Mandate

I wouldn't take Clutch Powers as any indication of past or present, Clutch Powers is a very special case in the sense that the only LEGO line to reference it openly as part of its plot (that I can recall) was NINJAGO, and it was only a brief one-time reference that has not been touched since then. Assuming that it has any plot connections to past or future lines, including NINJAGO, is a bit of a touchy subject because of how easily it can backfire. Castle, Space Police and Power Miners all were featured in the movie, but their actual plots were all seperate/loosely connected by the passage of time. AGENTS, City, Mindstorms, Mars Mission and who knows how many other themes were also present in the background. However, I think that Ultra Agents is set in the near-future. Astor City guards feature somewhat retro uniforms, as do many of the "civilians", even the Ultra Agents themselves wear tuxedos, not exactly far-off clothing. It could be seen as the MARVEL universe, present day but with super-tech stuff, etc. But unsurprisingly Ultra Agents isn't too far off into the future in terms of IRL technology. Lasers, after more testing and research has been done, are soon going to become staple tech in the US military against Drones. Powered armor, invisibility, and a whole bunch of other previously science-fiction technologies are becoming real things, and not in the Buck Rogers sense of wildly speculating the future. But that's a can of worms for another day If I can make a request, what inspired the bizarre nature of Terabyte? I mean, not every hacker builds a Mech and then literally hacks into secret computer databases

For a moment there by "train" I thought you meant the Hype Train. I should probably go take a vacation, shouldn't I?

Actually eight powers. Fire, Earth, Ice, Lightning, Creation, Destruction, Green and finally Gold. Green and Creation are closer to each other than the rest, except that it's exclusive to Lloyd. Since Garmadon is good, we have no character filling the "destruction" part (no Protagonist will, presumably). The Overlord doesn't really count as the only time he could be classed as destruction was when he possessed Garmadon for a brief period of time. Regarding what you said about a "stranger", no. The statements made about elements and ninja were different, not necessarily exclusive from one another but never implied to be coupled. I think we're done with characters "finding" their element for the time being. Anyway, this is really getting off-topic now. But regarding elemental powers, without a new McGuffin to drive the plot, we're done with Elemental Powers for the time being (excluding whatever they have planned)

They aren't Spinners, and I can confirm that from prior experience. Spinners in AZ/NZ cost aprox. $20 if memory serves me correctly, these are definitely impulses now that you mention it. At any rate the amount of sets has confirmed that NINJAGO Rebooted was a success, which probably means more rebooted themes in future, if BIONICLE doesn't serve as any reminder (arguably BIONICLE's reboot was in development before NINJAGO's, but NINJAGO was brought back earlier and in a smaller timeframe)

It'll be made of metal. While it's hinted at that there are more dragons than just the four (five/six/seven, depending on if you count the Ultra Dragon as a seperate entity [which you shouldn't] and the Golden Dragon and MechDragon as "dragons"), we have yet to see a female dragon. At least presumably all of the dragons are male, anyway. Flame and Rocky are male, at least, and I couldn't be bothered to get out Volume 1 of Season 2 to check if Wisp is, and the books are virtually pointless given how many retcons we get. The major question now is what the ?????? set is. PIXAL is likely to be coupled with Zane, although I hope Zane will have figured out what his heart was made out of, so that we can stop it with the "requirement" thing At the very least there's no full way to predict any basic outline of the new plot other than some very shaky assumptions. After the insane nature of the Rebooted plot, with how far it deviated from traditional story-telling and to more of an episodic model, telling the story in chapters as small adventures in a bigger adventure. Although I've pinned down why The Void was so disappointing as an episode, there was no build-up or major suspense at the end, in stark contrast to Rise of The Great Devourer, or Return of The Overlord. Anyway, I suggest we move plot discussion to the TV show thread. This is starting to get super off-topic (and it's my fault ). Regarding the sets, I'm wondering how Lava Falls and Jungle Predators are going to come out. They sound the most interesting of the "hero" sets (after the Mechdragon I think we know a bit of what to expect out of the Titanium Dragon).

Might want to spoiler-ize your post, that first sentence is a dead-giveaway to events of Episode 34. I'm fairly certain the new ninja will be PIXAL, but "new color of ninja" can work either way when it comes to *ahem* changes *ahem* such as this. I doubt that the Titanium Dragon would be for the new ninja. So far the "dragons" have corresponded to who owns them, eg, the Fire dragon (Flame) belongs to the ninja of fire, the Earth dragon (Rocky) belongs to ninja of earth, Ultra-Dragon "belonged" (so to speak) to Lloyd as the Green Ninja, and the Golden Dragon belonged to Lloyd as the Golden Ninja. Hence the "Titanium Dragon" would belong to "The Titanium Ninja". Given that Borg revealed who the Titanium Ninja was, it's only logical that that ninja would also ride the Titanium Dragon. One final thing I've noticed. The Fold (man, it's sad that they're basically "The NINJAGO band" now) 's Instagram tag said "What new suits?". Kind of strange really, when you roll that over in your mind a few times. It's a question, not a statement. And even if it was a statement, the "what" at the front turns it into a question. It's asking, "what new suits?". Maybe the new outfits for the ninja aren't specifically ninja suits this time around, and perhaps they won't feature any "hood". Ridiculous, I know, and it's probably over-analyzing a tag, but it's just something interesting that I noticed (oh, and if you zoom in on the pic, you can make out a forest/jungle).

