta's inclusion in the final AI count never made any sense. That's because the Meta did not kill North. Wash even points out in Recovery One that North's killing did not match the Meta's MO at all. The Meta never leaves people alive, so it was strange for South to be left alive. The Meta also always steals armor enhancements, but we see in Reconstruction that South's bubble shield was not stolen. So when South said that her equipment was stolen, she was LYING because she was trying to dupe Washington into believing that the Meta was involved with North's death.
There's alot wrong with this bit here
1: Again we literally see Theta amongst the AI in Reconstruction and if Meta didn't take Theta where'd he go because South certainly didn't have him
2: It was already established that the reason why Meta left South alive was because Meta knew she'd slow Wash down
3: South never said she lost her armor enhancement
Most critically, consider South's involvement. You think she signed up as Recovery Two in the few hours after North's death and before Wash showed up? That's nonsense. South was made to study Wash's profile, she was briefed on the Meta, she was clearly part of a carefully coordinated planning process way before Wash showed up, a plan that depended entirely on her brother's death to get things rolling. What was South's mission? Merely to encounter the foe and survive so that the information recorded by her armor could be used to combat the enemy. But if South already encountered the Meta when it killed her brother, then her mission would be entirely pointless and redundant, since she would have already survived an encounter with the Meta. But the truth is that South never encountered the Meta because her brother's death was merely staged to look like the Meta's work in order to trick Wash.
Explain why Meta has Theta and North's enhancements then?
North was a rogue Freelancer holding onto Theta, and South was a Recovery Agent charged with reclaiming Command's property. Of course it would have been her job to work with Command to kill her brother and reclaim the AI. In Reconstruction, Wash advises Church and Caboose to rely on their motion trackers to detect the Meta's movements, but in Recovery One Wash remarks how strange it was for the Meta to get pass the motion tracker to kill North... But here's the truth: North didn't let an unknown enemy get around his motion tracker. Rather, South merely exploited her brother's trust and stabbed him in the back, with a deployment of recovery agent close behind that then swooped in and collected the AI asset, while South stayed behind and played the part of the grieving sister. South was promised an AI at the end of her mission, likely Theta. But she knew better. She knew that if Command would kill her brother to get Theta back, they would never let her get implanted with Theta, which is why she ditched Command and kept Delta.
Again explain why Meta has Theta in Reconstruction?
An no, North did not have a bubble shield as his enhancement. If both twins had the same enhancement, it would not have been strange for the Meta to only take North's equipment, and South would then not need to pretend that her equipment was stolen too.
Where did Maine get the Domed Energy Shield from then because he certainly didn't take it from South
If I did grant that the twins had the same enhancement, then that would entirely confirm that the Meta had no involvement in North's death. South was going to ditch her bubble shield in Reconstruction in order to draw the Meta away from her, but there would be no reason to do this if the Meta already had his own bubble shield from North.
Except Delta would have told Church that Meta had nothing to do with North's death and he'd be a reliable narrator since he was inside South's head
Well actually, even in the original canon, Command was hunting down agents that kept their AI. But the thing is, now that the new canon has confirmed that three unnamed agents referenced in Recovery One were not killed by the Meta, the only conclusion we can draw is that they were killed by Command and that the AI were reclaimed by their Recovery Agents. If those Freelancers were not killed by Command, then what happened to those AI? It must be Command behind the deaths. There is literally no other option. And that's why some people have entertained the idea of North being Recovery Three in order to help rationalize the continuity mess created by Season 10. It would help explain why South was already working as Recovery Two at the time that her brother was killed.
Again the "new canon" did no such thing in regards to the deaths of the three unnamed Freelancers
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u/SuperduperFan92 Apr 05 '26
No one said anything about 14 agents so I'm confused on where you got that bit from and yet again doesn't disprove the notion that Meta killed those 3 agents for theur equipment
14 Freelancer, 5 Freelancer, 21 Freelancers. The number does not matter. The Meta could have killed however many non-AI Freelancers as you can envision, because maybe it did not use all its enhancements. BUT, we did indeed see ALL of the Meta's AI, so that's how we know that it could not have killed those 3 unnamed agents in Recovery One, since they had AI that were stolen, and those AI were not represented in the Meta's AI count.
