The Core

The Core also known as the Night from the ancient Olm prophecy was a biomechanical creature and the overarching antagonist of the 2019 Disney animated series Amphibia. It is an amalgam of Amphibia's greatest minds and the true master of King Andrias. While possessing the body of Marcy Wu it referred to itself as Darcy.
==Background==
===Personality===
left|thumb|224x224px|Darcy inherits Marcy's love of red velvet cupcakes with ube frosting.
The Core is shown to be quite malevolent in nature and craves both knowledge and power. It holds wide intelligence from being a compilation of previous intellectual minds, a trait it seems to take pride in, and has embraced the idea of being a conqueror due to the long history of multi-dimensional conquest. Due to having the collective memories of multiple beings, the Core refers to itself as "We" instead of "I". The Core is quite particular when it comes to choosing a host for its consciousness and would only settle for the most intelligent beings. After taking over Marcy's body, it is shown to be sardonic as it seems to enjoy mocking Andrias for his failures. It also admits to inheriting some of Marcy's quirks since possessing her, but despite its newly inherited goofiness and childlike tendencies, it is still quite sinister frightening at times. The Core also has some personality traits of King Andrias' late father, King Aldrich; as such it is a controlling tyrant who shows disdain towards friendship and manipulated Andrias to do what it wants and uses his insecurities against him, and shows little warmth or care towards him. The Core is genocidal, as it wishes to exterminate humans for their resources on Earth. The Core is also quite arrogant, as it sees itself as an invincible conqueror due to the long history of multi-dimensional conquest of Amphibia, to the point it doesn't take into consideration scouting the Earth properly before initiating the invasion due to thinking human are weak. After taking apart Marcy's phone, the Core deemed the technology of Earth pathetic. As a bid to keep control over its host and performing at optimal efficiency, the Core had no qualms wiping Marcy's "redundant" memories.
The Core was unwilling to accept failure and defeat so much that it takes over the planet's blood moon to destroy the entire population by ramming it into its surface. The Core was unable to process the capacity for change where Marcy revealed it was afraid of being destroyed and irrelevant, showing it would do whatever it takes to destroy its enemies and claim the Calamity Gems as its own, even if it means destroying an entire civilization it once secretly ruled over, while possessing the mindset if it cannot be happy, then no one can. As Anne and her friends went to stop it from destroying Amphibia, the Core showed its cowardliness by using Aldrich's voice to beg Andrias to help them, only for him to refuse and instead standing up to him and also the Core, thus severing his connection with them. Its arrogance and megalomania is what led to their downfall, as it arrogantly referred itself as a god and the three Calamity Gems to be "Amphibia's greatest treasure", showing it only cared for wealth and the power of gems, which made its genocide on Amphibia even worse. However, the Core could only watch in complete horror as Anne wielded the combined powers of three gems to destroy the evil mechanical being after proclaiming all of the people she befriended in Amphibia are their world’s greatest treasure, thus ending the Core’s reign of terror once and for all.
===Physical Appearance===
The Core is a large multi-eyed being and it's mostly circular with mechanical tentacles. After possessing Marcy and becoming Darcy, it has her placed in a black and purple suit with a symbol, similar to its eyes, in the center of the chest. The suit also consists of a helm with its eyes and a cord on top of its helmet as well as with a black and red cape. After Marcy was freed from its control, it seemed that the Core (or what was left of it) rested in the helmet which would grow spider-like legs before crawling (and then flying) away.
After possessing Amphibia's moon, the Core made the moon its new body, which gave the moon a massive orange eye surrounded by dozens of smaller eyes, exposed oranges bright wires and a series of purple thrusters used for movement. In addition, the Core had a port that stored dozens of robotic soldiers for defense.
==Role in the series==
===Before===
Not much is known about its past, but it was created after studying the Shadowfish so the greatest minds of Amphibia would be preserved forever as they would be combined into this robotic entity.