Ah, you haven't gotten to Episode 15 yet. I'm not going to spoil it, and nobody else spoil it for him Get Season 2 Volume 3 as soon as you can, LOTR343. It'll be worth it

WARNING: some spoilers are present, but they're only minimal and only if you dig too far into them. They regard the final episode of Season 3, and unfortunately I can't get two spoiler bars. As I said before, I've minimized it as much as possible. You have been warned Hiroshi's Labyrinth is the perfect setting, actually. Given that "all who enter are never found" (except Hiroshi himself) and that what we saw of the jungle wasn't that dense (but that could just be because they were on the edge of the Labyrinth), it's entirely possible that a small group of Anacondrai were there the whole time, and their elemental powers (it would really give us some enemy variation, splitting a tribe into five smaller tibes [invisibility, fire, ice, etc]) allowing them to survive in the jungle. When I first read the set names I thought "Aztec snakes" and now that I think about it the 2012 sets almost all featured South American-style Pyramids. It would also explain where the "Jewel of the Labyrinth" came from, if a group of snakes had lived in the forest for a near-eternity. Perhaps this is *ahem* you-know-who's *ahem* latest plot. Multiple downsides if this is correct: - no explanation for Zane's heart, or the Falcon's - no explanation for what Pythor wanted out of the Overlord (unless it was to resurrect the Anacondrai, in which case it means Julien might come back too and say what Zane's heart was) - Cyrus Borg will play a minimal part, other than by giving the Ninja new vehicles/weapons - No Dareth One thing I'm concerned about is the lack of "collectibles", but we haven't gotten the descriptions yet so I suppose that crushes the fear. Maybe the Anacondrai (if they DO have elemental powers, and not some random new character) get their power from the new collectibles? Finally, "the Titanium dragon". This actually worries me, believe it or not. It's clear that this must be Zane's vehicle now, given that What worries me is that Zane may no longer be white, but silver or grey instead. It's not the color that worries me entirely (though it would be a major downside, white fits Zane), it's the fact that this is now Zane's identity. If it's Zane's identity, I'm wondering what the new version of Zane will look like. Hopefully not too robot-y, like PIXAL. The Titanium Dragon also explains why PIXAL looked so far around the room

Hiroshi's Labyrinth, anyone?

Spyclops? That's unexpected. Didn't think I'd hear THAT name again.

No, that's casual clothes. Jay wore that singlet in episode 24, Lloyd however... we've never seen Lloyd in casual clothing, always the ninja suit, pyjamas or little-Lloyd. That's definitely from the next Season though, Lloyd has never been without sleeves, and Jay has not been seen since Episode 24 in that singlet. EDIT: no, I was wrong. A closer look has shown these ARE the new suits. Jay and Lloyd are wearing the same thing in their respective colors.

Well, HF at least ended with its story complete. There's numerous examples where LEGO has done nothing about the end of a line, eg the missing Comic 40 of Exo-Force, the announcement of who won the "decide the ending of Alpha Team" contest (though the web game did have its own ending), Power Miners had a huge plot twist that was never fully revealed, Mars Mission and Space Police didn't get a proper ending either, Space Police's online blog was cut short at "here come the Space Police Commandos!" and Mars Mission... well, it did have an ending, but it wasn't exactly fully explained. If you really want to get picky, V1 of BIONICLE didn't get an end to its story either.

No, the Hageman brothers (the Greg Farshtey of NINJAGO) confirmed the new villains (the Anacondrai, as revealed now) would have elemental powers. However, their actual statement was vague, as they said "the ninja discover they are not the only ones with elemental powers". So perhaps the appearance of a new ninja (if it's not PIXAL) may explain this, in fact, it could be a new type altogether, albeit with a new color. It's too early to tell yet, but given how unexplored much of NINJAGO is we'll find out eventually. I'm just hoping they manage to do fewer retcons this time around, at least not retconing the retcons. We already had a whopper of a retcon that was the Serpentine backstory, and I'm hoping they're going to fix that up a bit with the snakes being the enemy again (unfortunately, I doubt that the snakes underneath Borg Tower will be evil again. After the ending of Episode 34, it's pretty unlikely.)

Well, THIS explains why the Anacondrai were the most feared of the Serpentine. Elemental abilities would certainly be a ridiculous power, is this the "small favor" Pythor mentioned to the Overlord? Bringing back the Anacondrai? Sucks that we won't be getting a new ninja faction No confirmation on the new ninja, yet. Strange that Zane has no new set mentioned, though its probably the ?????? one (for those wondering, Kai is easily "Lava Falls"). I suppose this means there's going to be no explanation for the Stone Army tomb's opening OR Zane's heart. Unless of course, it turns out that the Anacondrai were in two tombs, separating "invisible" ones and "elemental" ones, and the elemental ones broke out, and opened the Tomb (unlikely because someone would have mentioned it by now)

Well, that was certainly unexpected. When the new series comes out on disc I'll get it and watch it for once.

