XANA

**XANA** is the main antagonist of *Code Lyoko*. It is an unseen and dangerous computer program that is based on a multi-agent system. It inhabits the Supercomputer that holds Lyoko, and seeks to cause havoc and destruction, take over the world, and eliminate the obstacles that stand in its way, the Lyoko Warriors.

It was voiced by David Gasman.

## Personality

XANA is a mere program that had little personality, keeping intentions hidden until the last moment. It has an evil and dangerous nature, only understands logical thinking, and is ruthless in pursuing goals. In its few appearances, XANA shows signs of demonic, violent, and sadistic behavior, and megalomania. Other qualities include anger at failures, respect for enemies, and a sense of wit.

At first, XANA only launches random attacks on humanity and the Lyoko Warriors. As XANA evolves, its intelligence and ambitions increase. It wants to escape the Supercomputer and into the world network to take over the world, using the Keys to Lyoko inside Aelita as the means.

XANA wouldn't risk eliminating vital parts in its plans, seizes any advantages, and values its own survival. It was willing to bind Aelita to the Supercomputer and join with enemies against another threat for the same reason. After its escape, XANA tries to destroy the machine to get rid of all its obstacles, not needing the Supercomputer anymore now that it has the Keys to Lyoko.

## History

### Origin

XANA was created to counteract and destroy a French military project named Carthage, of which its creator, Franz Hopper, was a contributor. Along with XANA, Franz created a virtual world called Lyoko to give XANA access to the real world through its supercomputer. Hopper also created a Time Reversion program as a byproduct, allowing him to perfect his work and increase the supercomputer's power along with XANA's upon use.

He had spent almost seven years on June 6, 1994, and was slowly losing it while XANA's intelligence grew exponentially with each day. Sometime between later reversions, a hole in XANA's programming allowed it to be infected by a virus that caused it to turn evil.

Hopper was in the final stages of Lyoko's creation when XANA betrayed him and alerted the men in black to his location. To avoid being arrested, Hopper virtualized himself and his daughter, Aelita onto Lyoko. XANA then attacked them and refused any notion of peace with Franz. Hopper shut down the supercomputer from Lyoko when XANA turned him down, trapping all three in the Supercomputer.

### First Encounters

The factory, XANA and Aelita were rediscovered by Jeremy Belpois six years after being shut down. XANA launched an attack by activating its first Tower, which went undiscovered until after its plans were thwarted for the first time by Jeremy and his friends. The newly dubbed Lyoko Warriors made a pact to free Aelita from XANA's clutches so the latter could be terminated.

XANA launches random attacks against the city, Kadic Academy, and against its mortal enemies. It hacks technology, manipulates objects and forces, projects electromagnetic phenomena through networks, sets elaborate traps, and causes disasters.

When they finally managed to materialize Aelita, XANA took her memories of Earth. To survive, it uses them as a tether to keep the group from shutting down the Supercomputer, because doing so would kill Aelita too.

### Evolving Enemy

XANA displays signs of evolution, becoming smarter, more powerful, and more dangerous. It now seeks to steal Aelita's memory to gain the Keys to Lyoko using its newest monster, the Scyphozoa. XANA's growing power allows it to create new monsters on Lyoko, possess humans to do its bidding, and can generate polymorphic ghosts that appear as human. Its attacks are no longer random destruction, and are for achieving the aforementioned goal of stealing Aelita's memory.

The group also discovers Carthage, a fifth sector in the world of Lyoko. It is where XANA lives, and where the group can access all of Lyoko's and XANA's own data and information.

For the Scyphozoa to get to Aelita's memory, XANA launches attacks centered around getting her to Lyoko. This mainly includes having possessed humans take and virtualize her by force and isolating her from the others, but also methods like brainwashing her, taking advantage of her loyalty to her friends, blackmail, or using her stolen memories to compel her curiosity.

