Did 3.0+1.0 justify WILLE's treatment of Shinji?

[Konja7]

My current theory is that since Shin confirmed that the events of the Next Time Preview at the end of 2.0 actually happened, Misato and her staff were sent in custody to be interrogated on what happened, leaving Kaworu and SEELE free reign to directly control NERV (Kaji managed to convince them that he's on their side thanks to his super-spy mojo) and implement their Third Impact, and Misato and Co weren't in a position to stop them before they could start it or at least could had stopped it sooner, before it turned nearly the entire planet to core (either they were kept in custody until shit hit the fan, or they were reintegrated into NERV but carefully monitored and apart from the new leadeship's decisions), and looking at 02's missing arm and chunk of skull in Q, it's probable that SEELE never bothered to repair it, leaving Misato and Co without an Eva to try to stop Mar.06, which led to Kaji sacrificing himself to stop 3I before everything was lost.

Kaworu doesn't seem to really be involved in the implementation of the Third Impact. In fact, it's more likely he works with Kaji to stop it.

Kaworu and Kaji seems to have a pretty good relationship when they talk in the Instrumentality.

Also, Kaworu says he was saved by Kaji too.



PS: Also, it isn't confirmed that the events of the Next Time Preview at the end of 2.0 actually happened. We only know that Kaworu used the Commander suit at some point.

[swagbuckking1]

ElMariachi, I agree with all your points and think your reasoning is pretty solid. I would like your thoughts on some things though and freely invite others to give theirs as well. Do you think that Misato and Ritsuko "punishing" Shinji is in keeping with their character? Would they have actually blamed Shinji for NTI? Do you think they knew that he was manipulated by his father and were willing to defend him? Or do you think that fighting for 14 years destroyed any compassion/understanding they would have had for Shinji?

It is hard to say because it seems like the latest movie does not show what happened during that timeskip for us to understand what made them want to "punish" Shinji.

[Pluto]

This is an edited/updated post of something I said about this in this thread.

In short, I think her behavior is explained by her role as the leader of Wille. It's a huge organization with strict rules and Misato carries a lot of responsibility in that role. She can't simply defer to Shinji.

Misato's Guilt and Relevant Plot Details
In short, Misato's main guilt is that she couldn't die with Kaji when he sacrificed himself because she was pregnant. Instead, she took on the role of the leader of Wille, the organization that was founded by ex-Nerv personnel via a coup d'etat around the time of the third impact (Kohji mentions how the blue armbands of Wille were how they were able to identify their allies on a bridge scene). The guilt and remorse she faced given the death of Kaji caused her to continue his work of restoring the earth and ultimately led her to become the leader of Wille.

When she gives the order to let Shinji pilot eva in Shin, there's some drama at gunpoint with Midori and Sakura about how he's danger to everyone. I think the Near Third and Third Impact were two separate events. With the Near Third, the surrounding earth was turned to core (you can see this at the end of 2.0). Then Seele went about their plans without Shinji and started the Third Impact after 2.0. Kaji sacrificed himself to stop this impact. Here Misato explains to them that she gave the order to pilot eva and that Shinji is the reason they're all alive.

The Theme of Growing Up

In the Ogata interview, she talks about how in her role for Q, it's 14 years later and Shinji still has the heart of a 14 year old while it's apparent that everyone else has grown up and Shinji selfishly thinks if he can pull out some spears, the world will be saved. There's a big shift in Shin from Q/NTE/NGE in which Shinji becomes an active participant in the world he inhabits as opposed to some who just lets things passively happen him. She also mentions how the characters, their lives, and their roles have changed.

The key word here to explain Misato's behavior in Q is role.

Misato's Role


The key word is Misato's role.

She's now the commander of Wille. She must accept responsibility for the entire crew of the Wunder, members of Wille, and Kredit. As a person in this leadership role, it is their duty to keep cool, neutral, calm, and collected during times of chaos, strive, and pressure. Think about how Commander Ikari and Fuyutsuki always kept their cool during NGE and NTE (regardless of what you think of them). They don't defer to anyone's emotional outbursts because they need to make a decision with a clear mind.

The only inclination the we get in Q that Misato still has any shred of compassion for Shinji comes from the scene were she doesn't blow his head up with the DSS choker. All Eva pilots have accepted the responsibility to wear the DSS choker to prevent an impact. In a strict organization like Wille, what makes Shinji so special?

However, I don't think Misato ever hated Shinji. She is now in the role of leader of Wille. She can't act friendly like that to him because of her role. What if she acted differently to Shinji than the rest of the Wille crew? What kind of problems would that cause for her in the role of captain? What kind of problems would that cause for the crew? She's most likely too busy and needs to focus on matters that are more important (e.g. protecting the crew/ restoring humanity).

She continues to act the same way towards Shinji as we've seen before until she takes a bullet for him. After that, when Shinji and Misato have their exchange, she's no longer wearing her dark glasses and hat. She is no longer in the role of captain/commander talking to Shinji but as someone who cares about him.

We can see her expression has changed.

[DantesInferno]

If you want an in universe reason? Maybe after more than a decade they've began to see Shinji less as a human and more as an "event", the thing that seemingly caused global genocide. And maybe characters like Misato have guilt around their part in encouraging Shinji to pilot the Eva, and treating him like a threat to be managed rather than a human allows them to avoid dealing with that guilt.

