My jury is still out on the question of Lavos’ sentience...
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Lavos Is Not Sentient
1. Back in the day Square sure did love to personify oblivion in the form of the Final Boss, and Lavos may simply be one of their more colorful attempts at this.
2. If you look at Schala’s speech at the end of Chrono Cross, she goes on about this idea of a planet being a living egg and its life forms comprising a myriad of “spermatozoa,” any one of whom could inseminate the planet and create a new universe. (No comment) Since Lavos is the exact opposite, slowly killing the planet off and corrupting its life forms, that could provide a conjectural bit of support for the idea that Lavos is not a sentient entity who has its own sense of purpose.
3. Some of Lavos’ actions were counterproductive, even plain stupid. But if you look at Lavos as a personification of oblivion rather than an evil mastermind, it all makes a lot more sense. Poke Lavos with a stick, as happened in 12,000 B.C. and 600 A.D., and it Unleashes the Dragon on yo ass. But otherwise it doesn’t actively do anything at all...it just gobbles up DNA (don’t ask me how that works) and seems to emanate vibes of sadness and anger that take root in sentient people’s minds.
4. Lavos has no dialogue, just a primal screech. This may not seem important, but in a space-limited RPG, everything counts. I searched the CT script for every mention of “Lavos” and found absolutely no attributions of character, only continuous references to Lavos’ power, might, immortality, and sleep. Queen Zeal mentions Lavos’ “dreams,” but then corrects herself to “eternal nightmare.” She later says that “At last, Lavos awakens!” Lucca calls Lavos’ lifecycle the “ultimate in evolution,” but in context it isn’t persuasive to me that evolution is meant to be synonymous with sentience. I then checked the Chrono Cross script, and again found no attributions to Lavos of any of the faculties of reason. Lucca mentions Lavos’ “hatred and sadness,” but these are construed as raw emotions without rational thought behind them, and it is actually Schala who devises the grand notion to destroy existence. Nowhere in these two games is any sentient, reasoned characteristic imputed to Lavos.
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Lavos Is Sentient
1. The Frozen Flame is almost certainly sentient. As a splinter of Lavos, this implies the same of Lavos.
2. The machines in the ruined future seem to have it going on with Lavos. Whether this is false pride or a genuine dialogue, however, remains unclear.
3. From a Western point of view, it is hard to argue that the ultimate evil in the world does not have a sentient will behind it. I would caution, though, that the Chrono games were not created in the monotheistic West. In fact, this might more properly belong in the “Lavos is not sentient” column.
4. Devil’s advocate. While officially undecided, I seem to be more of the mind that Lavos is not sentient. Thus, I would ask “How can this be disproved?” The challenge is yours.