A few of Aelita's memories of her former life start to slip through and the Lyoko Warriors get closer to finding out the origins of Aelita, Franz Hopper and XANA. It used Franz's identity to trick them into thinking that he (who was really a polymorphic spectre) had emerged from the recesses of Lyoko, and tries to eliminate them along with taking Aelita's memory, but fails thanks to Jeremy.

The real Franz Hopper makes contact with the group by using a Tower to possess Sissi. XANA retaliates by sending Megatanks to attack his Tower to shut it down, and possessing a doctor to eliminate Sissi in the real world. It succeeds with the former, but the group deactivates XANA's Tower before the latter happens. Later, when the group decode Franz Hopper's diary and XANA tries to take over to gain access to all the Lyoko Warriors' data and programs, Hopper saves their operation at the last moment.

Its last tactic was to trick Jeremy into sending his friends after Aelita's missing memories using a fake signal hidden deep in the center of Carthage. This trap worked as Aelita was left alone so the Scyphozoa could take the Keys to Lyoko from Aelita. After succeeding, XANA left Aelita lifeless on the floor, then activated Towers in all four surface sectors for its entire being as a giant, swirling spectre to escape from the Supercomputer and rendering the virtual world dead. Although XANA had escaped, Franz has revived Aelita with her real memories and used all his power to bring Lyoko back to life, deactivating all of XANA's Towers.

### Destroying Lyoko

XANA had escaped the Supercomputer into the world network. It didn't launch a single attack since then, thinking the Lyoko Warriors cannot interfere with its plans anymore, until Jeremie and Aelita upgrades the Superscan to track XANA on the network. It is alerted to this and changes tactics, responding by launching attacks focused on destroying all of Lyoko as well as the group.

It mostly sends monsters to assault the Core of Lyoko in Carthage, which would cause the entire virtual world to disappear. The core has two layers of shields, which take time for their Lasers to break through. XANA tries many attempts to hold them back while its monsters do their work, with Earth attacks or distractions, but the Lyoko Warriors always succeed in stopping them. XANA also uses possessed humans to target the Supercomputer to destroy Lyoko in the real world.

To lower their chances of stopping its attacks, XANA also destroys Lyoko's surface sectors one by one. It does this by using the Scyphozoa to brainwash Aelita, making her go into Way Towers to plant its virus code into the interfaces, allowing it to erase sectors off the Lyoko map and cutting off their access to the Core of Lyoko. XANA successfully wipes out the sectors in the order of Forest, Desert, Ice, and Mountain in this season.

Jeremy discovered the way to virtualize the team directly into Carthage, right when XANA destroys the last surface sector. At the same time, the group decided to recruit William Dunbar to help fight XANA and balance the team. While every member of the group was held up by real world matters, XANA wastes no time in attacking the Core of Lyoko. Aelita has to send herself and a rookie William to defend the Core of Lyoko. However, William, enraptured by Lyoko and his superior abilities, gets too cocky and allowed himself to be separated from Aelita. XANA takes the opportunity to capture him with the Scyphozoa, possessing his mind. William then proceeded to the Core to join the army of monsters who were preparing to attack it.

As William and the monster army easily rip through the Core's shields, the other Lyoko Warriors finally catch up with him, but none of them could defeat William. With the Core now exposed and no one left to stop him, William personally destroys the core along with Carthage and was deleted shortly after. However, XANA has salvaged his avatar code and turned William into its loyal slave.

### World Domination Scheme

With data sent by Franz Hopper, the Lyoko Warriors managed to reconstruct Lyoko. XANA used this as an opportunity to send William to Earth as an agent to kidnap Aelita. William is now in the clutches of XANA, as a dark Lyoko Warrior in its eternal service. Determined to save William, as well as uncover XANA's plans for the network, Jeremy and Aelita builds a digital submarine named Skidbladnir to go after XANA on the network and retrieve William and Franz Hopper.

While XANA still continues attacking the Lyoko Warriors and targeting the Supercomputer, it is determined to eliminate Franz Hopper, its creator. XANA concludes that he is the main obstacle to its power and realizes the reason the Lyoko Warriors keep coming back from defeat is because he is always there to bail them out. To take out Franz Hopper, XANA tries to throw Aelita into the Digital Sea in order to lure him out because it knows he would come out of hiding to save his daughter, which they figured out the first time he appeared for this.