A thousand years prior to the start of the series, in "The Core & The King", King Aldrich introduced then-Prince Andrias to the Core, to which he exchanged a nervous greeting. Following this, the Core observed Aldrich passing the key to the Calamity Box that he might lead the invasion of Earth. However, Andrias couldn't resist showing off the box to his friends, Leif and Barrel, which led to Leif experiencing a vision of Amphibia's destruction, motivating her to steal the box and hide it on Earth. The Core later informed Aldrich that that Calamity Box would eventually return in accordance with the olm prophecy, but it was impossible for it to calculate where or when it would occur.
===Season 2 ===
At the end of "The First Temple", King Andrias informs "his lord" that things are going accordingly as planned after recognizing that the Plantars and Marcy have managed to charge the green stone on the Calamity Box. He tells it that they will get their revenge, and not long afterwards, 12 giant orange diamond-shaped eyes open in response. 
===Season 3===
Angered over Andrias' tyranny, Olivia and Yunan decide to rescue Marcy from stasis so that they can create a plan to defeat him. They traverse the castle's many passages and briefly come across the Moss Man. Soon, they manage to find Marcy and revive her, but are all trapped in a hologram that preys on their worst fears. After overcoming the illusions by destroying the source, Andrias appears and reveals that they used the Moss Man to revive Marcy and that her intelligence was what was needed for an entity called the Core to be rebirthed. The Core transfers to Marcy's body, taking her over. Later, after Andrias failed to kill Anne Boonchuy, her parents and the Plantar family, the Core, with full control of Marcy's body, mocked Andrias for his failure, but was reassured that their army would be strong enough to invade Earth.
The Core possessed Marcy, now going by Darcy (Dark Marcy) assigns Andrias the mission of overseeing them and turning them back on while they optimize and reboot their system. Andrias and Darcy pass by an old, tattered portrait of a younger Andrias with a frog and a toad. Darcy sneers at what appears to be Andrias reliving "old memories", to which he assures them that such memories are meaningless to him. After Andrias has completed his task Darcy tells that they are close to invading Earth as Andrias says he has been ready for 1,000 years. Upon hearing this, Darcy smiles sinisterly, revealing that some of its personality contains that of King Aldrich, as the voice of Andrias' father overlaps that of Marcy's, stating "Why son, I think I'm almost proud of you". 
When the resistance of Amphibia launches an attack on Newtopia, Darcy then lures Anne, the Plantars, Sasha, Grime, Yunan, Olivia, and Frobo into a trap and started to mock Anne and Sasha for their efforts in attempting to stop them, especially Anne. They announce their capture of the resistance's leaders and cause the resistance to retreat. As Andrias and Darcy prepare their invasion on Earth, Darcy decides to terminate Anne since she still has a fraction of the blue gem's power and is a threat to their plans. So, they figure if they kill Anne now, the remaining powers of the Gem should return to them. Anne, however, discovers that neither the Core or Andrias fully understand the Gems or how they work. Just as they are about to kill Anne, Anne then outsmarts Darcy, telling them that if they kill her now then the remaining power of the Gems will cease to exist along with her. 
Darcy decided to spare Anne for now and has her thrown in the dungeon along with Sasha, Grime, the Plantars, Yunan, Olivia, and Frobo as they begin their invasion on Earth. Darcy and Andrias then deployed their invasion forces and begins destroying everything and overpower Earth's military while having the castle protected by a forcefield. While Darcy sadistically enjoyed causing destruction, Aldrich's consciousness inside the Core's matrix kept Marcy's distracted with fantasies of her interests, and even obedient illusions of Anne and Sasha. However, Marcy was able to regain her memories and discover she was trapped in a fantasy, leaving the Core to trap her in a black void.
In the meantime, Darcy and Andrias discovered Anne and her allies had escaped and the rebellion continues to fight against their forces protect Earth, even releasing mind-controlling herons and having them join their side in the war. Angered, Darcy ordered Andrias to go out into the battlefield and kill Anne, even warning him that he would never join his father and ancestors in their hive mind. As Andrias battled Anne, Darcy confronted Sasha and Grime who snuck back into the castle to shut down the forcefield and battled them, managing to sever Grime's left arm when he tried defending Sasha. Before Darcy could finish off Sasha, they detected Andrias was having a breakdown and hesitating to finish off Anne after Sprig read to him Leif's last letter to him. As Darcy became distracted trying to take control of Andrias' body to finish the job, Sasha took advantage to sever the neural link on their helmet, freeing Marcy from the Core's control before Anne managed to defeat Andrias and end the invasion.
