Here’s why Samurai Jack is suddenly donning armor during season 5. Samurai Jack is a cult animated series that originally began on Cartoon Network. The story follows the titular samurai who is banished to the far future by Aku, a powerful demon. The bulk of the series involves Jack wandering from place to place, fighting Aku’s minions and occasionally the demon himself, whilst trying to find his way back to the past. The show’s beautiful animation, well-rounded characters, and kinetic action sequences made it a hit.

Samurai Jack came to an abrupt end with season 4 when creator Genndy Tartakovsky began work on the 2D Star Wars: The Clone Wars series. While there was talk of a revival to give the show a proper finale or a live-action movie, Tartakovsky was always busy with other projects like the Hotel Transylvania franchise. Luckily for fans, a fifth and final season finally arrived in 2017 on Adult Swim. Season 5 was a darker, more mature take on the character, with Jack actually killing human beings and psychologically traumatized after roaming the future for 50 years with no way back to his own time.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

Jack looks quite different when he’s first introduced in Samurai Jack season 5, sporting a heavy beard, a machine gun, a badass motorbike, and heavy armor. The show reveals he lost his katana – the only weapon capable of killing Aku – decades before, and since he doesn’t age, he lost faith in his mission. While the Samurai Jack armor gives him a cool new look, this brooding loner isn’t the character fans grew to love, which why this makeover doesn’t last long.

See also  Mortal Kombat's Sub-Zero Is Actually Two Different Characters

A group of assassins known as the Daughters of Aku have been training to kill him, and he confronts them for the first time in the second episode of the season. They swiftly overwhelm him, destroying his bike, his weapons and stripping him of his armor. He ends up killing one of them during a fight and is horrified to discover she’s human. Jack has never killed a living creature before, and he has to come to terms with this before confronting the rest of his would-be assassins.

The new Samurai Jack armor is ultimately symbolic, and it’s only when its stripped away and he reverts to his old self that he finds the courage to complete his mission. He kills all but one of the daughters and ends up falling in love with the only survivor, Ashi, once she realizes Aku’s true nature. This leads to something of a bittersweet ending for the show, with Genndy Tartakovsky vowing Samurai Jack season 5 is definitely the end of Jack’s long journey.

Moon Knight Episode 3 Ending Explained – Are Marc’s Powers Gone?

About The Author


Padraig Cotter
(3485 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

See also  Waco: 10 Things You Didn't Know About David Koresh

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

More From Padraig Cotter