The Mystery of the Second Cross in 3.0

[BlueBasilisk]

While we were brainstorming the Children = Adams theory, Reichu noticed something very interesting in Eva 3.0. This bloody cross laying among the sea of skulls in Central Dogma?

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This is not the same cross previously seen in 1.0 and 2.0. It is far, far bigger. Recall the scene where Mark.09 goes into hiding from Mari's sniper fire:

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Mark.09 is able to hide its entire body under just the upper arm with ample room to spare. You can see the corner where the arms connect near the bottom of the image. We thought this was just a scaling error at first, but it's not. The cross is consistently huge in each shot it's in. In most shots we only have the skulls for scale. You can see them in both of the previous images I included. Those skulls are about the same size as an Eva's head. You can compare the falling skulls to Mark.09's neck stump, and here you can see Unit 13 walking among them to get a better idea of their scale:

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We know for sure that Lilith was not that big in either of the previous movies because we have the Spear of Longinus stabbed in her chest for scale:

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Lilith is roughly the same height as an Eva, though her torso and arms are considerably more bulky. Her arms would *never* reach the nails embedded in this other bigger cross. The nails themselves are nearly as tall as an Eva. Neither of these images is exactly to scale, but I attempted to add the hiding Mark.09 into the wide shot of the cross to give a better idea of just how massive this thing is. Wozzed was also kind enough to pose a model of Mark.06 on the cross for me as well. Take a look:

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Just look at how big Mark.06 is compared to the skulls around it, and it's still too small to actually fit on that cross. Its hands can't even reach the nails! There's another curious detail about this cross too. On Lilith's original cross, there's a horizontal notch behind her head. It's right above the point where the arms connect:

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On this other cross, the notch is higher up on the upper arm of the cross. You can see it here:

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So what does this all mean? Well, as far as we can guess, it means that at some point between the end of 2.0 and 3rd Impact, Lilith grew to a colossal size and had to be re-crucified on a much bigger cross. This might also explain the discrepancies between her chamber as seen in the first two movies and 3.0: She got so big they had to transfer her to another room. A room like the chamber of skulls did exist in NGE. It's the sea with the pillars of salt where Units 01 and 02 crash down after exiting the main shaft in episode 24. Not a 1:1 direct parallel, but not entirely different either:

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Getting into more speculative territory, we think the best time for this to happen was during the credits portion of Evangelion 2.22, during the time that Unit 01 became a radiant giant and it being stopped by Eva Mark.06. There's a quick cut away to Lilith (using a recycled pan and close-up from 1.0) right as Rei starts to enter Unit 01, showing that seemingly nothing is going on with her. Only time you see her in the entire film. This would be achieved as a result of her soul (presumed to be residing within Rei 2) merging with Unit 01 (an Adam) and it having some kind of resonant effect that feeds back into her body.

Despite being impaled on the Spear of Longinus, Lilith's body is not entirely inert. The little legs jutting out of the tumorous masses where her legs should be are constantly in motion, swaying and kicking. You can also see this in 3.0, as her body starts to let off steam and begins bleeding from the eye sockets as the chaos in Central Dogma heats up. The corpse seen here is impaled on two Spears rather than just the one.

3.0 is also where the idea of a link between the various parts of Lilith's body stems from. Her severed head and body are in completely different parts of headquarters, easily a mile apart or more, yet they both begin to react at exactly the same time. Not only that, but when Shinji pulls the spears out, the head bursts just like the body does. As the 12th Angel bathes in Lilith's blood, it begins to transform not into Lilith's original form, but into a giant Rei head like the one that had just exploded. Inside the giant core-head-fetus-Angel thing that encases Unit 13, there are dozens and dozens of smaller giggling Rei heads. They're hard to see because they're entirely core red, but if you look very closely you can see them, and you can hear them giggling throughout the scene where Kaworu laments becoming the 13th Angel:

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A similar phenomenon is witnessed when Unit 01 rips open the 10th Angel's core in order to retrieve Rei. Tiny little Reis made of core begin bubbling up out of the core beneath Unit 01's palm:

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The 10th Angel's core houses both the core of Unit 00 and the soul of Rei within, so it makes sense that this could happen. Rei is in there. It's not quite so understandable when it happens to Lilith. As far as we know, Rei never joined with her body. Mark.06 was said to be modified so that it functions autonomously, so no pilot would be needed. People have theorized that the 12th Angel ate an Eva piloted by one of the Ayanamis before joining with Lilith and Mark.06, but there's not really any evidence of said Eva existing. It's absolutely possible, but there's nothing concrete to support it, I think.

Given the timing of when Lilith's change would have needed to happen, I personally think it makes the most sense for her metamorphosis to have happened as a result of Rei merging with Unit 01 and the subsequent awakening. If Lilith's entire growth was the result of Third Impact, there'd be no need for the second cross at all. She'd be dead from the damage she suffered and skewered with the twin Spears of Longinus as a headless, bloated corpse that's far too big to fit on either cross.

