I don’t understand when Third Impact Occurred?!

[catinajar]

So we see N3I obviously...but do we ever actually see Third Impact? Or do we just hear that it happened? Because throughout I thought that the damage done to the world was because of N3I. Then I watched closer and they are talking about N3I and Third Impact separately. Did they happen at the same spot? If so, how are the personel still alive?

Help!

[Konja7]

Trust me. This part is extremely complicated.


The Near Third Impact and the Third Impact seem to be different events (it seems that a few months pass between one event and the other). However, these two events are connected in some way, but we don't know how exactly.

We only know what Kaworu mentioned in 3.33 (and we heard again in the prologue of 3.0+1.0):

Kaworu: Once awakened, Eva Unit 01 opened the Doors of Guf and acted as the trigger to bring the Third Impact.

Shinji seems to be blamed, because the Near Third Impact was the beginning.


PS: This would likely have a more clear explanation in the original plans for Q movie (where Shinji wouldn't appear).

[Raikyu]

PS: This would likely have a more clear explanation in the original plans for Q movie (where Shinji wouldn't appear).

And hopefully, Anno will shed more light into those events

[Blockio]

I don't think that it was a matter of months in between N3I and 3I proper; with how everything was set up, I'd say a likely timeframe is about a week from N3I until Wille's rebellion started, which lasted a few days at most, and towards the end of that was 3I proper.

This is not based on anything other than gut feeling and an educated guess on how real world crisis and rebellions tend to go, so I might easily be wrong here, but until more information comes out this is my working theory for the timeline

[Pluto]

You can find a comperehensive timeline about N3I and 3I in the first post of this topic. This timeline only uses the source material from the films.

From one of the stage greetings, Anno talks about the unused scenario regarding the 14 year timeskip in which "the third impact" is triggered. Presumably with Mark 06 and Lilith

[Jurrasic]

PS: This would likely have a more clear explanation in the original plans for Q movie (where Shinji wouldn't appear).

And hopefully, Anno will shed more light into those events

What interests me in this interview is what Anno says here:

So, and for myself, at this point I don't feel that I have the desire to continue on with Evangelion, but there's always the 14-year gap in the story, so in some form, I want to shed light into that. But at this point, I don't feel that I'm going to continue on the story where I left off.

Here's hoping that sometime in the future when he's not so burned out on Evangelion again, he might return his attention to the 'real' 3rd impact, Misato's guilt for cheerleading Shinji on to 'do what he wanted for himself' and what that led to, and the period of time between that impact and the point that WILLE decides to launch a pair of Evangelions into SPACE to recover Unit 1 cocooned in a 3D representation of a 4D hypercube orbiting the earth.

[The18°angel]

assuming that Misato only had a bone fissure in her injured arm, the fastest it can heal is 20 days(in the anime after 30 days she no longer her injure) and pregnancy symptoms can appear in the first month (unless Misato has taken a pregnancy test) and Kensuke mentions that Kaji jr is going to have his birthday soon so between 1 to 3 months from N3I until the actual third impact (to that we must add that wille was recruiting military personnel from the army and from nerv apparently)

[Szmitten]

Efforts have been made to assemble something based on dialogue, visuals, and logical sequencing. https://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_Analysis:Evangelion_%222.5%22#The_Time-Skip_period

[nerv bae]

Efforts have been made to assemble something based on dialogue, visuals, and logical sequencing. https://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_Analysis:Evangelion_%222.5%22#The_Time-Skip_period

Oooh, this is a great resource. Can't remember where, but I read this week someone's thought that Unit 01 would continue its interrupted Third Impact upon the removal of Cassius. In that vein, in this following sequence from the linked wiki page:

After Mark.06 descends, it removes the Spear of Longinus from Lilith, reviving her soulless body. Mark.06 merges with Lilith and removes her head. This causes the Doors of Guf to open and rain giant skulls into the bottom of Dogma. Crucifixes appear and the coreification of the land begins, and humans start growing and combining into headless red Evangelions (seemingly, specifically Eva-01). Lilith's head, having lost its mask and somehow now appearing with Rei's face, ends up above in the command center. Nerv headquarters rises into the sky, and the headless red Evas assemble towards it, plugging Dogma's shaft. The Moon approaches Earth and begins to bleed along newly-formed gridlines.