It's really just that. Either that plot point works for you or it doesn't.

Also, the Mark 09 attacked pretty much before they had any chance…

[Xiel]

As far we know, Near or not, Third Impact, was caused by Shinji's wish at the end of 2.0 ("I don't care about the world, just give me Ayanami back!"). That was the cause and trigger of the impact because the Evas (Adams?) work like a monkey's paw which interprets it as "let kid grab Rei, we get to change the planet soil!" Shinji was the cause of it. It will continue until Kaji stops it for good with his sacrifice, or so it's implied. It was just stalled by Kaworu, though it remained latent. We don't know exactly how it got restarted, nevertheless, the implication I got was that until someone gave their life to stop it, it continued. At some point, Mark 06 became an unmanned unit that sealed an angel, so there's that too. Kaworu seems to not know exactly what happened in the stuff with the 12th angel seal, unlike Mari and Asuka, so he was probably away during that battle.

The Impact seemly requires a wish to start, also an angel sacrifice to ascendent the Eva (Adam). Ayanami and Shikinami series allow Gendo (or SEELE) to have some degree of control over the effect too or so it seems since Gendo planned for Rei to be stuck in Eva 01 while Asuka was planned to be sacrificed as a component of Eva 13. How this works exactly, beats me. It's all full of ambiguous vagueness because Anno always uses this convoluted backdrop as some kind of metaphor.

Shinji and Rei (and the poor, poor angel) were pawns in Gendo's and SEELE's board. They have scripted that Impact before Ayanami's creation, so it's not as if they were malicious, or that saving Rei was the wrong thing to do (it was Shinji's tunnel vision that was bad, which again repeats in 3.0 and he finally regrets it deeply). The situation was manipulated by them, WILLE is aware of this, but there's the understandable fear of letting anyone near an Eva. That's why the chokers were made as a measure to stop the pilot should they go too far. Mari and Asuka wear one, originally so did Kaworu, it seems because was made for him. It's difficult to blame WILLE members for their paranoia, or Shinji who was just 14 years old and fished out the Eva and got all confused by the new world he faced. Gendo counted with that too, to snatch Shinji, so he can control Kaworu and Eva 13.

[ElMariachi]

^
You know Xiel, before I was one of the people most interested in how exactly things happened and which Impact destroyed what, between Near Third Impact and Third Impact proper, because back them I was sure that Shinji will have to live in this new world for good and learn to live with his past mistakes, and for that he needed to know exactly where his faults lied, but the ending of Shin made all this placing of guilt moot, since Shinji restore everything everything and everyone to the state it was beyond Second Impact, so it's not really important anymore. (and I'm still salty that it ended that way)

ElMariachi, I agree with all your points and think your reasoning is pretty solid. I would like your thoughts on some things though and freely invite others to give theirs as well. Do you think that Misato and Ritsuko "punishing" Shinji is in keeping with their character? Would they have actually blamed Shinji for NTI? Do you think they knew that he was manipulated by his father and were willing to defend him? Or do you think that fighting for 14 years destroyed any compassion/understanding they would have had for Shinji?

It is hard to say because it seems like the latest movie does not show what happened during that timeskip for us to understand what made them want to "punish" Shinji.

The Misato of 14 years ago? She wouldn't had punished or blamed him for it. But the Misato from 14 years later is someone deeply traumatized and scarred by what happened, and she surrounded herself by a nearly impenetrable wall of professionalism and total devotion to WILLE. That's the point, that her past traumas and 14 years of war made her into someone unrecognizable, until Shinji manage to bring back the old Misato from behind that huge wall.

In short, I think her behavior is explained by her role as the leader of Wille. It's a huge organization with strict rules and Misato carries a lot of responsibility in that role. She can't simply defer to Shinji.

Do we get an indication of how vast WILLE and Kredit actually are? From what little I got from the spoilers, it looked like it was the personnel of the Wunder fleet, a few villages like Village-3 and that's it. But all their armament and those supply helicopters seen in Q must come from somewhere.

[swagbuckking1]

Even after spoilers for 3.0+1.0 came out, I was left feeling still confused over WILLE's/Misato's treatment of Shinji in Q. I thought we would receive a spectacular revelation that would make us more sympathetic towards WILLE and understand why they were explicitly "punishing" him beyond the reasonable pragmatic reasons. And whilst it was revealed that Kaji sacrificed himself to stop third impact, IMO it revealed little as to Misato's/Ritsuko's condemnations of Shinji. Unless of course she blamed Shinji for Kaji's death then in that case I would have expected more resentment towards Shinji. But no, people are correctly surmising that Misato, as a result of Kaji's sacrifice, became an extremely detached, aloof and hardened leader focused solely on fighting Gendo. After all her decision to give up her biological son shows how dedicated she is to fighting this war and how extremely "professional" and militant she has become.