Yeah, viruses do exist on Macs. The only difference is that most people use Windows and most viruses are made for Windows, but Mac viruses are getting more common, and "I own a Mac" is no excuse for lack of antivirus software. (sorry for off-topic post)

The reason why LEGO hasn't given Chima the "love it deserves" is because LEGO is already doing enough for it as it is. Chima is lucky it has the media coverage it's gotten, by all estimations NINJAGO has been more profitable for NINJAGO both before and after Chima came into play. Simply put, there's not a huge amount of story to work with when it comes to Chima. It's a bunch of tribes fighting over a single (but relatively common) power source, and none of the tribes have any specific gains from using it other than the bottom-basic one every tribe has, with the exception of the Hunters, who would probably be melted by the Fire Chi the same way the Ark of The Covenant melted the faces of the Nazis in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Even NINJAGO in its first year had more story potential than Chima did. Four Ninja, four weapons, an old Sensei who was the brother of the enemy (who also forcibly took control of the Underworld), and the incredibly distinctive personalities of each primary protagonist (eg, Kai, Cole, Jay, Zane and Nya), something Chima had a complete lack of other than "childish", "not actually evil" and "evil, but only because of a misunderstanding". The result of Zane being a Nindroid still has plot potential today, which led to an entire year based off of his nature as a Nindroid, and it's probably going to have large implications. That's not to say Chima coudn't have been done better. It really could have, IMO.

Yeah... the lines between the TMNT songs and NINJAGO songs are really starting to blur. If the Vanilla Ice song for TMNT doesn't get Nickelodeon sued by LEGO for the ridiculous similarities, (assuming copyright protection and whatnot is made void) I think it'll be fine though.

Yeah, I only just heard about them. Ridiculous that they made 6+ songs (excluding the Remix, because that was used for something) for this year, and yet they couldn't add cash to the TV show budget a bit further. I'd sooner no new songs (excluding Remix) and a better modeling team. A lot of close-up shots (eg, on the Bus in The Surge) have the polygons visible, and most of the Ninja's vehicles looked down-right horrible in comparison to the set versions. (keep in mind, that's in comparison, they don't look terrible by themselves)

There's yet another new song coming out for Rebooted. This one is called "We are Ninja"

Odd... a while back I noticed that in the intro to The Surge, Julien was missing from the photo of the ninja after the Final Battle. And I recently stumbled on this image: (sorry for image size, if an Admin could change it that would be good) Apparently the picture is from the NINJAGO theories website (yeah, they've deleted everything to do with "the final theory" which basically confirms they're attention seekers) and it really highlights how odd it is that in none of the scenes after the Final Battle is Dr Julien ever seen. I would suggest an upcoming retcon to his model, but after it seems improbable. It's pretty unlikely that they completely overlooked Julien, or ran out of time to even put him in a random spot somewhere, but it's still a really odd error. Not much to go on about it, but perhaps Julien's death is going to have some connection to the next year's plot and to the new villain/s? EDIT: LOL, turns out NINJAGO theories has removed any reference to "The Final Theory" whatsoever. Off-topic, but funny fact.

Use [ spoiler ] and [ /spoiler] without the spaces. Are you referring to ShadoWind?

Because the HF show was decent, at the very best. NINJAGO's later episodes were brilliant, and even some of the earlier-ish episodes (that is, the "True Potential" plot and The Great Devourer episodes). Not to mention the fact that NINJAGO was, well, ninja. And it came with a spinner gimmick and collectible cards. In comparison, Chima's Speedorz were a lackluster (yet more in tune with plot and sets) with a card system that barely worked. Hero Factory hasn't even had a "collector gimmick" in any of its sets, unless you count the Brains and the whole "catch 'em and cuff 'em" thing. Even BIONICLE itself had the Masks in the first few years, and later on it became disks, etc... NINJAGO secured its place as top dog, and the possible resurrector of BIONICLE because it combined a whole bunch of things kids loved without an insanely complicated story (BIONICLE) or a downright kiddish one (Hero Factory, although the first 5 NINJAGO episodes were a bit kiddish) In fact, NINJAGO was rebooted before BIONICLE (as we all know), and it's entirely possible that it's because of NINJAGO's success as LEGO's first and only rebooted franchise (no, Space Police 3 does NOT count) that BIONICLE was even considered to be brought back. That's why NINJAGO's the top dog right now, it has: 1) things kids love, eg Ninjas, spinners, collectible card game 2) no convoluted storyline, yet still has depth to it 3) pop-culture demanded its return, it's LEGO's first line to be brought back from the dead due to fan request

Well, we know that Greg Farshtey was going to be doing at least three more books, but then the line was cancelled and the books scrapped. But I agree with you, the fact that there was no comic #40 is horrible.