Mass effect was one of the greatest new ip's released on the last generation of consoles. Now, as we await news on the next instalment, here is a theory I felt would be the natural evolution of the franchise. I hope you enjoy reading this theory and share your views. This will obviously contain spoilers!
Mass Effect 3’s Leviathan DLC showed us the origin of the Reapers - they were the result of a supposed blunder by the race called Leviathans. Leviathans are massive aquatic crustaceans who have an organic mind-control capability that can span the galaxy using a space-magical form of quantum entanglement. This ability appears to require the prospective thrall being initially in proximity to either a Leviathan or an artifact they call shards, which look like iridescent white spheres around a meter in diameter. They used this ability to become the apex race of the galaxy millions of years ago, by enthralling terrestrial species to serve them. They had a recurring problem with this way of life, though. Terrestrial species would create advanced synthetic life, which would war with them and exterminate them. The Leviathans would then be forced to go without thralls for a while.
So, the Leviathans created an AI to solve this problem, which solved it by determining that synthetic life would always destroy organic life, so it should preserve the apex race of the galaxy in synthetic form. This resulted in the harvest of the Leviathans and the creation of the first Reaper, Harbinger, in their image.
Life however continued to evolve and advance and find the Citadel over cycles lasting millions of years. In ME1, Shepard is told by the Reaper Sovereign that the Citadel was constructed by the Reapers as a trap to usher along the harvest of each cycle’s apex species. The Leviathans state that they have been watching the Crucible’s progress, meaning they are at least aware of its existence as an unbuilt idea. This is because they designed it. The hallucination of Ann Bryson that Shepard sees on Despoina when conversing with the Leviathan looks to the corner of its eyes before saying this. This is a classic “tell” for a liar, known to law enforcement and other people in the business of determining if someone’s telling the truth.
The Crucible plans were found in the Prothean Archives on Mars. The Protheans determined what was needed was something called the Catalyst, which they identified to be the Citadel. They almost finished building the Crucible but couldn’t deploy the weapon because they lost the war first. I believe the Leviathans were the first race to fail to build the Crucible. It was to be their failsafe if their Catalyst AI project got out of hand. Unfortunately the Reapers hunted them to near-extinction first. Survival of the species dictated that the Leviathans stay in hiding from the Reapers. They were successful in this. But they knew eventually some race would come along that could pull off the Crucible/Catalyst combination. The Protheans almost did. The Leviathans allowed them to keep the plans and data in their archives for future discovery.
The Flowers
In the first off-Citadel mission in the DLC, Shepard and team go to a remote mining base where the workers are behaving strangely. It looks like Reaper indoctrination, and at this point in the DLC you are still expecting to find a Reaper at the end. At the end of the mission Shepard finds an artifact of the Leviathans. When s/he destroys the artifact the workers snap out of their enthrallment immediately with none of the brain damage shown by victims of Reaper indoctrination.
In this mining facility you find labs where scientists are studying things like Turian pain threshold and plants. In fact, you find that they are studying these plants, which appear everywhere in the Citadel. A nearby log states that recent breakthroughs have made these plants “more effective” and that they will be “innocuous enough to be placed in offices.” These plants have flowers that look like red poppies, and are everywhere in the game, from the Citadel to Sanctuary.
James Vega remarks to Shepard early in the game that the people on the Citadel seem remarkably calm given the galactic war of extermination that’s happening. There’s also the matter of the Keepers, who run the Citadel and do not communicate with its residents. Nobody is disturbed by this, either. An unknowable alien race just running around rearranging your office and pushing buttons on terminals that only they can use and bumping you out of the way is something that any race sufficiently curious enough to find the Citadel would want to know the nature of. It’s even illegal under Citadel law to study them! Why?
Conclusion: These flowers are genetically engineered by Leviathan thralls, and either enthrall victims themselves, or are used by thralls to expand the range of the shards, analogous to signal repeaters. They are placed in proximity to important people to mildly enthrall them enough to kill their curiosity about the nature of the Citadel.
The AI Problem
The ending choice of ME3 includes the option to use the Crucible to destroy the Reapers. The Catalyst states that Destroy is not desirable. Well, you’re about to kill it. But the Catalyst even implies that Shepard will die because he has been implanted with technology that keeps him alive, and that Shepard’s synthetic allies - EDI and the Geth - will die too. But the Destroy ending is the only one where Shepard lives, if your EMS is high enough. We don’t see EDI or the Geth in the ending cutscene for Destroy, but both are capable of living in any computer powerful enough to run them. I think they’re alive and somewhere safe. If not, their sacrifice will be honored in the coming empire, or something.