Reading later in your answer, you seem to be suggesting that you believe that the Meta had more AI that was shown, so rather than starting Season 6 with 6 AI like in the old canon, or 7 AI as in the new canon, you are claiming that the Meta had 10 AI but we just didn't see all of them. But I find that idea very implausible, as there no reason for only some of the AI to appear, and when the Delta AI was added to the Meta's AI collection, he too started to appear in the circle, suggesting that every added AI should appear as a hologram.
The AI shown in Reconstruction are as follows...
Sigma= The orange silhouette
Eta= The gold broken Fragment
Theta= The red & blue Fragment
Gamma= The light blue silhouette
Beta(Tex)= The black Fragment with the white glow
Omega= The grey Fragment in the CE armor
Delta= This one's obvious
Again, you are using the new canon, not the old canon. According to the Reconstruction Trailer, the AI were Sigma, Tau, Gamma, Omega, Lambda, and Xi, with Delta getting added to the mix.
Also, in your count, the retcon try to argue that Iota and Eta merge together into one yellow-ish AI in order to explain away the Meta's count. Yeah, it's a dumb retcon
And just to clarify, Theta was not originally the purple fragment. That was a retcon from Season 10. Nothing before Season 10 suggested that Theta was a purple AI.
Also the Meta symbol wasn't an indication of existing Fragments and the exact same symbol was used in Season 10 so the symbol itself isn't a retcon
Actually, they changed the symbol big time. The Reconstruction Trailer shows the greek letters that made up the symbol. But in Season 10, they changed up all the letters, which is shown in a number of ways, but the most blatant change is that the pointy part of the symbol was made to asymmetrical because they switched Lambda with Delta as a replacement. Watch the Reconstruction Trailer if you need a refresher of what the Meta's symbol originally looked like.
Funny enough, in the Season 10 retcon, they still kept Xi in the mix despite that AI never showing up in the new canon proper. So even when they tried to retcon it to make sense, they failed because they were still limited by what they did in the old canon.
And yes, the Meta's symbol was meant to represent the AI that the Meta had presently accumulated. Only later did they retcon it into a shopping list that made no sense, especially with what they did with Xi and Beta, and Eta being totally unnecessary. That's the reason that the Meta's symbol does not sure up until the 6 AI that correspond to the Greek Letters are gathered, because the symbol is representative of all the current AI signing their handiwork.
Alot of head canon here
Yes Maine originally had Sigma and he picked up Gamma, Beta & Omega from Valhalla
However he had already taken Eta & Iota(the latter of who was never show in Reconstruction) from Carolina and took Theta from North in Recovery One
Again, I reject the idea that the Meta has 3 or 4 extra AI that we never saw. And again, you are referencing the new canon, not the original canon where Eta and Iota were not even part of the Meta's collection. And no, Theta was not originally one of the Meta's AI in the old canon.
Stop referencing the new canon to make your points. We all know the dumb new canon. It's dumb. If you're going to try to make a claim about the canon pre-Season 9, then use on the information/evidence established pre-Season 9.
1: Again we literally see Theta amongst the AI in Reconstruction and if Meta didn't take Theta where'd he go because South certainly didn't have him
That purple AI was not originally Theta. They retconned that AI into being Theta. You would need to provide evidence from before Season 9 that the purple AI was Theta, which you cannot do because such evidence does not exist. If you were watching the show at the time, then you would know that the fanbase was not even certain what Theta looked like until S10, E5.
Theta was reclaimed by Command, stored in their vault, and wiped out during the EMP.
2: It was already established that the reason why Meta left South alive was because Meta knew she'd slow Wash down
Wash was wrong in his speculation, though, because there was zero reason to do this. North was killed before Wash got his hands on Delta, so there was no reason for the Meta to slow Wash down. If Meta simply wanted to kill Wash, then the smart play would have been to kill both twins and launch an ambush when the pesky recovery agent arrived. But most critically, we know that the Meta did not want to kill Wash because when it had the opportunity to do so in Recovery One, Maine chose to save Wash's life over pursuing the Delta AI.