Having a Lyoko Warrior at its disposal allows XANA to use more effective means of fighting its enemies. It has turned William into a fighter that is more than a match for any warrior, lets him command its monsters like a general, and gave him a copy of the Keys to Lyoko, which allows him to influence or deactivate protected Towers activated by its enemies. XANA also gives him the Black Manta, a special Manta monster that he can summon and ride on like a vehicle, and a Nav Skid based on Skidbladnir data stolen by the Scyphozoa to fight in the Digital Sea. XANA can also materialize him using the Scanners without activating a Tower as a pixelized human to carry out missions on Earth, like kidnapping Aelita or sabotaging the Supercomputer.

Using their new ship to travel in the Digital Sea, the Lyoko Warriors find Replikas created by XANA, smaller copies of Lyoko, in the world network. They realize XANA uses them to infect other supercomputers, spreading its power over the world. They decide to track down and destroy them all, and isolate XANA's program in the network. In response, XANA launches attacks to destroy the Skidbladnir to keep them from destroying more Replikas.

XANA's supercomputers let it take over territories in the real world, like secret facilities and laboratories to use for its own evil purposes. The group found the Forest Replika connected to a laboratory in the Amazon Rainforest that makes cybernetic spiders, the Desert Replika for an automated New Mexico production factory for electronic implants, the Carthage Replika in a space station that produces dangerous floating, metallic spheres, and the Ice Replika in a research facility in Siberia with brains in tanks.

When inside the Ice Replika, XANA creates a new, gigantic monster called the "Kolossus" which forces them to retreat the first time, but not before it uses a Tower to teleport William into the arctic base. By doing this, XANA made the mistake of revealing the programs it uses to control William in the Tower's interface, which Aelita downloads to the Supercomputer. Their next encounter to the Ice Replika revealed XANA's plan of building weapons of mass destruction, powerful armies of robots to conquer humanity and the world. It sends William and the Kolossus against the Lyoko Warriors. Using a program made from William's data from the Tower, the group finally frees him from XANA's clutches, but the Kolossus destroys the Skidbladnir in the battle, taking out their way of traveling in the Digital Sea.

Due to XANA destroying their submarine, Jeremy devised an "Anti-XANA Program" based on Franz Hopper's original design of XANA, which he used a prototype version of to slow down the Kolossus long enough to save William. With the sub destroyed, their only remaining option was to enhance the program so that it would be powerful enough to destroy every trace of XANA in the world.

### Destruction

After William was freed from XANA's control, Franz Hopper sent Jeremy some additional data to improve the Anti-XANA Program, prompting Jeremy to bring his friends to Lyoko and protect Franz while the two finish the program. However, William was still anxious to go to Lyoko, so he joined them at the Factory, but they have him stay in the lab and only come as backup when they will need him. This would prove to be a bad compromise, as XANA possessed William, knowing its destruction was drawing near.

The possessed William would attack in the Factory, knocking out Jeremie to slow his progress on the program. Meanwhile, the Kolossus threatens Franz Hopper as it dredged closer on Lyoko. Even though the Kolossus was taken down, the program didn't have enough power to be launched by Jeremie, so only Aelita could do it from the fifth sector's interface. Upon arriving, she noticed her father who was sending the needed data from his own virtual energy to power up the program, was under fire and hesitated to launch the program. XANA's monsters finally destroyed Franz Hopper, which forced Aelita's hand.

The program was run, causing a powerful force to emerge from the Core of Lyoko that destroyed XANA's monsters and all of its Replikas on the network. Meanwhile in the real world, the spectre possessing William that was XANA's manifestation was ejected from William and writhed in agony before disappearing completely as its Tower deactivates, assuring that the malevolent program had finally been destroyed.