However, it must be stated that there is a difference between being professional and devoted to WILLE's cause and arbitrarily electing to "punish" Shinji. Each pilot was required to wear the choker for the obvious reasons but Shinji's had the added purpose of serving as his punishment. I view this decision of Misato's to punish Shinji to be solely an emotional one (not because of her "professionalism") and one indicative of her extreme levels of repressed guilt, shame, anger and grief (for Kaji and for Shinji). In my eyes, even the most battle-hardened, uber-professional rebel leader would see that there is nothing to be gained from "punishing" a kid you know was groomed to commit his supposed "crime". It produces nothing of value, it doesn't help them advance their goals and it certainly wouldn't bring the people who died back. Making Shinji's choker have the additional purpose of being his "punishment" (and making him explicitly aware of this straight after just waking up from a 14 year coma) serves no purpose other than making the WILLE crew and subsequently Misato/Ritsuko feel better about themselves.

I actually struggled to understand this at first but with the discussion from the members in this thread, it suddenly became clear that WILLE simply have a massive chip on their shoulder regarding Shinji.

That's it.

They want to make him feel like sh*t because after fighting for so long they irrationally blame him for all the damage that's ensued. However they are prevented from just outright killing him because they know on the surface level that he is not truly culpable for what had happened. So WILLE are caught between a rock and a hard place; wanting to get back at the guy their animal instincts have associated with the war but also knowing that he is, at the end of the day, just a really unlucky kid. Therefore WILLE's desire to punish Shinji show that even after 14 years of becoming desensitized, emotionally-blunted warriors, they are still flawed human beings who are prone to making irrational, impulsive and self-serving decisions when someone like Shinji returns.

Is it understandable for them to be this way?
Certainly.

Does that make them right?
No, not in my opinion.

Even in Shin, when Shinji merely asks to pilot Unit 1, Sakura and Midori pull their weapons on him. What did they think he would do? Sneak inside Unit 1 if they refused him? Where is the logic in immediately resorting to the lethal option when you know the kid has no chance in sortieing and preparing Unit 1 for piloting without your permission. Which leads me to say: because they are not being logical but are instead being hyper-emotional. This is how highly-strung they are; where they about to shoot the kid who could be their last hope in stopping Gendo. Only stopping when their leader, Misato, takes a bullet for Shinji.

So to answer: "Why did WILLE want to "punish" Shinji with the choker?"

- For the WILLE crew, it is because they are angry and resentful after fighting for so long and they elect to take their anger out on the figure they associate with third impact. However because they are aware that Shinji was being manipulated by his father, their hands are tied from outright killing him so they decide to add the "punishment" purpose to choker. I imagine they thought something like this: "We could just tell you every pilot has to wear one but we want you to feel bad so we'll tell you it's your punishment".

- For Misato, the reasons are obviously more personal. Deep down she knows that Shinji was manipulated by Gendo so why might have she wanted to punish Shinji? My theory/headcanon has come up with two reasons.

The first one is projection. She repressed all these conflicted emotions about Shinji which was subconsciously projected onto Shinji over 14 years. It is much easier to project one's feelings onto someone if they are missing/absent because they are not present to dispell the beliefs you are creating about them. And as a result all of Misato's guilt, fear and resentment are projected onto Shinji (or more specifically the mental caricature that has been built up of him in his 14 years of absence).

The second reason in my eyes is anger/grief. We know that Misato still deeply cares about Shinji; she wasn't able to detonate the choker and she kept his plugsuit in her room for 14 years. Also most revealingly, she took a bullet for him. So how does this translate to wanting to "punish" Shinji? Because Shinji left her. I believe Misato may have wanted to consciously punish Shinji because she felt resentful that he not only left her apartment but also "abandoned" her for 14 years. It might not sound rational or logical but the human mind rarely is. She deeply cares for Shinji and even when confronted with the photograph of her BIOLOGICAL son, her thoughts are about who? Shinji (much to the chagrin of @thricemisato who called Misato "pathetic & obsessed" at this scene). Because of this there is a high chance that Misato may have felt like a mother who's "son" abandoned her in her time of [emotional] need leading to her purposing the choker. I'm not too familiar on Shinji and Misato's relationship in the rebuilds but if it is similar to NGE then we must understand that there is a codependency between them; Misato needs Shinji just as much as he needs her. But this is just my opinion.

- People are quick to say that Ritsuko has no feelings towards Shinji to want to punish him but I am inclined to disagree. Excluding her obvious relationship with Misato and being an extension of Misato's feelings, Ritsuko may indeed have had heavily veiled resentments towards Shinji. In 1.0 she states that Shinji always does as he is told and believes this is how he has been his whole life. She believes that he is extremely obedient so can you imagine her shock when he completely ignores (whether he actually heard her is never said) her cries to stop when he is massacring Zeruel. The one time he achieves his own agency and he sets off a disastrous series of events. So yes, I believe she has some anger directed to Shinji because of this.

Another reason I think Ritsuko feels resentment towards Shinji is, like Misato, projection. Now this theory is entirely headcanon and it's a bit of a stretch so please bear with me. Ritsuko was the chief scientist at NERV and is supposed to know the evangelion inside-out. Imagine her shock when she Shinji completely blows her expectations away when he gets back up despite having no power. She even states that she (the expert) doesn't know what is happening with Unit 1. Now imagine how she would have reacted to finding out that Gendo knew the evangelions were capable of awakening and also planned for it to happen. That would have stung a woman like Ritsuko, who prizes herself for her intelligence that Gendo, not only knew more than her but also outsmarted her and used Shinji to do it. 14 years later the subconscious resentment from this manifests in the form of "punishing" Shinji. But yeah, this theory of mine is a stretch I know, but nevertheless it's fun to speculate.