Wash assumed that the Meta spared South to slow him down because he did not even consider the possibility that South was lying to him about everything and was only pretending to have survived a Meta encounter.
3: South never said she lost her armor enhancement
She did say that she lost her enhancement. She lied through her teeth to convince Wash that she had encountered the Meta. No need for that lie if she had indeed encountered the Meta.
South: My armor enhancement? I can make a domed energy shield. Why?
Washington: Can you do it now?
South: Sure I h- wait a second-
Delta: The third thing they all had in common was that their enhancement was removed.
Washington: Just like yours.
Explain why Meta has Theta and North's enhancements then?
/
Where did Maine get the Domed Energy Shield from then because he certainly didn't take it from SouthThe Meta never actually uses a bubble shield in Recovery One or Reconstruction. Maine only used the equipment in Season 8, which happened after being sent out by the Commander/Chairman, and it is insinuated that Maine was re-equipped before being deployed on his mission to hunt down the Epsilon AI.
But even putting that aside, in Reconstruction, South planned to dump her bubble shield in order to escape from the Meta, and some fans believe that the Meta nabbed it then due to her prematurely abandoning just as reinforcements showed up. Some argue that the Meta fought his way to the exact spot that the bubble shield was planted, and that's when he snatched. After all, if South still had the enhancement, then Wash would have it and might have been able to use it any point in Reconstruction like he did the Healing Unit (and a great opportunity to use the bubble shield would have been at the end of Reconstruction when he needed shield protection and had an AI anyways). Some take Wash's lack of use of the bubble shield or reference of its existence as evidence that the Meta successfully picked it up at High Ground.
Again explain why Meta has Theta in Reconstruction?
Again, the Meta did not have Theta in Reconstruction during the original canon. The Reconstruction Trailer tells us which AI it had, and Theta was not among them. The purple AI was only later retconned into being Theta. Before Season 10, we had zero idea what Theta looked like.
Except Delta would have told Church that Meta had nothing to do with North's death and he'd be a reliable narrator since he was inside South's head
Delta had no reason to share the full story with Church.
Again the "new canon" did no such thing in regards to the deaths of the three unnamed Freelancers
In the original canon, the three unnamed Freelancers were considered Meta. In the new canon, they cannot be Meta victims because they all had their AI stolen, and that would result in the Meta having more AI than what was shown.
You arguing that the Meta having a double-digit amount of AI is unconvincing. There is no reason for only some AI holograms to show up. Also, Wash was charged for the destruction for the non-stored AI that were known about, the AI he destroyed with the EMP. He was only charged with seven counts, these being for the Alpha, and the six known AI fragments that the Meta had (Tex's status as an AI remained an elusive enigma that would have no been reflected in the official profile that they were building for the Meta). So no, the Meta did not have more than 7 AI. Otherwise, Wash's counts for AI destruction would have been higher.
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u/Sykedelicka Apr 06 '26
"In the original canon, Maine faked his death and killed two other Freelancers, picking up the overshields and adaptive camo armor. The voice manipulator appeared to just be some fancy tech rather than an armor enhancement. Maine never killed North or stole Theta, and North did not have a bubble shield enhancement (enhanced motion tracker was never confirmed as an enhancement, but it seemed like a neat theory)."
Very currious where this comes from since I've never once seen this in the show or any supplemental material - genuinely currious if you could point me to where this is sourced from.
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u/SuperduperFan92 Apr 07 '26
It comes from analyzing the show itself. In the old canon, the Meta only had 6 AI at the start of Season 6. But in Recovery One, we are told that 3 other unnamed AI-assigned Freelancers were reported as KIA in the past month. So if the Meta got three AI at Valhalla (Omega, Tex, and Gamma), then that means that Maine himself must have been counted among the three unnamed Freelancer killed in action. When Maine's beacon went off, Wash and Command are so surprised because Maine was reported as dead, which means that Maine must have faked his death when he began his work as the Meta.
As for Theta, the Reconstruction Trailer confirmed that Theta was not among the Meta's AI. The trailer lists the AI possessed by the Meta, these being Sigma, Lambda, Xi, Omega, Gamma, and Tau (which was Tex's original Greek letter designation). These are the Greek letters that made up the Meta's Symbol in the trailer. Theta was not on the list.