Concurrent to the above, Kaji, who has been shot in the arm in the crossfire, acquires the Spear of Cassius from Eva-01 (which remains dormant) and a VTOL aircraft. With no Evangelions to stop Mark.06, Kaji decides to sacrifice himself to stop Third Impact before it wipes out all life on Earth. At some point, Kaji "saves" Kaworu, literally or figuratively, but Kaworu never sees Dogma's interior. Kaji bids Misato his goodbyes, and she, Ritsuko, and the other survivors leave Tokyo-3 (probably by air to avoid becoming Failures of Infinity. Future Village-3 survivors arrange a method of survival too).

Kaji enters Dogma and his aircraft crashes, sacrificing himself. Somehow, this results in the Spears of Cassius and Longinus being forced through Lilith's and Mark.06's cores in an unknown configuration or order of entry, but which ultimately stops Third Impact.

My off-the-cuff proposal today is that the removal of Longinus from Lilith does not cause the Third Impact we see the results of in 3.0, but instead begins a Different Impact. Then, Wille/Nerv is faced with a dilemma: stopping this Different Impact will require using both spears to subdue Mark 06 and Lilith, but will cause the continuation of interrupted Third Impact by Unit 01. Kaji makes a choice and Unit 01's Third Impact happens instead of Lilith's Different Impact. Is this proposal plausible or is it excluded by evidence in the films?

[Szmitten]

My off-the-cuff proposal today is that the removal of Longinus from Lilith does not cause the Third Impact we see the results of in 3.0, but instead begins a Different Impact. Then, Wille/Nerv is faced with a dilemma: stopping this Different Impact will require using both spears to subdue Mark 06 and Lilith, but will cause the continuation of interrupted Third Impact by Unit 01. Kaji makes a choice and Unit 01's Third Impact happens instead of Lilith's Different Impact. Is this proposal plausible or is it excluded by evidence in the films?

I've generally been trying to purge any theory-crafting from this specific thing (I was collecting information for personal use as the basis for a potential creative project and had tried to scrape as much of my own narrative as possible) or anything that I can't point to as evidence, hence the deliberate vagueness of some things. But:

Third Impact doesn't start because of the removal of Longinus, the combination of the Mark.06/12th merger and specifically the sacrifical beheading of Lilith is the thing that opens Guf.

While a few people think otherwise*, I personally have little reason to think Eva-01 was directly involved with Third Impact simply due to the lack of any presence of it in what little we saw of the event, but more importantly, unlike within Dogma where everything is happening and remains clear, Eva-01 is completely coreified like everything else on Earth during Third Impact, which implies to me it was still left abandoned and inactive outside and was not an active participant. I also spent a long time thinking about the idea of Eva-01 reawakening upon the inevitable removal of Cassius, thinking it's obvious that it should resume Impacting, but...apparently not? A speared entity is certainly active and mobile upon extraction but it never resumes Impacting or being Pseudo - the closest is Eva-01's eye laser, but even that was after 14 years of being unspeared and was literally its last physical act in its native universe. All I know is Cassius has to be removed from Eva-01 with little consequence (before or during) and for it to be transported and end up in either Mark.06 or Lilith (the practical means of which are unknown) despite an insurrection and/or a cataclysmic Impact happening around it.

Basically, I can only really disprove what you suggest in those capacities, but the holes in what we know are gaping enough that you can easily slip extra Angels, Evas, Adams, characters, and rituals in there to contribute to the event. I can only really confirm what I actually know (which is rich from me considering any Eva-08 talk is an indulgence on my part), and what I know is less than what's written there.

*I know everyone tries to involve Eva-01 and Shinji in Third Impact significantly to justify the character's resentment towards him, I just think it can/could have been a slow burn character driven realisation at the horrors he inadvertently dominoed into existence rather than literally making him directly responsible despite being unconscious.

[Konja7]

My off-the-cuff proposal today is that the removal of Longinus from Lilith does not cause the Third Impact we see the results of in 3.0, but instead begins a Different Impact. Then, Wille/Nerv is faced with a dilemma: stopping this Different Impact will require using both spears to subdue Mark 06 and Lilith, but will cause the continuation of interrupted Third Impact by Unit 01. Kaji makes a choice and Unit 01's Third Impact happens instead of Lilith's Different Impact. Is this proposal plausible or is it excluded by evidence in the films?

Pulling the Spear out of Lilith wasn't enough to wake her up and initiate the Third Impact in NGE. I know we can't really use the events of NGE to explain something in Rebuild, since things are pretty different, but I don't think Mark-06 pulling out the Spear will be enough.

