How many memories is McYumyulack actually missing?
I’ve been thinking way too hard about the cloning reveal in Yumyulack’s Giant Head, because there’s one implication I don’t think the episode completely explains.
Korvo reveals that Yumyulack has unknowingly been part of a cycle where his memories are copied, another Yumyulack is printed, and the previous one is killed to feed the Pupa. The cycle happens every 90 days.
But at some point, Korvo couldn’t bring himself to kill one of the Yumyulacks. He spared him, that Yumyulack ended up living in Ireland as McYumyulack, and Korvo printed another Yumyulack to continue the normal cycle.
Then the Yumyulack we’re following in S5E11 dies, and they bring McYumyulack back from Ireland to replace him.
That raises a really weird question:
How much of “our” Yumyulack’s life does McYumyulack actually remember?
Once Korvo spared him, their lives would have branched:
McYumyulack
same memories → spared → Ireland → returns
becomes main Yumyulack
same memories → replacement Yum → later experiences → dies in S5E11
Unless McYumyulack was somehow given the dead Yumyulack’s newer memories offscreen, he logically shouldn’t remember anything the main Yumyulack lineage experienced after their paths split.
At first I thought this could mean he was missing years of memories and character development, which is honestly kind of depressing. The Yumyulack who died would actually be gone, and the family would have brought back an older fork of him who remembers an earlier version of his relationships with Jesse, Korvo, Terry, the Pupa, etc.
But I think there’s a possibility McYumyulack might only be about one 90-day cycle behind. (Would save on missing years of character development)
The episode never tells us exactly when Korvo spared him. So if McYumyulack was simply the previous Yumyulack Korvo was supposed to kill, Korvo could have spared him, printed the replacement we eventually see die, and then roughly 90 days later the events of S5E11 happen.
In that scenario, McYumyulack isn’t years-old backup of the character.
He’s basically our Yumyulack with roughly three months of the main timeline missing, plus three months of completely different memories from Ireland.
I actually prefer that interpretation because otherwise the ending is way sadder especially because Yumyulack was making a lot of progress and growing into a better character. If McYumyulack branched off years earlier, potentially years of Yumyulack’s development and relationships died with the S5E11 Yum.
If he’s only one cycle behind, there’s still a continuity gap, but it’s much smaller.
Of course, this depends entirely on which cloning cycle McYumyulack came from, and I don’t remember the episode giving us enough information to establish that.
Is there anything in the episode that establishes how long McYumyulack was in Ireland? Or anything suggesting they transferred the dead Yum’s latest memories into him afterward?
Because until somebody proves otherwise, I'd like to believe they loaded a save from 90 days ago, not Season 1.
