When I first found out about the ultimate resolution of the Toa Nuva's quest, I actually felt quite let down. It happened to be on another website where there were no Bionicle Legends#11 spoiler warnings, and I didn't necessarily intend to spoil it for myself before reading the book. But it happened anyways.

 

I first felt kind of shocked that that was where it ended. I remember thinking "so after all this waiting, this is how it ends up?! I waited seven years to see Mata Nui wake up and Makuta finally destroyed in some epic manner, and this is what we get?!" Yes, I was rather ticked off. I also remember thinking before I had seen the spoilers that even if Mata Nui was awakened, I probably wouldn't stay with Bionicle on into 2009 because I would get what I had been waiting for since I was ten. I mean, the Great Spirit was originally going to wake up at the end of '01, then it was postponed to the end of '03 (Vakama even says it outright in MoL, no less!), and then we forgot about it ever happening while we took a detour into the past to give the story some history (no, I'm not complaining about '04-'05, Metru Nui was awesome), and then we get back to present time and Mata Nui needs to be saved from death--not awakened. So finally at last after all that time we get to 2008 and back to the Toa Nuva and at last the most climactic moment of the entire story is supposed to arrive...!!...but no. It doesn't happen, and it turns out that it was all for nothing. Biggest initial let-down so far (initial, these are my initial reactions--it turns around later).

 

However, after hearing now about the next arc of the storyline in Bara Magna and having all these little clues about "the shattering" dropped, I began to change my opinion. After all, if Mata Nui had simply been awakened, and Makuta, in the final stages of his plan, was thwarted and utterly destroyed, that would really be the end of Bionicle. Or at least, I can't really see how there could be anything else after the happy ending, unless we waited for five years and "re-started" in the future with a completely new plot.

So now I actually start to see the wisdom in what happened and the genius of the story team in engineering it this way. We're back to a single Makuta--The Makuta. The Great Spirit is hurtling through the cosmos on his way to a new, shattered world and some ultimate renewing of the universe, vowing to one day return to his Universe and overthrow his usurper. It's an epic new plot rising out of the ashes of the previous.

 

I've been a Bionicle fan since the first, tiny promotional image of Onua in one of the 2000 Lego Magazines, and I've survived till now, never expecting to remain a fan past the awakening (supposed awakening) of Mata Nui, and now I find that I've been unwittingly hooked into 2009 and the "greater universe" from which Mata Nui himself originated. So what began as extreme disappointment and frustration has now been miraculously reversed into renewed interest and anticipation of what is to come.

 

Well done, Lego, I applaud you.