This has been bothering me enough to come here to ask after a good 2 or 3 hours trying to find an answer online. I'm really surprised this isn't a commonly asked question.

What happens to Rei 3 after Shinji rejects the Human Instrumentality Project? Is she just gone? The vision of her at the very end doesn't really answer anything for me.

It seems like she is way too important to just be over with. Is her soul included in all of the souls sent back to Earth at the end, or is Lilith gone for eternity now? I was under the assumption that Lilith had to exist in some form or another in order for life to exist, so Rei would still exist too then? If anything, it should be possible to create a Rei 4.

Is there any official answer to this, or is it just another "nobody really knows" thing?

This is my first post, hopefully someone could help out ^^

Rei is a soulless manufactured body housing part of Lilith's soul

Episode 25 wrote:Rei 1:
No, you are a person whose false soul was
created by the human named Gendo Ikari.
You're nothing but an object living a lie, pretending to be a person.
See? There's a dark part of your heart inside you
that you can see nothing of, that you know nothing of.
That's where the real you is.

Rei 1:
But the real you is somewhere else.
You just don't know it.
Because you don't want to see it.
You're just avoiding it without realizing it.


Rei 1 (OFF):
Because it may not be human in form.
Because the person that I have been
so far may cease to exist.

so when she was absorbed and welcomed home down in Central Dogma, Rei 3 as a separate entity ceased to exist.

The Rei-shaped ghosts that bookend the series


are the closest that there is to some further manifestation of Rei after she/Lilith joined the ascent to some conjoined godhead with Adam/Kaworu

I have different, blasphemous opinions about this.

exnecross wrote:Is her soul included in all of the souls sent back to Earth at the end, or is Lilith gone for eternity now?

The only souls sent back to "earth" on EoE were Shinji, Asuka and Kaworu.
Kaworu is Adam. He got inside Lilith through his embryo form in Gendo's hand. He can have any form he wants to. The giant dead "Lilith" face in the sea of blood is Kaworo. Lilith is not an individual entity, but a collection of dead individual Lilins.
That place with the sea of blood in EoE is not the earth, it's inside Eva-01. It's the Eva imagination, powered by Shinji and Asuka. It becomes an eternal prison for them. It is literally hell. Shinji tries to kill Asuka there out of mercy for her because he understands where they are. She puts her hand in his face as if saying: honey, stop doing this, we will never die here, the pain will never end. Not even in 5 billion years.
Meanwhile, everybody else is in the perfect paradise of EoTv, which is inside the aforementioned "Rei" ghost, which is the real Godhead of the story. She is the only entity that can imagine a perfect reality for everyone else to live in. The EVA, as a man-made false god, cannot do it.

Petrucio wrote:I have different, blasphemous opinions about this.

Almost. Shinji and Asuka are embodied in perfected post-resurrection bodies maintained by their animating will, on the wreck of Earth, the anti-Eden at the end of the world (with not a single red sports car in sight) until their wills break, leaving two red dots locked in mutual torment until even after 5 billion years, when the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun are gone.

Meanwhile the rest of humanity has scattered as stardust to wander the cosmos (first far edge party a million years downstream, be there or be square).

The Shekinah (the Adam/Lilith alchymic marriage) is just adrift in time and space, occasionally popping up in places looking like a Rei.

Or there is always this http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?p=94517#94517

^I...am not sure if that is a joke.

Tines gets like that sometimes, don't worry about it too much.

OP: The entire second half of EoE is Rei's big suicide plan. Considering how determined she is to die, it's hardly likely that she would return to a physical form, although probably not impossible. The bookend ghost Reis are described in the Red Cross Booklet (I think?) as symbolic of "the existence which gazes upon man". In other words they represent us, the viewer, an impotent deity that has all the facts about the Eva universe but can't do jack nor shit about it. Rei the person is pretty much gone.

Azathoth wrote:The bookend ghost Reis are described in the Red Cross Booklet (I think?) as symbolic of "the existence which gazes upon man".

The Renewal (aka "Platinum") liner notes say this about the first bookend.

In other words they represent us, the viewer, an impotent deity that has all the facts about the Eva universe but can't do jack nor shit about it. Rei the person is pretty much gone.

God's in "his" heaven...

Reichu wrote:The Renewal (aka "Platinum") liner notes say this about the first bookend.

Interesting, what does it say about the second one?

And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who have the victory over the beast, over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God. (Revelation 15:2)

Someone wrote:^I...am not sure if that is a joke.

That's what EoE looked like to me when I watched it -- well, the two red dots and the far edge party bits got added later; but a special damnation for the pilots, definitely.

Mr. Tines wrote:That's what EoE looked like to me when I watched it.

You should never trust your first impression when confronted with something you don't know yet.

In EoTV, not only does Rei come back, she returns before Shinji!

No idea about EoE, but I doubt Tines' and Pertruchio's claims.

My heart tells me I am right.

Plus, the music they made for Rebuild.
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYny5BAkCQk[/url]
Showdown
Fight or die with truth and honour / This is the final showdown / This is the last horizon / No second chance for losing / There will be no tomorrow / Tear the heart from your aggressor / This is the final showdown / With no more road to go down / Prevail or pay the devil / This is the end forever

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R110lcX_hnw[/url]
In my spirit
In my spirit lies my faith
Stronger than love and with me it will be for always

It may be of interest that she was in the "I want to see them again" picture (it's easy to miss) and that the (albeit ununsed) Last A scenario included names on the gravemarkers we see in the background... and none of them bore Rei's name.

Still, the most parsimonious explanation would be that she did, in fact die along with the giant Lillith/Adam hybrid, since anything that could be used as counter-evidence is rather vague and what we have seen shows us that they merged completely.
In such a case, the GNRs crazy grinning as she falls appart could be interpreted as Rei III getting the Death she yearned for...