So back to my final question and the title of this thread:

Did 3.0+1.0 justify WILLE's treatment of Shinji?

No, it didn't IMO. In fact I believe Shin was a damning indictment on WILLE. Even though WILLE's reaction towards Shinji is completely understandable, the fact is their resentment almost doomed them as they needed Shinji in the end to stop Gendo. Installing the choker was a precaution taken with all the pilots to prevent awakenings, however due to Shinji being a special case where he is resented by pretty much everyone, his choker is controlled remotely by Misato. It is not shown whether Misato controlled Asuka's and Mari's so we cannot assume that she did. Even though WILLE didn't anticipate Gendo would come after Shinji, they still implemented a mechanism by which they could have him easily killed.

This is unmistakeably because of their grudge against him. They did not need to put the choker on him if they didn't intend for him to pilot. They did not need to put the choker on him if they assumed Gendo wouldn't come for him to make him pilot again (Ritsuko is shocked Rei Q came for Shinji and not Unit 1). They put a lethal device on him simply because of their resentment and were certainly willing to kill him if he escaped. It appears that Shinji was the only pilot that could have been killed by the choker manually indicating premeditation. However all of WILLE come out looking immature and spiteful because they needed Shinji in the end. Asuka was defeated by Gendo and Mari could do nothing to Gendo. In the end Shinji was needed. If Misato had listened to Ritsuko and detonated the choker as soon as he left, WILLE would be doomed as they wouldn't have had Shinji to stop Gendo. So yes that is my opinion but others may disagree.

[Xiel]

^
You know Xiel, before I was one of the people most interested in how exactly things happened and which Impact destroyed what, between Near Third Impact and Third Impact proper, because back them I was sure that Shinji will have to live in this new world for good and learn to live with his past mistakes, and for that he needed to know exactly where his faults lied, but the ending of Shin made all this placing of guilt moot, since Shinji restore everything everything and everyone to the state it was beyond Second Impact, so it's not really important anymore. (and I'm still salty that it ended that way)

It doesn't seem to be a distinction between Near Third Impact or Third Impact, just moments of the same process (When Kaworu made the distinction, it sounded as if it's just how the lilin of Wille labelled them for chronology's sake IMO; Gendo never speaks of a Near-anything, just Second, Third, Fourth Impacts). It got triggered when Shinji wished for something (and he, and everyone else were Gendo's puppets for his revised script) in those conditions (angel eaten, within an Eva/Adam), and the result is "cleansing the soil." That's why Earth got teeth, among other weird changes. The Impacts in NTE work as some kind of neat steps toward a complete overhaul of the world, one at a time.

Hmm, I think Shinji learned his lesson and matured, though: he realized Kaworu was correct about hope (the time he finally starts taking his advice), he accepted changes, did things for other people (want to save others instead of wanting to be saved by others from EoE and NGE), shouldered his mistakes (choker symbolism) and confronted his father. The growth is even paralleled to Misato who also accepts she is responsible as his commander and tries to undo the damage her father did (after learning he caused the Second Impact). NTE was announced as a story of hope (very very empathized in the movie as well), so it couldn't have an apocalyptic downer ending as the "old Eva."

[ElMariachi]

It doesn't seem to be a distinction between Near Third Impact or Third Impact, just moments of the same process (When Kaworu made the distinction, it sounded as if it's just how the lilin of Wille labelled them for chronology's sake IMO; Gendo never speaks of a Near-anything, just Second, Third, Fourth Impacts). It got triggered when Shinji wished for something (and he, and everyone else were Gendo's puppets for his revised script) in those conditions (angel eaten, within an Eva/Adam), and the result is "cleansing the soil." That's why Earth got teeth, among other weird changes. The Impacts in NTE work as some kind of neat steps toward a complete overhaul of the world, one at a time.

There's at least a difference of Mark.06 being turned into an autonomous unit and two Angels between N3I and Third Impact proper. And SEELE wouldn't had needed to go a make a proper Third Impact if Shinji's N3I already "cleansed the land" like they wanted.
But again it doesn't matter anymore, since Shinji retconned everything in the end.

Hmm, I think Shinji learned his lesson and matured, though: he realized Kaworu was correct about hope (the time he finally starts taking his advice), he accepted changes, did things for other people (want to save others instead of wanting to be saved by others from EoE and NGE), shouldered his mistakes (choker symbolism) and confronted his father. The growth is even paralleled to Misato who also accepts she is responsible as his commander and tries to undo the damage her father did (after learning he caused the Second Impact). NTE was announced as a story of hope (very very empathized in the movie as well), so it couldn't have an apocalyptic downer ending as the "old Eva."

I didn't wanted an apocalyptic ending a la EoE (mainly because the apocalypse already happened during the timeskip and is way worse than what happened in EoE! ), but that Shinji get to really live in this new world, with his past errors, and that WILLE's efforts to restore a world for humanity paid off in the end. That in the end everyone continue to work hard to turn back the world into something habitable thanks to Kaji's previous efforts and plans to preserve samples of Earth's biosphere, because as Fuyutsuki said in Q: "Breaking the world is easy enough. But rebuilding it, that isn't so easy.", or as Mari also says in Q: "Learn how the world works.", instead of having Shinji fixing everything and more thanks to Alien Space Magic.