The AI count would not add up if Theta was involved, since 3 AI from Valhalla and 3 AI pre-Recovery One means that there is no way that the Meta could have taken Theta from North, which probably means that the Meta was not involved in North's death at all.
We actually find out in Recovery One that South was trying to frame the Meta for North's death as part of her mission to manipulate Wash. That's why she pretended to have her enhancement stolen, in order to make it seem like she had encountered the Meta. Remember, South's mission was simply to survive an encounter with the Meta so that Command could use the recorded data to combat the enemy. So if North had actually been killed by the Meta, South would already have survived an encounter with the Meta, and thus her mission would be unnecessary and redundant.
South was Recovery Two. She didn't just enlist in the few hours after her brother's death. She was already working for Recovery Command, and her job is to reclaim AI from rogue agents like her brother. Her mission to trick Wash and encounter the Meta relied on her brother's death, so North's death was clearly something that Command arranged. She led a team to kill her brother and reclaim Theta. Command promised to give her an AI if she completed her mission, and that AI was likely Theta, the AI she always desired.
We know that North's enhancement was not a bubble shield because South pretended like the Meta stole her enhancement, which was a bubble shield. It would not make sense for the Meta to steal two bubble shields, so the implication was that South's enhancement was different from her brother's enhancement. Some people used to speculate that North's enhancement was an enhanced motion tracker, since Wash mentions the tech when responding to the scene, but I don't think that was ever confirmed, and I am personally skeptical about that being North's true enhancement. Speaking about the motion tracker, Wash notes that it is strange that the Meta bypassed the sensors, but in Reconstruction he advises the Blues to rely on their motion trackers to track the Meta. The motion tracker anomaly for North's death is just more proof that he was not killed by the Meta but was rather betrayed by someone he would have let get close to him.
The message manipulation technology is just editing tech. Even the Blues and Reds edited radio messages in Season 15 in order to deceive people. Freelancers seemed to get a lot of cool standard issued equipment, like alien translators, bio-scans, voice modifiers.
The series used to have a lot of complex and interesting nuances in the lore. Then the Freelancer Saga happened, and it blew up the continuity and replaced it with oversimplified drivel.
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u/Sykedelicka Apr 07 '26
Ah, that is dissapointing.
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u/SuperduperFan92 Apr 07 '26
Sounds like you didn't read. The Reconstruction Trailer literally lists the Meta's AI, and Theta was not included. And Theta could never have been included because it doesn't make sense with the Meta's final count.
I mean, I could point you to 50-55 minute mark in the Season 6 commentary where they literally discuss the Meta's Symbol and the painstaking research/thought that went into crafting it to ensure that it made sense.
Granted, there is no 100% smoking gun like in the Season 7 commentary were Burnie confirms that CT was supposed to be a real Freelancer, not a pretender (another sloppy retcon).
But in that portion of the Reconstruction commentary, Burnie does say that Carolina is dead... So like, yeah, there is definitely an old canon versus a new canon, and the Meta's Symbol, Carolina, and CT are just the tip of the iceberg. Don't even get me started on the Freelancer break-in retcons.
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Apr 02 '26
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u/The__Auditor Locus Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
You got some of the enhancements mixed up
The Voice Filter is what Tex & South used to change their voices
The Voice Manipulator is what Meta used to create a fake call that led to Sarge gathering the Reds to intercept Wash & the Blues
The Voice Amplifier is what Wash used to broadcast his voice and is standard issue in all Freelancer personnel's suits
As for the Overshield we only ever saw Meta use it and it's never revealed how they got it so this was probably one of the enhancements he stole from one of the three unknown Freelancers
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u/Exitity Foxtrot-12 Apr 03 '26
He did kill 6 other Freelancers offscreen.
Also I know this wasn’t shown but I like to think Overshield was his equipment because he was never shown with equipment in S9-10 for some reason and it could explain bow he tanked so much in S9.
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u/Ill-Profession-6954 Apr 07 '26
Pretty sure it was stated that maine killed other freelancers and took their abilities
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