One of these characters in the amazing digital circus is an AI imposter, an NPC that somehow slipped through the cracks and is now living amongst the human cast of the circus without anyone noticing. And the worst part of it all? They are the true villain of the show, the real monster torturing the rest of the cast for their own amusement.
Hello internet, welcome to Film Theory, the show that wants you to pop that subscribe button like a crocodile-shaped balloon. So finally, after six months, we've gotten the return of the wacky world and awesome adventures of the amazing digital circus. And man, episode two reveals so much about these characters, this series, and just how this world operates.
So our entire existence here is just LARPing? It's like the Ren Fair. In this latest episode, Caine sends the gang to a new level called the Candy Canyon Kingdom, where they fight on candy war rigs, Mad Max style.
What time period is this supposed to be again? I had the same question, Pomni. During this quest, Pomni and a candy crocodile Dundee NPC named Gummigoo both fall out of bounds into what looks like a developer room.
Here, Gummigoo discovers a copy of himself, lifeless and stuck in a default A pose. I guess the T pose wasn't submissive and agreeable enough. And goes through an existential crisis after realizing that he's not actually real.
Where's mom? I can't even remember her face. Did she ever have a face?
Pomni empathizes and invites Gummigoo to live with the rest of the castmates in the digital circus to find some purpose. But after the gang finishes the adventure, Caine seemingly deletes Gummigoo, much to Pomni's horror. Looks like one of these guys made it through.
Wait, what? Wait, what? This episode was dense and we learned a lot about how the circus works and also more about each of the main characters.
For example, apparently the cast can remember elements from their past lives. It's just their names that have been completely forgotten. We also learned that maybe, just maybe, the AI within this computer game isn't actually that different from the human characters that get sucked into it.
Yeah, this was a major theme for the episode. There was a whole multi-minute long conversation dedicated to the subject and it got me wondering, well, what if there isn't a difference? And what if the series is really going to drive that home with a twist reveal down the road?
That's right, friends. I believe that one of our main cast here in the Amazing Digital Circus is an NPC, an AI created by Caine who has somehow wormed their way into the circus and is now living amongst the human cast without anyone noticing. And figuring out exactly who that is will show us who the true villain is in the Amazing Digital Circus.
Prepare yourself for an episode that's 57 times more immersive, friends. We're diving in. But before we talk about the bright, colorful characters of the Amazing Digital Circus, let's talk about the bright, colorful clothing of Lumen.
So for most of my life, I've been a black hoodie, black t-shirt, black pants kind of guy. It's a great look and I do dig it. It's actually why I've loved the merch we've made with Theorywear over the years.
But as I've gotten older, I've realized that sometimes you want to add a splash of color into things to wear something with a little bit more pizazz that isn't just a logo on a t-shirt. And as we started coming up with more ideas, we realized that Theorywear just wasn't quite the right fit for what we wanted to do. And so Theorywear is evolving into something new.
Our new apparel line, Lumen. Lumen is all about making creative clothing that anyone can wear, from me to my mom to your average Joe and con-goer. We wanted to make things that anyone can wear at any time and crush it.
Like you can rock up anywhere wearing the ombre bomber jacket and you'd get head swiveling your way thinking, man, that guy's cool. And just to be clear, we're still going to be doing all of the same sorts of stuff that you've loved with our logos and the channel colors and collabs like FNAF, Dune, and Godzilla x Kong. In fact, we've got partnerships with Poppy Playtime and some other IP you've definitely heard of coming up in the next year.
And if you have any guesses for what those might be or just some collabs that you'd love to see, let me know down in the comments below. We'll be reading all of them because we want these collabs to be for you guys and by you guys. Regardless, this evolution from Theorywear into Lumen lets us do all of that and more.
Like the cotton candy cardigan, that's just good clothing. And something that I'm proud of with this that we've worked incredibly hard on is to be inclusive with all body sizes and shapes. Believe me, that's very relevant to me.
And being able to buy something online in plus sizes that actually fits well AND looks good? I could not be happier about it. I actually got to grab a Scenic View crew neck early and this thing has immediately entered my wardrobe rotation.
I am so incredibly proud of what we've come up with here and cannot wait to wear it myself. And if you want to check out what Lumen has to offer, head over to LumenOfficial. com or click the link in the description.
There's a ton of cool stuff over there that I haven't even mentioned here that you are going to love. And now that we're all comfy in our new Lumen apparel, let's dive back into the mystery of the Amazing Digital Circus. So why would I claim that there's an NPC amongst all of the castmates here in the Amazing Digital Circus?