[Konja7]

There's at least a difference of Mark.06 being turned into an autonomous unit and two Angels between N3I and Third Impact proper. And SEELE wouldn't had needed to go a make a proper Third Impact if Shinji's N3I already "cleansed the land" like they wanted.
But again it doesn't matter anymore, since Shinji retconned everything in the end.

In fact, we don't even know if SEELE started that Third Impact. We can assume that (since SEELE plans need the Impacts), but it isn't directly say or show that they started the Third Impact between 2.0 and 3.0

I really hope the CRC 3.0 will clarify the story.


I'm not totally sure Shinji retconned all things, since he tell Rei II that he won't bring time back.

[Xiel]

There's at least a difference of Mark.06 being turned into an autonomous unit and two Angels between N3I and Third Impact proper. And SEELE wouldn't had needed to go a make a proper Third Impact if Shinji's N3I already "cleansed the land" like they wanted.
But again it doesn't matter anymore, since Shinji retconned everything in the end.

Well, in 2.0, you see a large chunk of Earth being red before Kaworu stalls the Impact from Space. So we don't know how that affected the soil. I don't think SEELE can make an Impact with their own means anymore, it seems they require a certain pilot to make Impacts (IMO, Shinji for Third Impact as Eva 01 pilot and Kaworu for Fourth Impact, the soul-cleansing one, as the Eva 13 pilot) to follow their 'script' (the Dead Sea Scrolls). It's all very vague and ambiguous. That's why they used Shinji to kill Kaworu (or separate his soul and body) to give control of the outcome and the process of the Fourth, IMO, by hypothetically trapping his soul in the Eva and keep his corpse on automode pilot so he can't rebel. They entrusted Gendo to finish this without knowing Gendo had his own idea about the Fourth Impact. SEELE wanted to remake the world and make everyone life fruit and knowledge fruit hybrid beings, Gendo's idea was the similar to EOE Instrumentality. There's also the mysterious role of the Ayanami and Shikinami series made for this. What exactly do they do and why they were required them to ignite the Impact? It seemed that they needed Rei (alive or dead) in Eva 01 to their desired result as part of their scenario, and Asuka (alive or dead as well) in Eva 13 for their Fourth. Perhaps, and this is just my speculation, their presence would allow a third party (Gendo or SEELE) to control the consequences of the Impact rather than the pilot?

I didn't wanted an apocalyptic ending a la EoE (mainly because the apocalypse already happened during the timeskip and is way worse than what happened in EoE! ), but that Shinji get to really live in this new world, with his past errors, and that WILLE's efforts to restore a world for humanity paid off in the end. That in the end everyone continue to work hard to turn back the world into something habitable thanks to Kaji's previous efforts and plans to preserve samples of Earth's biosphere, because as Fuyutsuki said in Q: "Breaking the world is easy enough. But rebuilding it, that isn't so easy.", or as Mari also says in Q: "Learn how the world works.", instead of having Shinji fixing everything and more thanks to Alien Space Magic.

EoE ending ends with a pair of completely emotionally and mentally scarred 14 years old alone on a beach without any other sign of life, or freshwater or nourishment. The NTE timeskip shows humanity alive, so it's already a more hopeful and better scenario than what happened in EoE to me. I've always assumed if people (who weren't close to Shinji) returned, they would hunt down and kill Shinji for his actions in such a dreary scenario. NTE sort of vindicated my interpretation. If Misato hadn't had a position of commander in WILLE, Shinji would have been executed as soon as he appeared by the angry survivors who lost a loved one during the Third.

Alien Space Magic changed it in the same place. Why wouldn't it fix it? The only reason Shinji couldn't fit it in 3.0 is that he was overwhelmed by despair, his inability to change, and not shouldering his own sins (symbolically represented by the choker). The supernatural aspect has always been kinda metaphoric to Shinji's growth.

[ElMariachi]

In fact, we don't even know if SEELE started that Third Impact. We can assume that (since SEELE plans need the Impacts), but it isn't directly say or show that they started the Third Impact between 2.0 and 3.0

I really hope the CRC 3.0 will clarify the story.


I'm not totally sure Shinji retconned all things, since he tell Rei II that he won't bring time back.

I really doubt that a "savage" uncontrolled Impact like N3I or worse, an Angel reaching Lilith would had the exact effect SEELE wanted as the "phase two" of their plan "cleansing the land"), besides in 2.0 they say to Gendo that they don't plan to EVA-01 for their plans anymore, but Mark.06, fast forward in Q and you see Mark.06 with an Angel inside it (probably used to awake it) and a spear (vital for SEELE's version of Instrumentality), so for me everything points that Third Impact was SEELE's doing.

