Magus and Schala: The Eternal Tragedy

[mondragon369]

Both Serge and Chrono are walking projection screens.
I wanted to write "walking talking" but seeing how neither of them really does, this could only cause them more pain which they are never able to express verbally. And that would be plain cruel.

[Zaperking]

Well, If in the good ending and proper ending, Serge loses his memories, then he won't feel used....

[GreenGannon]

Oh, right, but I don't think he does.

"You're going to forget this so you won't come back and kill us later."

"Nope"

"Dammit! Run Balthasar run!"

Hey, maybe that's Chrono Break.

[Aitrus]

There ya go.  Crono and Serge and mad at the Entity and Balthasar for totally messing up their lives and destroying everything they thought was true, they're out for revenge.

Maybe you play a new group of "heroes" recruited to stop Crono and Serge?

[Zaperking]

Hey, I just noticed a few things.

Schala was the only person capable of controlling the Mammon Machine and activating the Ocean Palace.

Yeah, she must be the arbiter then.

Another thing I noticed is that anything that happens with Schala is mirrored by what Magus does. In CT, RD and CC.
Like for instance, Magus searches for Schala. At the end of CC, Schala is searching for Serge, so the tides have turned. That whole situation makes me think that CC's Serge is Magus, or atleast a Janus reincarnation, or a clone like Kid. That would also mirror perfectly if it was the case. Serge's grave did read "What came from the sea has returned from the sea". Personally, I never saw how Serge looked like Marge. Or even Wazuki, except for the hair.

As for RD's situation with Schala and the flame, I kind of thought that maybe that had happened in the original timeline aswell? But to a lesser degree of things that happened. Maybe Magus didn't even die, and just lived his life in shame for not being able to match Lavos or something Oo. Oh well, never mind.

Schala finally came to terms with herself, and perhaps found the peace she deserved.

I don't really think so. It depends if she ever liked her life in her past existence. Her character and integrity is killed off by everything that Kid stands for. In RD and CC both. But in CC, her enlightement may be her peace. And the merger with Kid, I guess. When Schala is talking after the TD's defeat, it seems she has some kind of personality issue. But when she's writing the letter, she seems like she's calmer, and the personality thing has stopped, and she talks her way normally, ending the letter with 'Schala "Kid" Zeal'.
The letter in my point of view kind of nullifies the wedding picture in the end. She only calls Serge (actually, his name isn't even mentioned, so i'm speculating) her "friend". I myself thought that the picture was a tribute to RD, or the way that the story started out and ended.
To bad the whole situation with Magus searching for Schala didn't stop there in the end. Now Schala is on a quest to find Serge, or atleast it's hinted. The fact that Schala doesn't say Serge may point out that she is talking about Janus, atleast.

Also, from the way that Lucca's letter says that one day Janus will be standing along side Kid... Who was Kid standing next to when she read the letter? *Cough* Serge *Cough*.

I just wish the whole Schala/Magus thing was closed. It's like one of the greatest semi-plots in RPG history.[/quote]

[Raelle]

I apologize in advance if I'm sort of kicking at a dead horse, but this article was an interesting and enjoyable read and I did want to comment back on it with some of my own thoughts.

There, at the peak of his powers, Magus had a second chance to stop the Ocean Palace disaster from occurring and save his sister. But Magus' first priority was revenge on Lavos; his sister's well being came in second place.

Basically, yes, but I think there’s more to it than that.

I’ve only recently played through Radical Dreamers, and one of the quotes that caught my eye in particular was Magil/Magus pleading with Serge to not “repeat his mistake, and forget what’s important.” The context, of course, was protecting Kid/Schala. Yes, Radical Dreamers is an alternate universe, but I thought it was interesting for a glimpse of Kato’s general idea of how Magus would have turned out after the events of Chrono Trigger.

Magus sort of struck me as being at a loss as to how to handle Schala during his guise as the Prophet. There are multiple times, during the Ocean Palace sequence, where he starts moving towards Schala in concern, and then holds himself back, only to do it again in the next cutscene. Several times he makes expressions of general alarm in regards to her - for example, when she pleads with him to spare Crono and company. During his twenty or so years in 600 AD, any idea of “saving Schala” wouldn’t have even been a blip on his radar - during that entire period, as far as he’s concerned, Schala and Zeal are long gone and all he has left is his revenge against Lavos. Obviously, he’s been consumed with that obsession for all of that time. But being sent back to Zeal and being actually face to face with his sister again - I think it threw him for a sort of emotional loop, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with it. So basically, he just didn’t - and besides that, by that point, he had been so fixated with his goal of killing Lavos for so long I’m not sure that he even really comprehended the possibility of just bailing Schala out and disregarding his revenge. In other words, he’d forgotten what was truly important to him, and based on Radical Dreamers, it seems like he realized that at some point - and regretted it.

So I don’t think it’s quite as simple as Magus just deciding, “My personal vengeance against Lavos is of higher priority than my sister’s safety.” By way of his actions he more or less did choose that, but I think he was sort of ignoring that he had the option between those two choices in the first place - he never expected to see Schala again to begin with, after all. When Lavos takes him down definitively, he’s not cursing and raging more about his failure at vengeance; he’s asking if Schala is all right. Guy didn’t know what it was he wanted, so he just kept going down the path more familiar to him, in a sense.