Well, not to bury the lead, but Caine heavily implies that an NPC has come into the circus before. At the end of episode 2 when Caine pops Gummigoo like a balloon, he explains that he did so because Gummigoo was an NPC. I know you guys love your NPCs, but if I start losing track of who's a human and who's an NPC, who knows what could happen?
That could have a couple of implications. Maybe Caine accidentally deleted a human castmate before, or maybe one of these humans is actually an NPC. Well, the latter seems much more likely because it doesn't seem like Caine CAN delete humans.
When characters like Kaufmo abstract, Caine doesn't delete them despite that being an easier solution. Instead, he just throws them down into the cellar. No, more likely, an NPC has made it back to the circus before, and Caine just can't remember who is who anymore.
That seems like an awfully big Chekhov's gun to hang on the wall and never go off, and this isn't even the only piece of evidence pointing towards a human character actually being an NPC. Especially in episode 2, there was a lot of emphasis put on the concept of AI and just how advanced they are. First off, while trying to entice Zooble to join in on the adventure in the Candy Canyon Kingdom, Caine tells her that.
. . This shows us that Caine is working on making his NPC characters more advanced, that creating more realistic, human-like AI is a priority for this computer system.
And elsewhere in the episode, we see this to be true. The AI of the NPCs we see in this new level is far and away more advanced than what we see in episode 1. First off, Princess Lu of the Candy Kingdom welcomes the cast as brave knights sent by God to help the kingdom in their time of need.
As you can see from that stained glass window, the God here is clearly Caine. Therefore, these AI are advanced enough to understand that Caine created them and make their own religion around that, exactly how humans do in the real world. But more prominently than that, the themes of this episode really take a dive into what separates humanity from AI, if anything at all.
One of the biggest moments here was Gumigoo's internal existential crisis after falling below the map, where he realizes that nothing in his life is really real. His friends, his mom, even himself, none of them are actually real people. First off, this shows us that the AI of the NPCs here in the Digital Circus is advanced enough to become self-aware.
Gumigoo absolutely understands that he isn't real. It's also worth noting that Gumigoo doesn't shut down or get fried or abstract, he just becomes a bit of a sad boy once he realizes his situation, exactly the same way humans do when they have their own existential crises in the real world. Been there, done that, my man.
So the AI is even sturdy enough to handle that sort of shock to the system. And the thing that pulls Gumigoo out of this depression? It's Pomni and her empathy.
She lets Gumigoo know that she understands how he's feeling, and that even people who come from her world, the real world, have these thoughts too. And when she invites Gumigoo to come back to the circus with the cast, Gumigoo asks, would I even belong? I'm sure you wouldn't belong any less than me.
Pomni is straight up telling Gumigoo that it doesn't matter if he's real or not, they are the same. At the very least, this is driving home the theme that the AI in this game and its human characters aren't actually so different. And combined with everything else we've talked about, the show is absolutely seeding the possibility that one of the human characters is not what they seem.
And so now that begs the question, who is it? Which one of them is an NPC? Right off the bat, we can likely eliminate Zooble and Gangle.
We haven't really had a chance to dig into their characters yet, and the show seems more interested in exploring them as comic relief than big twists. What about Kinger? He's supposedly been there the longest, and is definitely the one that seems the most glitchy, for the lack of a better term.
Again, I'm not so convinced. Similar to Zooble and Gangle, he's being positioned more as a side character, and one that really reflects both the comedy and tragedy of the situation the humans are trapped in. What's more, there's a lot of evidence pointing to Kinger being a QA developer who got sucked into the game.
In the pilot, he asks, Did someone say something about an insect collection? And again, when he sees the gloinx, he wonders, An insect collection? And then in the Candy Kingdom in episode 2, he points out, They've even got little candy bugs here.
It's so beautiful. This interest in insects would make sense if he was a bug tester in his past human life, so it wouldn't make sense for him to also be an NPC. That leaves us with just Ragatha and Jax.
At first glance, Ragatha does seem like a good candidate. Despite telling Pomni that there were no hard feelings for leaving her to the abstracted Kaufmo, if someone ever says that in a series like this, that means there are definitely hard feelings. So maybe she's being set up here as a secret antagonistic AI down the line.
But at the same time, they're also really positioning her as a parallel to Pomni. She's trying to help Pomni fit in and feel better in exactly the same way that Pomni was trying with Gummigoo. Thematically, it makes more sense for Ragatha to fall into the mentor archetype, showing Pomni the ropes, before Ragatha inevitably falls to the mentor occupational hazard trope, showing Pomni the dark fate that she herself could face.
So no, I don't believe that they're setting Ragatha up to be an AI. Which leaves us with Jax. And oh man, it could definitely be Jax.