As for the retcon thing, Shinji does indeed says that he won't bring time back (which implies that he could have if he wanted) so everyone will keep their memories, but he still retconned the Angels and Evangelions away from the world, which led to a weird situation where Second to Additional Impact never happened and the world progressed normally (we see people using smartphones in the train station, which were absent in the Pre-3I world) but with the people that lived through everything transported in it as if they always lived there, but with their memories of the old world intact I guess, and even if they shouldn't be there (without the Evangelions, Angels... Asuka and Rei shouldn't exist for example, yet here they are)
Hell, it's even implied that the people who died will also come back (Kaji proposing to Kaworu to live with him and Katsuragi in the fields), the only thing that wasn't retconned is the memories of the people. (maybe)

Well, in 2.0, you see a large chunk of Earth being red before Kaworu stalls the Impact from Space. So we don't know how that affected the soil.

I think it's just the lightning of the vortex that gives everything a red color, because once it stops, the Geofront is still made of stone, and in the Next Time Preview (that we know happened during the timeskip) the surroundings of Tokyo-3 were still made of stone:

SPOILER: Show

Besides, how would had anyone in Tokyo-3 (including Toji, Kensuke and Hikari) survived if the immediate surroundings were turned to core during N3I?

I don't think SEELE can make an Impact with their own means anymore, it seems they require a certain pilot to make Impacts (IMO, Shinji for Third Impact as Eva 01 pilot and Kaworu for Fourth Impact, the soul-cleansing one, as the Eva 13 pilot) to follow their 'script' (the Dead Sea Scrolls). It's all very vague and ambiguous. That's why they used Shinji to kill Kaworu (or separate his soul and body) to give control of the outcome and the process of the Fourth, IMO, by hypothetically trapping his soul in the Eva and keep his corpse on automode pilot so he can't rebel. They entrusted Gendo to finish this without knowing Gendo had his own idea about the Fourth Impact. SEELE wanted to remake the world and make everyone life fruit and knowledge fruit hybrid beings, Gendo's idea was the similar to EOE Instrumentality. There's also the mysterious role of the Ayanami and Shikinami series made for this. What exactly do they do and why they were required them to ignite the Impact? It seemed that they needed Rei (alive or dead) in Eva 01 to their desired result as part of their scenario, and Asuka (alive or dead as well) in Eva 13 for their Fourth. Perhaps, and this is just my speculation, their presence would allow a third party (Gendo or SEELE) to control the consequences of the Impact rather than the pilot?

I'll be honest, the whole business of requirement for Impacts became so massively convoluted that I don't know what's supposed to be required or not anymore. Like, I've read that using Asuka as a trigger was a contingency plan for Gendo, so I dont' know anything anymore.

EoE ending ends with a pair of completely emotionally and mentally scarred 14 years old alone on a beach without any other sign of life, or freshwater or nourishment. The NTE timeskip shows humanity alive, so it's already a more hopeful and better scenario than what happened in EoE to me. I've always assumed if people (who weren't close to Shinji) returned, they would hunt down and kill Shinji for his actions in such a dreary scenario. NTE sort of vindicated my interpretation. If Misato hadn't had a position of commander in WILLE, Shinji would have been executed as soon as he appeared by the angry survivors who lost a loved one during the Third.

Alien Space Magic changed it in the same place. Why wouldn't it fix it? The only reason Shinji couldn't fit it in 3.0 is that he was overwhelmed by despair, his inability to change, and not shouldering his own sins (symbolically represented by the choker). The supernatural aspect has always been kinda metaphoric to Shinji's growth.

Yui's words in EoE made it clear that those who want to come back will come back, with the implication that Asuka and Shinji won't stay alone for long, and that despite the damage done to the planet (like the sea being tinted red and the giant half head in the ocean), now humanity is finally free from SEELE's schemes and can move forward.
As for Shinji being immediately killed by WILLE if it wasn't for Misato, I'm not sure, since most of them would understood that he was a pawn and were even ready to let him pilot one last time (even thought it was because the situation was desperate), and the only ones that were really vehement against him were those who explicitly lost someone during Near Third Impact (and of the two we've seen, Sakura still decided to give Shinji the benefit of the doubt and it's implied that her actions at the end of Shin were born out of panic rather than malice)

As for the Alien Space Magic, of course using it could be a solution (as Kaworu said in Q: "What was changed by Eva can be changed again by Eva"), it's just that I think (and again it's' my personal opinion here) that it goes against the themes shown to us through NTE, that repairing things (the world, you relationships with others...) take time and effort and that there are no magic button to fix everything, Shin even opening to show us that core erosion can be reverted without using Evangelions, that Kaji had an old plan to restore life on Earth thanks to preserved samples (both plans born from the work in the preservation aquarium shown in 2.0)... and then the ending throw everything away by having Shinji going "Neon Genesis" and fixing everything in one go.

[CharPenPen]

Just my 2 cents but: I feel an ending where Shinji and the rest of the Wille crew endeavor to slowly heal the earth would have been interesting, but it also would have felt jarring. I've always felt Evangelion is above all a metaphor for depression and social atomization, with the SF elements basically being window dressing. For instance, surely after EoE Asuka and Shinji will barely be able to find clean water or food? But it doesn't matter, because it's such an evocative final scene that expresses the emotions of the work.

As such, I always expected the time skip to basically be a bad dream that would eventually be reverted. It encapsulates a feeling of being at ones lowest with no sense of improving things - a familiar world rendered alien and inert. As such, for me, it has to end with a return to that previous version of the world once Shinji, and the works, mental state has lifted. To maintain such an alien world would make it very hard for me to continue relating to the story primarily on an emotional level, I would instead be more focused on the nuts and bolts of the setting. The clouds part, basically. Committing to the SF minutiae of 3.0 and ending with the slow healing of the world would have felt jarring on that level. However, I realize this all stems from my very specific relationship to Eva.

