Revangelion 2.0 – 3.0: What Happened?

I fully acknowledge that it’s many years too late for this post to be even remotely relevant, but I feel like writing about it anyway since to this day I still see confusion on what exactly went down between the second and third Rebuild of Evangelion films. Or, more realistically, because I need this draft to finally be published in order to link to it in a different Evangelion piece I’ve been waiting to release. The third entry in the Rebuild of Evangelion movie saga understandably caused a lot of confusion at release due to how radically different it was from the sequel we were expecting based on the events of Evangelion 2.0, and many a fan hastily decried it as a nonsensical mistake that lost the plot due to bad writing. I cannot disagree with this more. I believe that if you simply pay attention to the film it very clearly lays out to you a coherent roadmap of what has occurred.

So what happened between the films that caused the planet to get gunked up so badly? The short answer is: End of Evangelion. Or rather, the Rebuild equivalent. Evangelion 1.0 and 2.0, despite some lore changes, more or less follow the same route as Neon Genesis Evangelion up until the confrontation with Zeruel. It’s not a dramatic assumption to then assume the story continued to develop in tandem with the original timeline, leading up to End of Evangelion as the endgame of the current NERV and SEELE. The majority of End of Evangelion’s sequence of events still seem to have taken place, but there are fundamental differences in their execution and consequence due to the altered circumstances feeding into it. Such distinctions include the existence of WILLE, the changed Impact mechanics in the Rebuild universe, and the absence of any available Evangelion pilots to function as a defence line.

First and foremost for this discussion, there is clear evidence of an armed conflict within Evangelion 3.0’s NERV headquarters. The facilities are riddled with craters left by enemy artillery, and not much of anything is left in working condition. In the context of End of Evangelion’s script, this can be understood as tantamount to SEELE’s invasion, a bloody betrayal spurred on by ideological differences between the two branches of the establishment. Though as previously mentioned the new circumstances in the Rebuild timeline result in a change of events, as later in Evangelion 3.0 it is shown that SEELE still trusted Gendo to lead the Human Instrumentality Plan after he disconnected their monoliths, unaware that he planned to betray them. For this reason it seems impossible for them to have been the ones who assaulted NERV like they were in End of Evangelion. The obvious choice then, is WILLE, Misato’s new guerrilla group that seems intent on opposing their parent organisation at every step of the way. I would propose that after Near Third Impact, Misato’s bewilderment at Unit 01’s awakened state sent her pressing for answers on the deeper secrets of the Evangelion units, which would then lead her to Central Dogma where she bears witness to Lilith (in line with Neon Genesis Evangelion). The key change in events is that Unit 01’s awakening against Zeruel in the TV series was just that – an awakening. It never had the capacity to individually begin Third Impact. Whereas Eva 2.0’s conflict against Zeruel sees Shinji wrenching open the Gates of Guf, calling forth Misato’s Second Impact trauma and having a much stronger negative influence on her. It develops along the line of Neon Genesis Evangelion again with Misato forcing her way into seeing Lilith in Central Dogma, and then rather than gritting her teeth and returning to NERV like in the original series, Rebuild Misato then secretly took this information to Ritsuko and began plotting to eliminate Gendo and SEELE. The existence of WILLE as the invading party then justifies the way in which characters like Asuka, Misato and Ritsuko survived when they previously would have perished, since they were key administrative staff on the attacking side.

And that’s really far as we have to go by deducing things on our own, since for the central question of “how did the world end up like this” Kaworu explicitly offers an  explanation.

While Shinji was sealed away Third Impact occurred, and everything that has gone awry is a direct consequence of this. The event in question is a true Impact, unlike the quickly interrupted Near Third Impact that Shinji instigates at the climax of Evangelion 2.0.

The ruinous state of the planet makes many direct visual parallels to the original timeline’s Third Impact in order to further cement the suggestion that the missing piece to bridge the end of the second film and the beginning of the third film is the Rebuild universe’s very own End of Evangelion.

The bloody caging on the moon hearkens back to the Black Moon of Lilith.

The presence of a dismembered giant Rei/Lilith head implicates the existence of a Third Impact comparable in scale to the one seen in End of Evangelion.

The horizon is littered with crosses that present imagery reminiscent of those found in End of Evangelion.

At the point we leave off in Evangelion 2.0 Shinji and Rei are absorbed inside Unit 01, Asuka is quarantined due to her infection by exposure to Bardiel, and Mari is incapacitated after the battle with Zeruel. There was no Evangelion pilot left to defend NERV from enemy attack, and as such the Rebuild of Evangelion’s Third Impact was catalysed when Mark 06 broke into Central Dogma under an Angel’s influence and made contact with Lilith. As we know, Impacts occur when the AT Fields of the two Seeds of Life Adam and Lilith make contact with one another. In End of Evangelion Third Impact occurs when Gendo forces the Adam fetus implanted in his right hand to merge with Rei, the physical vessel of Lilith’s soul. In the Rebuild incarnation the 12th Angel hosting inside of Mark 06 provides the presence of Adam’s spirit and flesh that then trigger Third Impact when merging with Lilith.

Alongside this Kaworu also namedrops the Human Instrumentality Project, referring to the failures of infinity as its byproduct.

From this we can discern that the nature of Instrumentality in the Rebuild timeline is fundamentally different. Based on the line in Evangelion 2.0 that SEELE was tired of false gods and wanted to create a true one, the Failures of Infinity, and the giant face upon the Earth, my belief is that the evidence points towards a new kind of Instrumentality. Instead of liberating human souls and congregating them inside the Sea of LCL, the new aim would instead be to convert humans into Core material and integrate them into a unified planet-sized Evangelion existence.

And so, there you have it. This is my rather brief case for what I see as the mysterious events in the midst of the second and third Rebuild of Evangelion films. Despite what many may say I do not believe that the creative staff behind the Rebuilds are idiots, and in following this neither do I believe that they would simply leave an unfilled gap between such radically different products. For them to skip over the events of those 14 years, it must mean that we have already seen what happened elsewhere. And when you make the minor adjustments for the End of Evangelion narrative to work within the Rebuild mythos it very neatly conforms to its shape, to the extent that I feel quite confident in making this claim.