There is likely more in Lilith awakening. Not to mention that the Near Third Impact seems to be involved.

My current theory is that the awakening of Eva-01 caused the awakening of Lilith, but this wasn't noticeable in 2.0 because she was stabbed by the Spear of Longinus. That would fit the the concept that the Near Third Impact was the trigger for the Third Impact. Also, it could explain why Shinji is blamed by humanity.

Third Impact doesn't start because of the removal of Longinus, the combination of the Mark.06/12th merger and specifically the sacrifical beheading of Lilith is the thing that opens Guf.

We don't know if the sacrifical beheading of Lilith opened the Gates of Guf. It's possible the awakening of Lilith started the Third Impact, while Mark.06 beheaded her to take control of the Third Impact.

Also, we don't know if the Spear of Cassius was removed from Eva-01 without consequences. I suspect the red color in the moon could be related to Eva-01 being in space. The Third Impact with Lilith as epicenter "purify" the land on the Earth, so it shouldn't affect the moon.

*I know everyone tries to involve Eva-01 and Shinji in Third Impact significantly to justify the character's resentment towards him, I just think it can/could have been a slow burn character driven realisation at the horrors he inadvertently dominoed into existence rather than literally making him directly responsible despite being unconscious.

Kaworu says the Near Third Impact (Eva-01 awakening) was the trigger to bring about the Third Impact. We heard it again in the prologue of 3.0+1.0 (and at no point in the movie is this implied to be false).

So, I think the staff really wants to say the Near Third Impact was related to the Third Impact, but they won't give details.

[Szmitten]

Also, we don't know if the Spear of Cassius was removed from Eva-01 without consequences. I suspect the red color in the moon could be related to Eva-01 being in space. The Third Impact with Lilith as epicenter "purify" the land on the Earth, so it shouldn't affect the moon.

Eva-01 is coreified which can only happen if it was on Earth during Third Impact, and Eva-01's orbital tesseract has a Neo-Nerv logo which can only exist post-insurrection and post-Third Impact. And Cassius has to be removed from Eva-01 before/during Third Impact and inserted into Mark.06/Lilith during.

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but I'm not going to suggest Eva-01 had any direct interaction with Third Impact because of that, especially when the few allusions to it focus exclusively on Mark.06, Lilith, and Kaji's aircraft.

Kaworu says the Near Third Impact (Eva-01 awakening) was the trigger to bring about the Third Impact. We heard it again in the prologue of 3.0+1.0 (and at no point in the movie is this implied to be false).

So, I think the staff really wants to say the Near Third Impact was related to the Third Impact, but they won't give details.

It depends on whether it's a figurative ritualistic trigger, in which case we can't prove anything because it's just Eva theology-babble, or that it literally set up the pieces for Third Impact by removing multiple pilots and Evas from counter-attacking, locked away the soul of Lilith in Eva-01 thereby making her body wholly inert and vulnerable, ripping open the Geofront for easy access and beginning the Black Moon's ascension, and accelerating Seele's plan by forcing them to introduce their own Children and Eva.

[Konja7]

Eva-01 is coreified which can only happen if it was on Earth during Third Impact, and Eva-01's orbital tesseract has a Neo-Nerv logo which can only exist post-insurrection and post-Third Impact. And Cassius has to be removed from Eva-01 before/during Third Impact and inserted into Mark.06/Lilith during.

It's possible Eva-01 is corified because they removed Cassius. After all, we don't know if Eva-01 was on Earth when the Third Impact happened.

My theory is that Cassius being removed from Eva-01 still has consequences like the red in the moon and the corification of Eva-01.

[Szmitten]

It's possible Eva-01 is corified because they removed Cassius. After all, we don't know if Eva-01 was on Earth when the Third Impact happened.

My theory is that Cassius being removed from Eva-01 still has consequences like the red in the moon and the corification of Eva-01.

Spears have no relation to coreification from what we've seen. The original Nerv logo appears in Q with bullet holes, implying the insurrection is contemporary with original Nerv, and Neo-Nerv, the logo of which appears on Eva-01's tesseract, means that Eva-01 can only have been sent into space after both the insurrection (the logo) and Third Impact (the coreification).

Spear removal doesn't suddenly instigate coreification, Third Impact did. The Moon is a weird random thing and there's nothing solid to connect it to.

[Mark 6]

Hi, I would like to add a small detail if permitted, leading to a possible connection between Unit 01's awakening during N3I and Lilith's subsequent literal awakening.