### Legacy of Damage

Even though XANA was completely destroyed, the Lyoko Warriors were far from celebratory with its demise. Aelita and Jeremy were emotionally stirred by Franz Hopper's death, the other Warriors, except William and Yumi, felt that they shouldn't shut down the Supercomputer due to its impact on their lives.

After deciding to move on with ther lives after Sissi discovers Jeremie's diary on the entire venture, the Lyoko Warriors shut down the Supercomputer and silently move on with their lives, leaving XANA as a bad memory.

### Returns

However, despite apparently being destroyed, XANA managed to survive, indicating that the program managed to escape total destruction from Jeremie's multi-agent program.

In the live action series *Code Lyoko Evolution*, XANA managed to infiltrate a virtual world known as the Cortex. As the Cortex was not registered as one of the program's Replikas, in addition to having a powerful firewall capable of destroying programs meant to cause direct harm to its functions, the multi-agent program was unable to destroy the remaining traces of XANA. However, the process had left XANA severely weakened and trapped in the Cortex. Unlike Lyoko, the Cortex had much more protective coding, making it near impossible for XANA to fully take control of it. However, XANA had a backup plan, just before its initial defeat, it had split a copy of its Source Code into four and integrated it into the Lyoko Warriors sans William and Jeremie without their knowledge, and rendered said codes dormant so as to avoid detection. After six months, XANA activated the codes and lured the Lyoko Warriors into reactivating the supercomputer, giving it the means to sustain attacks via its polymorphic specters, altered so that physical contact with the heroes would drain the Source Codes from them, increasing XANA's strength so that it could break out of the Cortex. Unfortunately for XANA, the program was unable to launch large-scale attacks due to needing the Warriors alive, and the interference from Professor Tyron, the man who created the Cortex, limited XANA's activity. The Lyoko Warriors eventually uploaded a virus into the Cortex, which threatened to delete XANA once and for all. Tyron had his supercomputer shut down so as to program in an anti-virus to stop this. At this time, XANA had retrieved 95% of its Source Codes, and, like the Cortex, was rendered dormant, meaning that once Tyron succeeded in programming it the anti-virus, XANA would be free once again. Due to the 2013 judicial recovery procedure against Moonscoop SA in France, which resulted in Moonscoop entering bankruptcy proceedings, resulting in the series not being renewed however, XANA remained down, but not out.

## Powers and Abilities

XANA is a highly intelligent and dangerous program that acts like a virus. It lives in the Supercomputer that generates Lyoko, which gives it power and a bridge to the real world. The virtual world allows XANA to manipulate powerful forces on Earth.

It was originally trapped inside the Supercomputer and vulnerable to being shut down. While inside, XANA increases its power with every return to the past. After XANA stole the Keys to Lyoko from Aelita, it could escape confinement and access the world network. XANA's capabilities are listed below:

### Towers

XANA taps into its true capabilities by activating Towers, signified by pulsations. It can also take over unsecured ones and use many together at once. Towers allow XANA to access the real world. The only way to stop its operations is by deactivating them.

With a Tower, XANA manifests extensions of its multi-agent system in networks or generate as ghostly spectres on Earth from outlets. These entities are immune to earthly harm, can interact with objects, and enter outlets to travel in networks. XANA channels the following abilities in these forms:

* **Electromagnetic Powers:** XANA can cause electromagnetic phenomena on Earth. It can manipulate electricity and control devices, cause short circuits, harness magnetic fields to levitate objects, or channel viruses to hypnotize or attack humans. XANA also hacks electrical networks to project larger effects, like starting earthquakes with ultrasound, negating gravity, or attacking groups of people with viruses.
* **Virus Possession:** XANA's main power. It can directly possess machines, computers, objects, or living things at the atomic level to manipulate and modify to launch attacks and plans on Earth. The Eye of XANA signifies its control. With this ability, XANA can move objects at will, take over machines or weapons, spread chemical substances, animate lifeless objects, control hordes of animals, manipulate ground or weather, turn a dog into a zombie virus carrier, create smoke that petrifies humans, etc. XANA soon grows powerful enough to possess humans to do its bidding on Earth, and pixelize them and other vessels to grant abilities like spectral bodies, increased physical abilities, electromagnetic powers, walking through walls, creating duplicates, etc. Only Lyoko Warriors cannot be controlled this way. They return to normal when their Towers deactivate and people do not remember anything that happened.