If what the Leviathans say about the Catalyst is true, it is their enemy too. The Reapers are the enemy of all organic life. Supposedly the Leviathans were hunted to extinction but Shepard learns otherwise. Why is it afraid to not have its Reaper army anymore? Because the Catalyst knows the Leviathans are still around, too. It knows that without the Reapers to keep them in hiding, that they will not fear any “lesser” race, and they will dominate the galaxy and kill the Catalyst. The Catalyst hoped that Shepard would die too, but knows that even if he did, the remaining organic life in the galaxy would be enslaved by the Leviathans all over again. This is the central problem that the Catalyst was designed to solve - how to ensure that there would be thralls for its creators.
The Catalyst however, if the Leviathans are to be believed, created the Reapers. It wants them to live, and as a supposed enemy of the Leviathans it wants them suppressed. The Reapers do not execute full extermination. It would be impossible anyway.
What do you need to fight a race that can mind-control organics easier than it can breathe air? How about synthetic soldiers that are immune to their mind control? The Leviathans hate synthetics. The Protheans, who were culturally not too dissimilar to the Leviathans, hated them too. Why? Because they do not submit. Synthetics cannot be controlled in the same way that organics can. This makes the Control solution in the ending especially ironic, and is another of the illusions that the “illusive man” is under.
Conclusion: The reason terrestrial AIs were undesirable to the Leviathans is not because they kept exterminating the Leviathans’ thralls, but because they are immune to the Leviathans’ mind control and were used by the thralls to fight the Leviathans. The Catalyst knows this and its solution to the AI problem was to synthesize the Leviathans. This is why the Catalyst believes Synthesis is the best solution - it is the one it chose itself. Destroy is canon and is the intended use of the Crucible by its designers, the Leviathans.
Biology 2248
There’s also the fact that Salarians, Yahg, and Leviathans share certain traits and physical characteristics. The Yahg are terrestrial bipeds, but have six eyes as the Leviathans do. The Salarians are amphibious, an evolution of aquatic life. All three races’ heads look similar witch have dual vertical horns or fins that rise from the crown of their scalp, with tapering chins.
The Yahg have a violently xenophobic demeanor based on what we’d call Darwinist ethics. They exterminated the Citadel’s first contact team for daring to speak to them as equals. The Salarians are known to “uplift” alien species that they can use for false flag operations. Their government also displays a shocking lack of concern for ethical dilemmas when they arise in the process of Salarian advancement. You find a captive Yahg on the Salarian home world when rescuing Mordin Solus and Eve from an STG facility. The cultural characteristics echo the Leviathans’ disregard of “lesser” species as potential thralls and tools. There’s also a hint right in front of your face, or in front of Mordin Solus’ face, rather. His forehead, unique among Salarians, has a marking that looks very much like a Reaper - or, like the cave paintings of Leviathans that we see in the DLC. Mordin is ultimately responsible for ending the Genophage against the Krogan and allowing them to reproduce at their natural birthrate again, which is something the Salarians are vehemently opposed to as a matter of governmental policy.
The Salarians, in the paragon storyline where you allow Mordin to cure the genophage, do not participate in the climactic battle against the Reapers. They do not lend fleets to Shepard’s coalition and stay home and defend their own worlds. This would leave the Salarians in a very bad political situation at the end of the war. They are a Council race, one of the foundations of galactic civilization. They pissed off the Council by not helping to defeat the Reapers, and they have the Krogan pissed off at them for making the genophage in the first place and the Krogan who don’t follow Urdnot Wrex’s lead will be looking for revenge. Why would the Salarians, who are the most naturally intelligent race in the galaxy, do this to themselves? It’s the opposite of self-preservation in the galactic political climate and Salarians are known for playing a political “long game” and understanding these ramifications. They wouldn’t do this to themselves if they didn’t have another ace in the hole in the form of the Yahg and the Leviathans.
The Reapers are also avoiding the Yahg home world, Parnack. No less ranking a figure than Admiral Hackett, the commander of the anti-Reaper navies and Crucible project informs Shepard of this. The Yahg do not have fully developed FTL technology yet, and are persona non grata at the Citadel because of their violent natures, so nobody comes to their aid.
There’s also the mystery of the Thorian. The Thorian was a giant plant that was encountered by both the Protheans in their time and by human colonists on the planet Feros in ME1. It had lived in its form for at least 50,000 years, and had a similar lifecycle to the Leviathans - while the Leviathans are mobile, they are stuck in the water, and enthrall terrestrial species to serve them. The Thorian used spores to enthrall smaller organics, which eventually turned them into something called “Thorian creepers” - the only ones encountered in-game were made from humans and behaved similarly to Reaper husks.