EoTV seems to show her surviving, but then again, Kaji and Yui were there, too... It's EoTV, anyway, sop the presence of the tree might not mean that they are literally present...
Yui still seems to have departed in some way, tough ("Good bye, mother"), perhaps she was "present" as EVA 01.

I think the big question is whether Rei is capable of dying? Achieving a near (if not) god like state, at the point where she can travel through time and be at multiple places at once, how does that existence die?

Petrucio wrote:The only souls sent back to "earth" on EoE were Shinji, Asuka and Kaworu

I had read that all the souls of those absorbed by the human instrumentality project were sent back? (Let's be honest, nobody REALLY understands the ending after their first time watching.)

Is this not true then? Nobody else regained their human form?

exnecross wrote:I had read that all the souls of those absorbed by the human instrumentality project were sent back? (Let's be honest, nobody REALLY understands the ending after their first time watching.)

Is this not true then? Nobody else regained their human for?

Yui explicitly states that all living things can return, all they have to do is, how does it go, "imagine themselves in their hearts"? While we don't see any other humans, they can return, and it's possible they already have returned, just at other places (as in, not the beach we see).

CJD wrote:Yui explicitly states that all living things can return, all they have to do is, how does it go, "imagine themselves in their hearts"? While we don't see any other humans, they can return, and it's possible they already have returned, just at other places (as in, not the beach we see).

Yes, this is what I meant. Its safe to assume most people did "choose" to return though. The guy I quoted seemed to be saying that those 3 were the only ones to return.

CJD wrote:I think the big question is whether Rei is capable of dying? Achieving a near (if not) god like state, at the point where she can travel through time and be at multiple places at once, how does that existence die?

Such an existence can die, but not in a way that is meaningful to us humans, for whom time is a one-way street. A "timeless" existence dying implies that there is a finite number of occurrences of that existence throughout past, present and future, one of which is a (final) death. However, since humans cannot see into the future, they cannot know whether there will be any more occurrences of the timeless being or not.

(Of course, this assumes a paradoxical conception of time, since the timeless being is both determined and not-determined by temporal causal processes.)

---

Anyway, my take on the main topic:

Lilith/Adam died. As a result, all the human souls (except Yui's) were jettisoned back into earth in the form of LCL, which caused the oceans to turn red. Any human soul with the will to separate themselves from the joint non-experience of Instrumentality will be able to recreate their physical form. Shinji and Asuka are the only two shown to have succeeded at this at the end of the movie, but there is the unspoken hope that more will follow eventually.

Rei and Kaworu are the souls of Lilith and Adam, two Angels / Seeds of Life. The concept of individuality is alien to them, as individuality is only found in Lilin, the 19th Angel, which is the human race. (Yes, it is even alien to Lilith, who was the progenitor of all life on earth, including humanity.)

However, Adam and Lilith have also experienced human life, and as a result they have been exposed to individuality.
Lilith learns about being human as Rei, who is socially awkward at best, and inhumanly detached and robot-like at worst. However, Shinji reaches out to her and treat her as an individual, and she slowly learns what it means to be human.
Adam, as Kaworu, is bemused and fascinated with humanity, and learns to understand the paradoxical relationship between individuality and love/attachment through his own interactions with Shinji.

So what happened to Adam/Kaworu's and Lilith/Rei's souls after Third Impact ended and Adam/Lilith's body housing all the souls of humanity died? I believe their souls were sent back to earth in LCL-form along with those of the human race. If they wished, they could reshape themselves as Rei and Kaworu.
However, I do not believe they want to, from their parting words to Shinji. They say that they 'will remain as the hope that humans will still be able to connect and bond in spite of their individuality, as the words "I love you"'. (I quoted this from memory, so please forgive any inaccuracies.)
Therefore, Adam and Lilith will forever remain part of the shared (sub-)consciousness of all human souls in the LCL-sea, as a permanent "womb" from which souls who are ready may be reborn as individuals to experience the joys of life and love.

Adam and Lilith are mother-figures that have withdrawn from their human children, who have reached adulthood and no longer depend on their mothers.
Just like Yui has withdrawn from Shinji, by remaining forever alone inside EVA Unit-01 and by leaving from earth and humanity. Shinji has outgrown the need to pilot Unit-01, which is a metaphor for the mother's womb, and he will be forever separate from the mother's womb as a result.

CJD wrote:I think the big question is whether Rei is capable of dying? Achieving a near (if not) god like state, at the point where she can travel through time and be at multiple places at once, how does that existence die?

She "died" inasmuch as she has no functioning body and no will to obtain one. We're given no evidence that souls can be "killed" or destroyed in any way; in that sense, sure Rei still exists, but only in the sense that she's a little red tinkerbell floating around in high orbit, incapable of interfacing with anyone else. People die when they are killed, so to speak; it goes the same way for gods, mostly.

Rei pretty clearly rejects the power that her own divinity should entail, though. Eva's concept of what a god is is so closely linked to the physical attributes of a thing that it's difficult to say that she can claim to be a god anymore, having sacrificed her body (containing the Fruit of Life she took from Adam).

This may sound stupid, but wouldn't Rei want to return to the human realm in physical form for the sake of Shinji? I don't believe at all that she was incapable of real feelings, as in EoE it was incredibly clear she began to love Shinji and wanted to be with him. So much so that she went against Gendo's plan for him, amongst several other things. Shinji became the only person to make her feel emotion.

Why would this suddenly go away towards the end? The Rei leading up to the climax in EoE would definitely want to stay with him. Unless somehow merging with Lilith caused her to forget all she once felt for him. Her will should be strong enough to live on.