After the heroes move Newtopia Castle back to Amphibia, the Core's helmet sprouted mechanical legs before taking off towards Amphibia's moon, now converted into a giant machine, for the purpose of ramming into the planet to destroy Amphibia and everyone on it out of spite. It unleashed a swarm of insectoid machines to fight a superpowered Anne, Sasha and Marcy but they were all defeated. In desperation, Aldrich called on Andrias to aid the Core, promising him immortality. However, a repentant Andrias instead ordered his remaining Frobots to aid the girls before crushing his crown in his hand and with it his link to the Core. But the battle soon turned in the Core's favor as it boosted power to the moon's engines while Sasha and Marcy's powers began to wane due to their inexperience. In a last ditched attempt, Anne used a "secret spell" taught to her by Mother Olm to combine the power of the gems. The Core chided her for using Amphibia's greatest treasure against it but she refuted that it was the people who were its greatest treasure before using all of the gems' powers to obliterate the moon and the helmet, bringing the Core's reign of terror to a conclusion for good.
== Other appearances ==
The Core, in its Darcy form, appear as one of the singers in the Broken Karaoke short "Evil as Can Be". During the song, it questions if Chip Whistler should be there until Flintheart Glomgold mentions the time he tried to turn the Greens' home into a parking lot.
In the Chibiverse episode "The Roast of Dr. Doofenshmirtz", when Marcy gave Dr. Doofenshmirtz a rather mild roast due to her inexperience with roasting, she redonned the Core's helmet and became Darcy again, who roasted Doofenshmirtz in an extreme manner and tone until Sasha sliced the neural link again.
==Relationships==
===King Andrias===
thumb|220x220px|Andrias meets the Core for the first time.|alt=
The ruler of Amphibia refers to the Core as "My Lord" implying that the creature is his master. Andrias serves the Core and heals Marcy Wu from her injuries inflicted by Andrias himself as the Core required a host who possessed high intelligence and was capable of beating Andrias at Flipwart. Andrias did not agree with the Core on using Marcy as a host, but followed his master's orders anyhow after recapturing Marcy and allowing the Core to possess her body.
===Humans===
The Core considers humans to be inferior and desires to wipe out their entire species just to claim their world's resources. Because of the ancient prophecy states that the 3 human girls were will end its dreams of conquest once and for all, it wants to undo the prophecy and ensure the dark future it has planned for a millennia.
====Anne Boonchuy====
Due to Anne retaining her powers from the Calamity Box's blue gemstone, the Core definitely sees Anne as a threat, like Andrias, because of the Olm prophecy, but the two have yet to meet yet and it's possible the Core wants Anne dead as much as Andrias does.
====Sasha Waybright====
Most of what the Core personally thinks of Sasha is unknown as they have yet to meet each, but it is obvious that the Core considers her a threat because of the Olm prophecy.
====Marcy Wu====
The Core sought Marcy Wu as its host due to her possessing high intelligence and being capable at beating Andrias at the game Flipwart. After Marcy had been healed from the injuries she sustained from Andrias, she was restrained and possessed by the Core. Also by keeping Marcy a prisoner in her own mind the Core is essentially protecting itself from the prophecy involving her and her friends, but that backfired as Marcy now freed from its influence and considers her a threat as well thanks to Olm's prophecy.
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*In the trailer, the Core's real voice is heard for the first time before the reveal of Darcy.
**The Core's voice at the end of the trailer is revealed to belong to King Aldrich who was assimilated into the Core at the time of his death so the Core usually uses Aldrich's voice in order to communicate with Andrias.
*In each form the Core takes throughout the series, it has a different set of eyes. In "The First Temple" it had thirteen eyes, later the Core had eleven in the main theme song, and finally nine eyes in "Olivia & Yunan".
**When shifting into King Aldrich, the Core had 11 eyes.
**When it becomes the moon, it has possibly around 35 eyes or more.
**On Andrias' crown, it has only one eye.
==External links==
*The Core on the Amphibia Wiki
*The Core on the Villains Wiki
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