Right at the end of the N3I scene in 2.0 (before Kaworu appears to stop it), we are shown a brief shot of Lilith down in Terminal Dogma, just as Ritsuko name-drops Third Impact. Just going on speculation, that quick shot of Lilith might have been meant to imply that it was just moments away from awakening itself. As for what it was to do once it awoke and came down from it's cross, that seems to be a mystery so far. The last connection between Lilith's awakening in relation to Unit 1's own, is that quick glimpse we got in Thrice of Eva Mark 6 beheading Lilith with the Spear of Cassius. If the spear being pulled out of Unit 1 would indeed "resume" N3I, then that could mean Lilith would also continue to awaken; forcing the Mark 06 to quickly descend down Terminal Dogma to put a stop to Lilith from whatever it was about to do in relation to Third Impact. It barely had enough time to grow a pair of functional legs and descend from it's cross before being beheaded. Lastly, this leaves open a new mystery onto how a "reawakened" Unit 01 would be dealt with once it had the spear pulled out of it, and why NERV or WILLE would need the spear pulled out in the first place (to use against the remaining Angels?).

[Konja7]

Spear removal doesn't suddenly instigate coreification, Third Impact did. The Moon is a weird random thing and there's nothing solid to connect it to.

Eva-01 was starting a Third Impact when it was stabbed by the Spear of Cassius.

My theory is that removing of Cassius could (re)activate that Third Impact at some level and cause the coreification of Eva-01. This could also be the reason for the red in the Moon if this happened in the space (happening in the space could be the reason why it doesn't affect Earth).

Of course, this is just a theory. My main point is that there is another possible reason for the corefication of Eva-01, so maybe Eva-01 wasn't in the Earth during the Third Impact with Lilith as epicenter.

[DantesInferno]

Spear removal doesn't suddenly instigate coreification, Third Impact did. The Moon is a weird random thing and there's nothing solid to connect it to.

Eva-01 was starting a Third Impact when it was stabbed by the Spear of Cassius.

My theory is that removing of Cassius could (re)activate that Third Impact at some level and cause the coreification of Eva-01. This could also be the reason for the red in the Moon if this happened in the space (happening in the space could be the reason why it doesn't affect Earth).

Of course, this is just a theory. My main point is that there is another possible reason for the corefication of Eva-01, so maybe Eva-01 wasn't in the Earth during the Third Impact with Lilith as epicenter.

Regarding the "removal of the spear of Cassius from Eva-01 should restart (Near) Third Impact" idea, I lean towards "not quite", but the truth is we don't know.

But contrast that with Asuka's dialogue in 3.0, right after Shinji pulls both spears out of Lilith/Mark.06:

I'll take care of this one before the continuation of Third Impact begins

(translation mine).

When I first saw 3.0 I interpreted it as "Third Impact resuming from where it stopped", but after watching 3.0+1.0 and hearing Gendo's exposition, it could well mean "Fourth Impact".

Regarding the raining skulls, my take is that they're dropping from the infinities as they rise up the shaft. The skulls are likely lost as part of the process of "turning into an infinity"; this is in line with how humanity is (as per 3.0+1.0 exposition) supposed to give up the Fruit of Knowledge (i.e., the brain) in exchange for the Fruit of Life and becoming an eternal (infinity) entity, taking the place of the FoL-based angels (this also ties in with the "Mass Extinction" exposition by Kaworu in 3.0). The "failures" of infinity are such likely because Third Impact was stopped and Fourth hasn't begun yet.

It remains to explain how there were so many lilim at Dogma to produce such numbers, but it's possible that they came from elsewhere and the Doors of Guf or other impact phenomena where involved somehow in the "teleportation" (compare with 4th Impact in 3.0+1.0, when the Black Moon spears impale the Gates of Hell, opening the Gates of Guf in turn and releasing a shit-ton of Eva infinities... from where/when?).

Also, the infinities seem to be made from lilims' souls, not bodies (those turn into Tang), and if we go by the ending (where the infinities revert to people and e.g. farm animals), each single infinity would corresponds to multiple lilim.

[nerv bae]

I've generally been trying to purge any theory-crafting from this specific thing (I was collecting information for personal use as the basis for a potential creative project and had tried to scrape as much of my own narrative as possible) or anything that I can't point to as evidence, hence the deliberate vagueness of some things.

