The Core

**The Core**, also known as **Darcy** while possessing Marcy Wu, is the overarching antagonist of the Disney Channel animated series *Amphibia*, serving as one of the two unseen overarching antagonists (alongside King Andrias) of Season 1, the overarching antagonist of Season 2, and the main antagonist of Season 3. It is also the unseen overarching antagonist of the tie-in book *Marcy’s Journal: A Guide to Amphibia* and the posthumous overarching antagonist of *Return to Amphibia*.

It is a mechanical amalgamation of Amphibia's greatest minds and past rulers, including King Aldrich, as well as the hidden true ruler of Amphibia that intends to gain the power of the Calamity Box to conquer the entire multiverse. It is also the former master of King Andrias and archenemy of Calamity Trio.

It was mainly voiced William Houston, while as Darcy it was voiced by Haley Tju.

## His Evil Rankings

### What Makes It Heinous?

* The Core is an assimilation of Amphibia's greatest minds and past rulers, including King Aldrich, who conquers other worlds for their resources and abuse their families, making it incredibly likely no one in the Core can be called a good person.
* For generations, the Core has attempted to conquer the entire multiverse with the use of the Calamity Box, and had each generation eradicate and colonize planets for their resources.
	+ Judging by King Aldrich's words and a mural, it's also heavily implied that the Core wiped out all life on the planets they conquered if they weren't able to bring them to Amphibia.
* The Core is so unwilling to lose control of Amphibia that it robotized the planet's blood moon and made a plan that, if it ever lost a war and Amphibia was liberated from it, it would take control of the moon to crash it into Amphibia's surface, destroying everything and wiping out all life out of spite.
* Back when Aldrich wasn't part of it, it told him to ignore Leif’s warnings about how continued use of the Calamity Box would result in Amphibia’s destruction. This becomes even worse when one considers that the destructive event in question would be due to the Core's own actions, making Leif’s vision a self-fulfilling prophecy.
* Mentally and emotionally abused King Andrias for thousands of years in order to make him continue with their goals. It’s implied they’ve been doing this with other rulers for generations, including King Aldrich.
* After Andrias's first meeting with Marcy Wu, it ordered him to kill her due to her being one of the heroes of the Olm Prophecy. Even Andrias was horrified that it wanted to kill a child, and proposed instead to trick her, Anne Boonchuy and Sasha Waybright into returning their powers to the stones in the Calamity Box in order to spare her life. The Core agreed to the plan, but only out of pragmatism.
* When Marcy, Olivia and Yunan attempted to escape the palace, the Core uses illusions of their worst fears to torture them.
* In an incredibly painful process, it possesses Marcy Wu to become "Darcy" and locked her away in a chamber in her own mind, with plans to assimilate her fully. Due to this, it was only interested of her intelligence since it knew she's the one who could beat Andrias in Flipwart, instead of concerned about her well-being.
	+ It is later revealed that it kept Marcy in a fantasy land while wiping her memories. When she rebels against it, the Core has Aldrich destroy the fantasy land and keep her in darkness in the hope of erasing her entire personality.
		- It's revealed in the tie-in book *Marcy's Journal* that, while she mostly remembers everything, she still lost some of her memories and has blank spots.
* It continuously mocks Andrias for his failures, taunting him by claiming he was a pathetic excuse for a king. At one point, it even mocked him for still remembering his friendship with Leif and Barrel, stating that he should “let go of old memories.” This results in Andrias reluctantly burning the portrait of himself with his friends to prove his commitment to the Core, with it responding by allowing Aldrich to tell him that he was almost proud of Andrias.
* Has Andrias attack and start harvesting resources in Amphibia in order to invade Earth. This results in Wartwood and numerous other towns being destroyed, the natural environment becoming polluted and reduced to a nearly inhospitable wasteland, and many monsters and creatures being enslaved with mind control collars to increase its army.
* It captures Anne, Sasha, the Plantars, Grime, Frobo, Yunan, Olivia, Domino 2 and Joe Sparrow when they tried to get the Calamity Box and planned to kill Anne in order to take back the magic she possessed. It only stopped when Anne points out it wouldn’t know if it would kill the magic and decided to keep her alive just in case, and planned to brainwash everyone else anyway.