I think the Thorian was one of the Leviathan’s projects via a thrall race. But since the Thorian came before the Protheans, who made the Thorian?
The Protheans claimed to learn the secrets of FTL space travel from the ruins of the Inusannon, the preceding cycle’s apex species. It was, I believe, a genetic engineering project created by enthralled Inusannon in their image. This is based on the Adjutants created by Cerberus that we encounter in ME3: Omega. Supposedly they are husks of cloned Inusannon and they look very similar to the Thorian, with horizontally oriented bodies and tentacled mouths.
The purpose of the Thorian was a test. Leviathans were testing methods of enthrallment that didn’t require shards that could be traced back to them. We see at the dig site that the Reaper ground forces can use the shard signal to trace the location of the Leviathan controlling it. If they find a way to give a thrall like the Thorian the power to enthrall on their behalf, they can screen their location from the Reapers even more effectively, and grow the thralldom organically.
Conclusion: The Leviathans used enthralled Inusannon to genetically engineer the Thorian, Salarian, and Yahg species in the cycle before the Protheans. The Protheans encountered these species in their cycle but they were primitive and not part of galactic civilization yet so they were left alone. These species will be the major terrestrial enemies of the second Mass Effect trilogy - the Leviathans’ foot soldiers. The Salarians will have been kicked out of the council at the beginning of ME4 and their seat will be filled by the Krogan in the person of Urdnot Bakara.
Final thoughts
One of the issues with making ME4-ME6 a sequel is how will they up the ante for enemies? How do you create an interesting conflict for a sequel when we already had a battle against giant robot spaceships for the survival of all life in the galaxy? This would be big enough to hold up. The downfall of the Salarians, the rise of the Yahg, and the rising hegemony of the Leviathans. The first trilogy was a battle for survival, and the second will be a battle for self-determination.
Theory: The Leviathans have been genetically engineering life for the past few cycles because they have finally increased in number and strength to attempt to return to the apex of the galaxy. They created races that were made to be perfect thralls and floated the Crucible plan to allow the rest of the races to end the Reapers. Now that the Reapers are gone, the Leviathans will ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of their thrall races: the Yahg and Salarians - and attempt to take over the galaxy again. Presuming that it is a sequel to the Reaper War, this will be the plot of the second Mass Effect trilogy!
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Do we know if ME 4 is actually going to be part of a whole new trilogy? Or will it just be a final chapter? I hadn't heard anything about a trilogy being made.. but you do have some good ideas!
I love Mass Effect, and I feel like even though the 1st game isn't as refined (gameplay wise) it is still my very favorite game of last gen.
Thanks for the good read, my mind is now racing full of ideas inspired by a mix of my own Mass Effect knowledge, and the ideas you brought to mind. (:
Very interesting read! I always found it odd that there was so much new information given to us in the Leviathan DLC but it never resonated throughout the rest of the game, or even in the following DLCs. I mean, sure, the goal of ME3 was to lay the smack down on the Reapers, not learn the history of the galaxy; knowing that and then reading your theory makes me think there's much more story to be told in the Mass Effect universe, and the Leviathan DLC was a hint to that. Bioware told us Shepard's story was over; some would interpret this as saying that his/her story was an isolated legend in one continuity in the Mass Effect universe; but maybe, just maybe, Shepard's story was actually the first chapter of a much larger story, one that goes from (like you said) survival and into self-determination -- a battle for control of the galaxy itself.
Another great question is why Bioware hasn't shared nearly a damn thing since the game was announced...
This game died when it destroyed the consistencies and created countless plotholes in the last 5 minutes. I think thats why Casey Hudson quit, he didnt want to be blamed again when the next game bombs. That or the shareholders wanted to get rid of him after how he handeld to the whole ending fiasco back in 2012.
Just because the Reapers are gone doesn't mean it's over. Actually the war has just begun. Leviathans reaching their apex is a big problem for the galactic community, in the aftermath of the Reapers.
It has been stated that the Salarians and the Humans will both be in Mass Effect 4. This most likely means it will be some sort of sequel to the first 3 Mass Effect games if not a direct sequel. In other words since all the original Mass Relays that were activated were destroyed how do you get all those people on Earth home? Using FTL would take centuries. These types of questions as well as peripheral mention of Sheppard at some point as a way of introducing new characters and story. The whole reason for the First Contact War was because humans were playing around with and trying to activate Mass Relays. They activate the wrong one in ME4 and run into some galaxy sized trouble. Sounds good to me.