And there's a surprising amount of evidence pointing towards it. First of all, Jax being an NPC would make a lot of his quirks suddenly make a lot more sense. For example, Jax is the only character who's able to keep his head steady while driving a truck over the rocky road, something that would probably be much easier for a computer program or an AI to do rather than a human.
Additionally, gravity doesn't seem to affect him in the same way as the others. Notice that during the Mad Max truck chase sequence, characters like Pomni are thrown around by the momentum of the trucks. She has to hold on to prevent herself from being flung off the vehicles.
But Jax? He stands upright as the truck plummets vertically into the chocolate river. This is much more similar to the gator NPC Max, who is able to pull himself back up onto the bandit's truck while similarly ignoring the laws of physics.
Jax is acting more like an NPC here than the human cast. Now obviously, these moments are played for comedic effect, but this stood out to me either way. Do you want some more serious examples?
Well, for one, Jax is incredibly good at getting into places that he shouldn't. In the pilot, Jax reveals that he has keys to everywhere, all the other rooms in the circus. Additionally, he is able to very easily steal the key to the kingdom walls in episode 2.
To me, this sounds a lot like Jax has sort of administrator access to the circus and its connected levels, like he's part of the computer system more so than the other cast. Oh, and another big thing here, he's the only one of the main cast that seems to break the fourth wall. It's kind of a blink and you miss it moment, but in the first episode, Jax looks straight at the camera, straight at us.
Though this could be played off as us being in the point of view of Ragathub, who immediately asks, uh, why are you looking at me like that? It's still a weird moment, and in episode 2, he does it again, shrugging directly at the viewer. The only other character we've seen act similarly is another NPC, Caine, when he speaks directly to the audience at the beginning of the pilot.
My name is Caine! I'm your ringmaster! What's more, Jax is also very interested in food, which is something we've only seen from NPCs and AI in the digital circus.
Yeah, this was actually pointed out by TrueFullHero over on our subreddit, but Jax is the only one of the main castmates to show any real sign of hunger or even interest in food. Oh no, they killed Zooble. Anyway, you guys wanna go get something to eat?
You know, I am pretty hungry. You didn't even do anything! So what?
I can still be hungry. Why is this significant? Well, according to Kinger, the humans in the digital world have no need to eat, drink, or sleep.
Well, not really, because we don't need to eat, drink, or sleep in this digital world. So the digital food here only gives off the virtual sensation of eating without any of the nutritional benefits. However, NPCs do seem to need food.
Like, in episode 2, the crocodile bandits say that this implies that foods like syrup can help NPCs, and this isn't even the only time we see NPCs eating or talking about food. In episode 1, Bubble eats the angel food cake, the glowing queen eats Zooble, and the fudge speaks about eating many of the candy town's folk. We even see Caine and Bubble in a restaurant during the pilot, though it doesn't look like their food has arrived yet.
Additionally, though we do see the human characters at a table set with food during the last supper scene in the pilot, we don't see any of them eating, and this was given to them as a reward by Caine, an AI who would see food as essential. So Jax craving food, unlike any of the other human characters we've seen so far, is another tell that he's an AI. But wait, I hear you saying, doesn't the show's official synopsis say that The Amazing Digital Circus is about six humans subjected to the whims of wacky AI?
And yes, that is correct. However, there are ways to explain this. Firstly, it could just be a marketing misdirect.
I mean, you don't want to reveal your big twist in the synopsis you released before the first episode. But even still, assuming that the synopsis is correct, it can still work. That sixth human could be Kaufmo the Clown.
Yeah, while we don't see him before he abstracts, he still is present in the first episode of the series, and his funeral played a big, thematic important part in episode two. That would mean that he's still in the series and was still subjected to the whims of this wacky AI, thus making that synopsis still technically correct. And what's more, this isn't actually the only synopsis of the show that we've gotten so far.
Gooseworx had a different one over on her teaser for the series uploaded to her personal YouTube channel, and this one describes the circus as a 3D animated pilot about a rogue AI that relentlessly torment, has fun adventures with, six human souls. Has fun adventures with is an interesting phrase to use here, since Caine never goes on any adventures with the cast. Yes, he makes them, and he pushes the other characters to join in on them, but he never goes on them himself.
In both the in-house adventure from the pilot and the candy kingdom in episode two, he just kinda goes off and does his own thing after sending the cast on their way. But do you know who does go on the adventures with the other characters? Jax.
And not only that, but he's excited to. In episode one, as soon as Pomni shows up, like immediately afterward, he asks, So, Caine, we having a new adventure today for the newbie or what? In episode two, he tries to get Zooble to tag along, Ooh, a new AI.