Lilith having an initial growth phase could also provide a possible explanation for the weird state of the head left behind in the command center. As you can see, it has grown to a huge size:

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Don't let the headless Evas below her fool you. They're not even close to being full-sized Evas. If you compare them to the little Gendo standing on the highest platform of the bridge in the first image, they look to be roughly 15-20 meters tall. The best comparison I can find is from the scene in 2.0 where Unit 01 and the 10th Angel fight inside command:

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Comparing the two command towers, it looks like Lilith's head smaller than both the 10th Angel and Unit 01, though not significantly so. This means that the head is far smaller than the body left in Central Dogma. Unit 13 can easily climb up her body like she's a mountain with plenty of room to spare. However, if you look at the comparison images I made earlier in the post, with Mark.09 hiding under the cross and the Mark.06 model, her head looks like it'd be just about the perfect size for a body scaled to fit on that cross.

Mark.06 faces a similar problem. The giant white version of it jutting out from Lilith's neck is several times bigger than it should be, but it's still absolutely puny compared to the body it's emerging from. If Mark.06 fused with her while she was already huge and then continued growing after being assimilated, it'd nicely explain the size discrepancies.

I feel like this discovery helps clear up at least a few of the mysteries concerning the events of Third Impact.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Wow, one of those details that multiple watchings didn't really "click" with me, but this certainly makes a heck of a lot of sense. Thanks for the excellent write-up!

[Settie]

I'm not sure how this is a mystery. If memory serves we don't actually know the "size" of lillith and its cross. As the few shots of lillith don't have good reference to asses size. Plus even if lillith was eva size, there's still the fact that the spears don't actually have set size, since a quick google search shows that the spears dwarfed eva 13 when they were impaling lillith/mark 6.

I'm gonna go with the likelyhood that that "second" cross is lilliths cross that grew alongside it when it ballooned up in size, like the spears did.

[Reichu]

I'm pretty sure I'm the originator of the "Rei clone in an Eva gets eaten by 12th Angel and that's how Lilith got Rei-looking" idea that BlueBasilisk mentions in his write-up. (Closest I can pinpoint the original source is somewhere in the Impact Mechanics thread during 2013.) It was the best I could come up with previously, since it's easy to interpret the shot of Lilith in Ha as confirming that N3I has no effect on her, therefore ruling out (seemingly) the notion that she turned into a giant Rei then. The jumbo cross changed the game promptly, and things are much tidier for it. It never DID make sense why the 12th Angel became Rei-ish when exposed to Lilith's body fluid, if it had been the very thing to bring the Rei influence to Lilith in the first place!

SSD: We didn't actually notice it until I increased the gamma on this shot for completely unrelated reasons (I was trying to make the polygons in the back pop more), and then it became obvious that the cross' furrow was in the completely "wrong" place. It all snowballed from there.

Settie: The spears get longer when they're impaling Lilith and 06, but they retain the same girth. So the Spear does indeed provide a proper scale for Lilith in Jo and Ha: Lilith's own hands would comfortably wrap around the shaft, therefore she is about Eva-sized.

[kuribo-04]

My gut reaction was "it's for dramatic effect", but it does seem like this actually is intentional.
Great find. Never noticed it in 7 years.

[Settie]

Settie: The spears get longer when they're impaling Lilith and 06, but they retain the same girth. So the Spear does indeed provide a proper scale for Lilith in Jo and Ha: Lilith's own hands would comfortably wrap around the shaft, therefore she is about Eva-sized.

That's actually incorrect, just did a double check on the screenshot that popped up on google search and indeed the spears do change size. It comes as a weird ironic twist that the proof came from these forums and specifically from you.

As you can see unless there's some hankyness going on, those spears fit the hands of the giant version of the mark 6. Unit 13 looks tiny next to mark 6s arms and hands and the spears. So it's more likely that the size of the spears and cross aren't an indicative of something but rather to make the shots look better and more consistent. Otherwise the mark 6 would have baby hands or unit 13 massive ones.

[Evil Doge]

This make me think...
It could be that the Rei Ayanami faces were there because someone in NERV extracted Rei from EVA-01, leaving Shinji there cause in that moment he would be useless.
With that idea on mind, Rei Ayanami was used to complete the Third Impact:

+ Rei (Lilith's soul)
+ Lilith (body)
+ Eva Mark.06 (Adam's body)
+ 12th Angel (as a subtitute to Adam's soul)
= Third Impact

In that impact, as the same of The End of Evangelion, Lilith take de form of Rei Ayanami but a lot more bigger. And, in some point of this process, the Third Impact was stopped by the two Longinus Spears (or Longinus and Cassius) putting it, again, in pause.