	+ Yet, even after deciding to keep Anne alive and held prisoner, the Core informed her it wanted her to watch it destroy her home world before it eventually kills her through dissecting her alive.
* Invaded Los Angeles and sent robots and mind controlled creatures out to attack and attempt to kill everyone, and then eventually destroy Earth for its resources, putting countless in danger and most likely killing a few people.
	+ To make matters worse, the Core itself is shown destroying a few tanks that no doubt killed several soldiers. It does so with sadistic pleasure, declaring how much it missed doing this.
* Threatened Andrias to forbid him from joining it with his father and ancestors if he failed again.
* During the battle with Sasha and Grime, it sliced Sasha across the back of her ankle and almost killed her, leading to Grime pushing her out of the way and getting his arm sliced off, which the Core made a sick joke about.
* Created illusions of Anne and Marcy to trick Sasha into lowering her guard and injures her back by slicing it with its scythe.
* Berated Andrias who was going through a breakdown and attempted to painfully brainwash him and force him to kill Anne and Sprig once more, even being angry at Aldrich, one of the members of its collective, for Andrias's failures.
* After getting its connection to Marcy's body severed by Sasha and the invasion of Earth was stopped, the Core’s helmet hacked Amphibia's blood moon and took control of it, attempting to crash itself into Amphibia to kill everyone and everything out of sheer spite and inability to accept its defeat.
* It attempts to use robotic creatures to try and kill Anne, Sasha and Marcy to stop them from destroying it and when it fails, has Aldrich cowardly beg Andrias to save them.
* When Anne is about to use three Calamity Gems against it, it mocks her as well as boastfully refers to those as "Amphibia's greatest treasure", proving it only cared for the wealth and power of the gems, making its genocide on Amphibia even worse.
* Its last attack had caused Anne to temporarily get killed, as she uses the full power of the three stones in order to completely destroy the Core. Although Anne does get resurrected by the Guardian, it's left ambiguous if the resurrected Anne is the real deal in a new body or just a clone, with Anne saying that might suffer an existential trauma later on.
* While it is said they are afraid of dying and becoming irrelevant and forgotten, it is a petty and laughable excuse and is called out pretty quickly, as Sasha claims it to be a “sore loser", to which Andrias even responds, "more or less.”
* Its actions still have somewhat irreversible damage, as it deeply affected the Calamity Trio (with *Marcy's Journal* implying she was traumatized by it) and the Stones to be destroyed, preventing the girls from ever visiting Amphibia again.
* While it was originally considered an organization, the Core is shown to be more of a unified consciousness (even calling itself that), with it merely being *influenced* by those inside of it rather than *being* the minds inside of it, and sometimes speaking directly to the people inside of it. Thus, it is its own individual rather than a group of people. Furthermore, other characters (including the Core itself on occasion) constantly refer to it as a single person, further proving it doesn't count as an organization or group.
* Unlike most of the other villains, including King Andrias, it has no redeeming qualities and is taken completely seriously.
	+ While it does have a few comedic moments as Darcy, they aren't really detracting from its evil nature as it is still played mostly seriously and the few comedic moments were incredibly brief. If anything, they just show how sadistic it is, such as its infamous "dis-armed" joke as mentioned above. Not to mention that, during the series finale, the Core is taken completely seriously with no comedic moments at all and becomes purely loathsome.

### What Makes It Inconsistent?

* It has an extremely vague moral agency. While it is true that the Core is one individual rather than a group, it is made out of, controlled and influenced by the people inside of it, all of whom are hegemonic, sadistic megalomaniacs, with at least one of them being genocidal and abusive to boot. Not to mention that occasionally, some of the minds inside the Core, such as Aldrich, would temporarily take it over, all of which makes it's moral compass muddled to the point it can't be Pure Evil or even Near Pure Evil.