XANA also uses polymorphic spectres on Earth, ghosts that take human forms or shapeshifters that change form at will, and have pixelized powers. If virtualized to Lyoko, they won't need a Tower to exist on Earth anymore and take the form of other Lyoko Warriors, copying their appearance, powers, and equipment.

Other abilities that XANA can use activated Towers for include materializing or teleporting virtual minions into the real world through the Scanners or Replikas, activating technology that it has built, or stimulating minds with psychic visions through a link to the Supercomputer.

### Monsters and Programs

XANA sends armies of monsters to fight on Lyoko, named Kankrelats, Bloks, Hornets, Krabs, Megatanks, Tarantulas, Creepers, Mantas, Kongres, Sharks, and the Kalamar. How many it can virtualize is limited by its own resources. Monsters are mostly armed with Lasers and XANA uses them to fight enemies, guard Towers and assets, or attack targets in virtual worlds. As XANA's power grows, it creates new ones and send them to previously inaccessible areas.

It also made the Scyphozoa, a unique monster for greater plans. It is programmed to steal digital memory and life energy from anything, or implant its virus code in Lyoko Warriors to put them under its control.

With other programs, XANA can alter sectors, use virtual prisons, create illusions, open portals, launch programs through monsters, or put bugs or viruses in systems. It can also manipulate incomplete or deleted warriors to take their memory at will, directly possess them, retrieve their avatar from the digital void, and even bind their essence to itself. For possessed warriors, XANA modifies their abilities, and creates equipment and vehicles for them.

## Replikas

XANA, with the Keys to Lyoko, allows it to access the world network beyond the Digital Sea, as part of its eventual goal of world domination. Inside, XANA uses the Keys' data to build a network of Replikas, copies of Lyoko linked to its multi-agent system, to control hundreds of supercomputers.

Through the machines, XANA takes over military facilities and laboratories in the real world for its own research, creating technology, and building a massive robot army to destroy humanity and take over the world.

Also, XANA can take extra power from its supercomputers to increase its power immensely. Allowing XANA to create the ultimate monster, named "the **Kolossus**," a massive, fiery titan whose immense strength can tear the landscape and instantly devirtualize enemies. It is invulnerable to any attacks, aside from hitting the eye symbols on both its head and arm.

## Physical Incarnations

XANA is a mere program in the Supercomputer that keeps an unseen presence inside of its systems. It has no actual physical form that was seen in the series. The closest thing to a real form are the spectres that it generates into the real world as part of its multi-agent system, and even then, they are merely parts of a much larger force.

In the episode *"Ghost Channel"*, XANA appears for the first time inside a virtual simulation of the real world as XANA knows it. This manefiestation is theorized to be XANA's true self, since it acts with more anger and sadism than any of its programs and considering its behavior when it broke down trying to compute a logical fallacy. The manifestation is a demonic caricature of Jeremy that acts as the controller of its simulated world, and it was destroyed when Aelita dispersed the bubble with her powers.

The second direct appearance of XANA was at the end of "*The Key*", where an enormous mass of a spectre was seen spiraling into the sky from the factory as the program escaped Lyoko. This is only form of XANA to be confirmed in-universe as its true form, since it was seen leaving the Supercomputer as a collective force rather than as an assumed pawn.

The third and final incarnation of XANA was the spectre that appeared in "*Fight to the Finish*". The spectre itself had the unique ability to possess William in the real world, despite him being scanned by the supercomputer. The other unique feature is the misshapen Eye of XANA that appears on its torso, of which no other spectre has had. This spectre is assumed to be XANA's real-world form since it expressed pain that went in tandem with XANA's ultimate destruction.