Thanks for your thoughtful replies throughout the topic! Some follow-up for you and @Mark 6:

... Eva-01 is completely coreified like everything else on Earth during Third Impact, which implies to me it was still left abandoned and inactive outside and was not an active participant.

1) In this picture from 2.0 preview Eva-01 looks normal (albeit speared) and protected from corefication by sealing pillars. Do we have evidence that Eva-01 is actually coreified during Third Impact? (EDIT: Okay, right after pressing "Submit" I realized you probably meant that Eva-01 had the spear removed during Third Impact, but was then coreified at the end of Third Impact, and remained inactive-but-not-coreified during the intervening, say, twenty minutes or whatever. I will leave my original post as-is just to illustrate my dummy thought process. )

2) As a general rule, across the rebuilds coreified doesn't equate to inactive. For example, the failures of infinity walk around despite being core, and the vessels of adam are quite active despite being core. So even if we can demonstrate that Eva-01 is coreified during Third Impact, I'm not sure we can conclude that Eva-01 is therefore inactive during Third Impact.

The last connection between Lilith's awakening in relation to Unit 1's own, is that quick glimpse we got in Thrice of Eva Mark 6 beheading Lilith with the Spear of Cassius.

3) I do not see the Spear of Cassius in this picture of the beheading scene. Is it in there somewhere and I just missed it; do we have other evidence that Cassius has been removed from Eva-01 as of the beheading scene?

[Szmitten]

1) In this picture from 2.0 preview Eva-01 looks normal (albeit speared) and protected from corefication by sealing pillars. Do we have evidence that Eva-01 is actually coreified during Third Impact? (EDIT: Okay, right after pressing "Submit" I realized you probably meant that Eva-01 had the spear removed during Third Impact, but was then coreified at the end of Third Impact, and remained inactive-but-not-coreified during the intervening, say, twenty minutes or whatever. I will leave my original post as-is just to illustrate my dummy thought process. )

Yes (but also hex sealing pillars don't reverse coreification, the anti-L system does and is different technology despite both using Angel glyphs).

2) As a general rule, across the rebuilds coreified doesn't equate to inactive. For example, the failures of infinity walk around despite being core, and the vessels of adam are quite active despite being core. So even if we can demonstrate that Eva-01 is coreified during Third Impact, I'm not sure we can conclude that Eva-01 is therefore inactive during Third Impact.

I generally have difficulty reconciling what a potentially limbless Eva-01 can be doing while Shinji is too unconscious/LCL to will any Pseudo effects or why a berserk Rei/Yui would deliberately fuck everyone over. Eva-01 isn't autonomous or programmed to carry out Impacts (like Mark.06 or Seele's Rei's), it's always driven by a character's will. I feel like something as significant as "Eva-01 was walking around and literally did Third Impact" is too major a thing to neither state nor show, when, to the contrary, we're shown clips of Near Third Impact when Kaworu explains that Shinji was the cause and specifically that Third Impact happened while he was merged/fused with Eva-01. That and when we do see Third Impact it's just Mark and Lily.

3) I do not see the Spear of Cassius in this picture of the beheading scene. Is it in there somewhere and I just missed it; do we have other evidence that Cassius has been removed from Eva-01 as of the beheading scene?

We see no spears in that or any sequence. We only know that there was a Longinus in Lilith which is now not there (but still has to be down there), and that Cassius has to be removed from Eva-01 during or prior because it and Longinus both have to end up down there in Mark.06/Lilith before Dogma is sealed - with a dead Kaji inside and a stopped Third Impact outside - for 14 years.

[nerv bae]

I generally have difficulty reconciling what a potentially limbless Eva-01 can be doing while Shinji is too unconscious/LCL to will any Pseudo effects or why a berserk Rei/Yui would deliberately fuck everyone over. Eva-01 isn't autonomous or programmed to carry out Impacts (like Mark.06 or Seele's Rei's), it's always driven by a character's will.

Thank you, this seems like a good argument that Unit 01 does not continue Third Impacting after Cassius is removed. But does the same reasoning extend to Unit 13 in 3.33? There, we see Unit 13 Fourth Impacting without being driven by either pilot's will and without apparently being autonomous like Mark 06 (to my knowledge Mark 06's autonomy never has visual evidence; it's instead established only in dialogue) or being programmed like Mark 09 (where we see Rei-Q losing control as the Seele symbol is displayed in her plug). If Unit 13 can Impact against such reasoning then I think the argument against Unit 01 impacting "on its own" is a bit weaker.