That means Rei 02 was kept trapped in Lilith's body from 14 years and, probably, we saw her die by the 12th angel and Unit 13 in 3.0.

[BlueBasilisk]

^ That's been considered in the past. The biggest issue with the idea is that Fuyutsuki tells us that the Rei Ayanami Shinji knows (meaning Rei II specifically) is still safely stored "within the system" of Unit 01 per Gendo's plans and he's the best authority we have on the matter at present. Rei Q shows that Lilith wouldn't necessarily need a soul in her body to be up doing things.

That's actually incorrect, just did a double check on the screenshot that popped up on google search and indeed the spears do change size. It comes as a weird ironic twist that the proof came from these forums and specifically from you.

As you can see unless there's some hankyness going on, those spears fit the hands of the giant version of the mark 6. Unit 13 looks tiny next to mark 6s arms and hands and the spears. So it's more likely that the size of the spears and cross aren't an indicative of something but rather to make the shots look better and more consistent. Otherwise the mark 6 would have baby hands or unit 13 massive ones.

I'm glad you brought this subject up. There is indeed some hinkiness going on in that screenshot. Chiefly, the hilts of the Spears are much bigger than they should. There are multiple other cuts showing that the Spears are tiny within Mark.06's grasp. That's not the only inconsistency in the Central Dogma fight. The angle of the two Spears and the point of entry on Mark.06 also shift around in different shots. There are a few where Eva 13 wouldn't have the arm span to reach both at the same time from where it was standing.

Reichu was partly right and partly wrong. The Spears do change girth when they coil and uncoil, but it's not to any significant degree. The scene where Shinji pulls them out and crosses them over 13's head shows us how the Spears are 'supposed' to be working.

They are small enough to fit comfortably in 13's hand throughout the sequence, from before Shinji grabs them and onward. There's even a single cut where you can watch the Spears uncoil and revert back to the two-pronged forks from the long javelins that had been impaling Lilith and Mark.06. They shorten and uncoil but there's no meaningful shift in the size of the handles within 13's hands. They both grow slightly thicker when the ends unwind but it's nothing you'd notice without being able to see 13's hands adjust slightly to the difference. You can see the reverse happen in the same way when Kaworu rams them into 13's chest later: the tips wind together and the handle shrinks slightly.

What we can take away here is that in-universe, the Spears are not scaling themselves up and down to match whatever they're stuck into. If they were, the one that's stuck into Lilith's back would have much more girth than it does in that scene. If it scaled proportionally, the handle alone would be as thick as 13 is, or even bigger. Or the two would be different sizes since one is stuck primarily in a smaller Eva. But they're not shown to work that way in any of the movies.

There are some scaling issues here and there. Later in the movie the exact diameter of the Spears is shown to waffle a bit while 13 is holding them. Sometimes they're completely enclosed in its fingers and sometimes they're not. The same thing happens with Lilith in 1.0. We have three different shots where the Spear occupies a little more or a little less of the available real eastate on her chest.

Fortunately, I'm concerned about the relative scale of things, not the specific. The Spears of Longinus are shown to be a bit longer than an Eva is tall in their resting state (the one with two forks at one end) and small enough in diameter that an Eva can easily hold one in a single hand. This much is shown with a fair bit of consistency and since we haven't been shown that the Spears can scale themselves so that length and girth both increase in a major way, we safely guess that the Lilith seen in 1.0 and 2.0 is within the same ballpark as an Eva in terms of overall size. I think she possibly skews on the larger size, possibly up to 2x if I'm being generous, but even at 2x she wouldn't be close to big enough to fit on the other cross. If she was that big already, the Spear would look like a cocktail fork in comparison.

Like I said in the OP, we did think it was the same cross with the scale fudged so that Mark.09 could hide under it. Reichu even poked fun at Anno for falling back on old habits. But then we noticed the different design elements and the fact that it is consistently that large in every shot. If it was just fudge or a goof there'd be noticeable fluctuations in size compares to the other elements around it.

Edit: Now that I'm not on mobile anymore, I can provide some screenshots!
Here's the one you linked to in better quality:

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And indeed, the Spears to look fitted to Mark.06's hands here, but if you look elsewhere:

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They're much smaller and more fitted to 13's hands. Mark.06's hands are actually a bit bigger than they look because the arm covering goes part way up the back of the hand. You'll also see what I meant about the point of entry and angle changing. In the first one, it's at the top of the chest plate, right at the base of the neck, but in the others it goes right through where the core should be near the bottom of the chest plate.

And here's the important sequence. 13 grabs the Spears:

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Yanks them out and raises them overhead, at which point they return to their normal shape:

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The handles expand a bit when they unwind but otherwise they're basically the same size in 13's hands! It's the only time they're shown to intentionally change size throughout the battle in Central Dogma, so it appears that this is more or less the size they were supposed to be all along, but there's some fudging going on.