Questions about Seele and Instrumentality

[chaosakita]

After watching the End of Evangelion again, I have a few questions:

1. How was Seele planning on starting Instrumentality?

It seems like Seele was going to start Instrumentality with the MP Evas. How would that have worked? I thought you needed Lilith + Adam to start the Third Impact.

2. Was Seele aware of Gendou's plans? How aware were they? Did they know that Gendou could carry out his plan through merging Adam with Lilith?

3. Was Seele aware that Instrumentality was starting because of the unison of Adam/Gendou and Rei?

4. Did they know that Instrumentality could eventually be foiled?

I guess these questions might not really have a definite answer, but it'd be interesting to see the discussion.

[Mr. Tines]

In all of this, we have to realise that there is a lot of vagueness masquerading as hints at profundity. That given

1. Probably in a similar fashion to what we saw, only with Lilith and/or Adam taking the part of EVA-01 in the whole sephirotic divide by zero ritual; but by the time shit went down everyone was improvising like crazy

2,3. I get the impression that Gendo managed to keep enough secrets from SEELE (e.g. by sacrificing Ritsuko to keep Rei out of their clutches) that they were unaware of how advanced his planning was.

4. Part of the battle was about who was in the driving seat; if not them, then a broken Shinji who would be expected to fold. Yui running her own Trojan from the inside was not on anybody's radar.

[PinkAF]

Somewhat related to the questions above, do we know what SEELE's original purpose for the Spear of Longinus was? They seem pretty pissed to have lost it in Episode 22, but seem to get over their loss pretty quickly. Do we know what purpose it would have served in the original Third Impact scenario? And before they knew the Spear would return to Earth (or did they know all along?) how were they intending to bring about Instrumentality in their alternative Third Impact scenario? Were the MP Eva's replica spears substitute enough? I had always assumed Unit-01 acted as their Lilith substitute, the MP-Evas with the Kaworu Dummy Plug acted as their Adam substitute, but was never sure what part of the equation the Spear of Longinus served.

[Bagheera]

My take in general:

http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/14932/Impact-Events-and-the-People-Who-Drive-Them/

As to these specific questions:

1. Combine the Adam embryo with Kaworu and Lilith (they thought she still had her soul, and knew nothing about Rei) and use the Lance to force the conglomerate to do what they wanted. The MPEs and Unit 01 were their backup plan, though as Tines noted Yui's plan blindsided everyone.

2. Seele knew Gendo was working against them, and they knew he had the Adam embryo. They didn't know about Rei, though; the extent of his control over the soul of Lilith probably took them by surprise (though we all know how the worked out for Gendo, as well!).

3. Yes.

4. Yes, which is why they wanted the pilot of Unit 01 broken, and goes a long way toward explaining Kaworu's role in the show. But that's a big can of worms and a whole 'nother discussion.