[The18°angel]

another type of ending that would have been good is one that shows that after mari rescues Shinji from the beach they both return to the real world and it shows that the land is restored and that people are starting to come back and how this affects the that remained in the world for the last 14 years. where there are difficulties due to the different points of view of those who returned to those who remained behind something similar to what happens in the series the falcón and the winter soldier after the blip

[Xiel]

I think it's just the lightning of the vortex that gives everything a red color, because once it stops, the Geofront is still made of stone, and in the Next Time Preview (that we know happened during the timeskip) the surroundings of Tokyo-3 were still made of stone:

SPOILER: Show

Besides, how would had anyone in Tokyo-3 (including Toji, Kensuke and Hikari) survived if the immediate surroundings were turned to core during N3I?

Maybe Tokyo-3 was spared because was ground 0 while the effect began from the outer expansive circle wave? Who knows how this worked. I know Gendo doesn't actually bring up any near Impact, just Impacts as the same process.
Even if he didn't mean it and they were all manipulated by Gendo, Shinji's still stated the cause in Shin. Misato takes responsibility because she was his superior officer.

I'll be honest, the whole business of requirement for Impacts became so massively convoluted that I don't know what's supposed to be required or not anymore. Like, I've read that using Asuka as a trigger was a contingency plan for Gendo, so I don't know anything anymore.

Tell me about it. I'm not sure how the heck did Katsuragi papa ignited the Second Impact, but for Third and Fourth have its convoluted scenario using 14 years olds (thinking about it, Eva 13 probably took 14 years to be built because they need Kaworu to be 14), they needed awakened Eva 01 and Eva 13 as well with:

1. Angel sacrifice as power up item like a RPG adventure.
2. Those speshful Evas pilots (Shinji, Kaworu).
3. A wish/sacrifice?

You don't need Shikinami or Ayanami (Kaworu and Shinji can do this without them - Q) but it seems that they exist to make things go on their way (Gendo, SEELE) without a clear explanation of how. But they were specifically created as tools for Impacts. That's probably why they sabotaged Kaworu and Shinji because they were doing things without their assigned clone series.

Yui's words in EoE made it clear that those who want to come back will come back, with the implication that Asuka and Shinji won't stay alone for long, and that despite the damage done to the planet (like the sea being tinted red and the giant half head in the ocean), now humanity is finally free from SEELE's schemes and can move forward.

So? If your loved ones became orange juice because some kid got a mental breakdown, and returned alone to a hellscape, Most would find that kid and murder him out of fear and rage. Do you honestly think they'll be thankful to Shinji? That's an unrealistic expectation, pretending humans would easily let go and not act their feelings. Shinji can't even hide because Instrumentality would make sure they know he did this. He wished for the world to die, and his actions in EOE don't fix anything, unlike his actions in NTE. It leaves the world in a worse state than after the Second. WILLE members' reaction to Shinji, even Sakura who was helped before by him and is Touji's sister, is completely realistic and shows us how humanity would have regarded Shinji if they returned after EOE. Except Shinji wouldn't have friends in powerful places to protect him like Misato, Touji, and Kensuke. You can't expect humanity to be this zen and enlightened to "move forward". Asuka and Shinji look scarred for life by the experience.

As for Shinji being immediately killed by WILLE if it wasn't for Misato, I'm not sure, since most of them would understood that he was a pawn and were even ready to let him pilot one last time (even thought it was because the situation was desperate), and the only ones that were really vehement against him were those who explicitly lost someone during Near Third Impact (and of the two we've seen, Sakura still decided to give Shinji the benefit of the doubt and it's implied that her actions at the end of Shin were born out of panic rather than malice)

They would have gunned him down if wasn't for Misato (not just Sakura, Midori too), and this is when Shinji could solve their issues and stop Gendo (Something he can't do in EoE).

As for the Alien Space Magic, of course using it could be a solution (as Kaworu said in Q: "What was changed by Eva can be changed again by Eva"), it's just that I think (and again it's' my personal opinion here) that it goes against the themes shown to us through NTE, that repairing things (the world, you relationships with others...) take time and effort and that there are no magic button to fix everything, Shin even opening to show us that core erosion can be reverted without using Evangelions, that Kaji had an old plan to restore life on Earth thanks to preserved samples (both plans born from the work in the preservation aquarium shown in 2.0)... and then the ending throw everything away by having Shinji going "Neon Genesis" and fixing everything in one go.

NTE never presented that as a 'wrong' choice. There's a reason why SEELE and Gendo had to sabotage Kaworu, and Fuyutsuki had to mentally weaken Shinji to trigger such a bad scenario. It's only a tool to be used but depending on your mental state and maturity. Shinji who approached the power for selfish reasons, disregarding people, would be punished. Shinji who used that power for the sake of other people, even if it could cost him his life, was rewarded.
I interpreted Shinji failing to change, accepted time passed, wanting to redo (turn back time) instead of fixing things as Kaworu proposed (after he gave him full speeches about "change is good, try it, Shinji-kun"). Because he was consumed by despair and unable to accept his actions. In NTE, he isn't trying to bring back the past to rebuild the world into one without Evas.