You don't wanna mess with the new AI, Zoobie? And his reasoning for all of it? I'm fine with doing whatever, as long as I get to see funny things happen to people.
He just wants to mess with them. Sounds like something a rogue AI who wants to torment the cast would think, doesn't it? And again, like, rogue AI and torment are weird words to describe Caine and what he does, right?
Like, listen, I get it. What Caine is putting these characters through does not necessarily seem like a walk in the park. But torment?
That doesn't track either. And at the very least, we do know that there seems to be some fun had by these human characters on the adventures. Ragatha and Kinger both seem excited by the candy kingdom castle.
And Ragatha instantly likes Princess Lu. That doesn't sound like someone who's tormented to me. But do you know who does torment the cast day in and day out every time we see them?
Jax. He's physically abusive. Like, just to name a few instances, he steps on Gangle's mask without caring, throws a bowling ball at Kinger to knock him into the gloink layer, pushes Gangle over for no reason, and throws Pomni out of the candy truck without a second thought.
On top of that, he threatens them. Often. He tells Ragatha that he left a centipede, her worst fear, hidden in her room, forces Gangle to ram the syrup tanker, or he'll tell Ragatha about the figurine thing, and saying that Ragatha's hair looks like licorice in front of a monster that eats people made out of candy.
He doesn't even bother to show up for Kaufmo's funeral, and he gets very unhappy when bad guys seem to die, like when the fudge is seemingly killed in the candy kingdom. He even leaves the kingdom gates open for the fudge so he can murder the candy citizens. I could go on and on and on, but you get it.
A rogue AI that torments others lines up way more with Jax because, even if he isn't THE bad guy of the show, he's definitely A bad guy. On her tumblr, Gooseworx has gone into great detail about how despicable Jax is. He's morally the worst character in the show.
When a fan said that they hoped that Jax would get worse, she said that you're probably going to enjoy some of the things we have planned, and then later reiterated that he will become much worse, which I would say is accurate given how mean and cruel we see him being in episode 2. And perhaps most important for us here today, when asked if Jax was just a jerk or an anti-hero, Gooseworx explains that there's absolutely nothing heroic about him. Would that be because he's actually the villain here?
Yeah, friends, clearly. They are positioning Jax to be the true villain of this show, not Caine. And the biggest thing that clinched this for me, that convinced me that Jax was going to be the big bad who would break this system, believe it or not, it was the merch.
Yeah, Jax has been positioned as a major character for Glitch through their merchandising since the very beginning. When the pilot for The Amazing Digital Circus first aired, tell me, what two characters do you think they made plushies out of, that they had ready for you to buy immediately as the episode ended? It was Pomni and Jax.
Now, Pomni makes total sense, she is the main character after all. But why Jax, and not someone like Caine, who is the other poster character for the series, who is arguably the main antagonist? They positioned Jax to be just as important as Pomni with these plushies.
And that isn't even the biggest hint we get through Glitch's merchandise. See, all of the main characters for The Amazing Digital Circus now have enamel pins over on Glitch's store, and the card back for each of them has them in either the character's room or an environment directly connected to the character. Like, Pomni is in her bedroom, as is Gangle, Zooble, and Ragatha.
Kanger is in his pillow fort from episode one, while Caine and Bubble are on the circus stage. But where do you think that they put Jax? In his bedroom, like the others?
In the main circus floor? Hiding somewhere? Breaking into someone else's room?
Nope. Unlike the others, he's just outside of his bedroom, his nameplate broken and letters on the floor. But most importantly, the texture on the back of the card has been ripped, revealing the glitchy void underneath.
Not even Caine, the ringleader for the circus who creates and controls all of the levels of this world, is shown here in the void. His pin is still contained within the circus, but Jax is breaking apart from it, tearing it down. Why would they add this detail only to Jax's pin if they weren't trying to tell us that there's something deeper going on with this character?
That just underneath the surface, he's glitchy and robotic and computer-generated, just like the void. The evidence speaks for itself. Someone in this cast is definitely an AI, and Jax is the perfect candidate.
He's malicious, he's weird, he's different from the other characters, and even his merch has set him apart. So I'm calling it here. Don't be surprised when he's revealed to be the big bad AI at the end of this series.
But that being said, Jax wasn't the only contender I had in mind while writing this video. There's actually a lot of evidence pointing towards Pomni being an NPC too, which we will be exploring very soon. Yeah, we'll be doing another episode exploring the possibility that Pomni is actually a secret AI NPC in the near future, so subscribe if you don't want to miss that episode when it hits.
But until then, as always, remember that it's all just a theory. A film theory. And cut!
And if you want another digital circus theory right now, check out our video proving that the digital circus is literally H-E double hockey sticks.