WILLE restored a lot of the world at the beginning of Shin, though. What Shinji did is to restore the living beings that were turned into evas and remove Evas from the world, so ending this cycle of fate, after ejecting his friends from it.

[Konja7]

WILLE restored a lot of the world at the beginning of Shin, though. What Shinji did is to restore the living beings that were turned into evas and remove Evas from the world, so ending this cycle of fate, after ejecting his friends from it.

As I mentioned, the restoration of WILLE is unreliable.

The pillars protect the land. However, if these pillars fail or stop working, the people would be doomed.

So, humanity really need a better restoration for the World (that Shinji gives them).

[Xiel]

So, humanity really need a better restoration for the World (that Shinji gives them).

I agree, but they still did a lot. Shinji and Misato both tried to fix their mistakes and their parents' mistakes. And they succeeded. There's nothing wrong to end Eva with a positive note where Shinji matures and cares about the world and other people, not just what they can do for him. That's why he's an adult in the ending.

[Konja7]

NTE never presented that as a 'wrong' choice. There's a reason why SEELE and Gendo had to sabotage Kaworu, and Fuyutsuki had to mentally weaken Shinji to trigger such a bad scenario. It's only a tool to be used but depending on your mental state and maturity. Shinji who approached the power for selfish reasons, disregarding people, would be punished. Shinji who used that power for the sake of other people, even if it could cost him his life, was rewarded.
I interpreted Shinji failing to change, accepted time passed, wanting to redo (turn back time) instead of fixing things as Kaworu proposed (after he gave him full speeches about "change is good, try it, Shinji-kun"). Because he was consumed by despair and unable to accept his actions. In NTE, he isn't trying to bring back the past to rebuild the world into one without Evas.

You're right that the restoration of the Earth using Alien technology was never the "wrong" choice. The issue was always Shinji's attitude and he was "punished" by that in Q.

That said, the message wasn't so clear at the time of Q (it isn't so weird to interpret it as Shinji being "punished" for wanting to take a fast solution). So, many theories and expectatives were developed in these nine years.

Now, Shin confirms that the use of Alien technology to restore the world was always the solution. So, there will be disappointed people with this resolution.

[Shinji Ikari Expy]

From a narrative standpoint, I don’t think Anno meant for WILLE’s actions to be perfectly moral. They were supposed to be understandable given the circumstances, which they were. That’s why I don’t see any point in deconstructing WILLE’s actions in 3.0 from an ethical standpoint, especially if you know the conclusion of the story.

Misato reconciles with Shinji. WILLE eventually lets him do his thing, even though some of them still resent him. Knowing that — why continue complaining about this?

Let me put it another way: if Shinji were a real person, living life after the “reset” in 3.0+1.0, he wouldn’t hold a grudge. I’m certain that he’d forgive WILLE and let it go. Why can’t you?

[ElMariachi]

The whole deal with the pillar is confusing thought: at the beginning of Shin we see one of them purifying all of Paris and its surrounding region, and later we see Village-3 needing to be surrounded by those same pillars to not turn to core, how the hell does that work?

You're right that the restoration of the Earth using Alien technology was likely never the "wrong" choice. The issue was always Shinji's attitude and he was "punished" by that.

That said, the message wasn't so clear at that time of Q (It isn't so weird to interpret that Shinji is being "punished" for taking a fast solution). So, many theories were developed in these nine years.

You're right that a lot of what I thought were the themes of Shin (and NTE as a whole) were born from speculating for years with what we got in Q, and what I got from Q was "stop relying on the Evas to solve your problems, both physical and emotional" and "learn to listen to the others", and said others words boiled down to "don't pilot, bad things will happen if you do".
And yes, not listening to Kaworu when he told Shinji to stop because the spears were the wrong ones is part of the "learn to listen to the others" theme, but let's imagine that the spears in the chamber were the good ones, do you think that Asuka and Mari and Misato would had let them do it? No, Shinji and Kaworu would had to defeat them all to do whatever Kaworu planned to do in peace, which would had conveyed the message that those silly people at WILLE don't know better and should let the people with the angelic powers do their thing.

That's' from here I think that the theory that humanity's problem won't be fixed with one push of a button that will undo everything (ie that a solution that looks like it'll do that must have a caveat somewhere), but that they'll have to work hard to restore their world and assure a future for the next generations.
And even the beginning of Shin goes in that direction, with the revelation that there are other ways to cleanse the land from core corruption, that there are settlements where people live, and that WILLE has a long term plan to restore the biosphere little by little.

And I think that I'm not the only one who thought that, since most of the post-3.0 fics I've read goes with route of cleansing the world little by little (Reticence, Afterwards, You Must (Not) Run Away...), so it's surprising to see that Anno took another route.

By the way, when I talk about "Alien Space Magic", I don't mean using alien technology is bad (after all the pillars themselves are alien technology, or based on it), but to have an alien device/phenomenon/whatever that solves a problem of a wide scale in one go, as if it was a magic spell. To give you an example, the ending of Mass Effect 3 where you can destroy or control the Reapers or turn all lifeforms of the galaxy into biologic/synthetic lifeform in one energy wave is "Alien Space Magic".