TCA 1: Origins

The first season of The Crusaders Academy premiered on October 9th 2020 and concluded on January 22nd, 2021

## Synopsis

In The Crusaders Academy, the teenage boy **Adrian Zandar** becomes a super-hero named "Echelon" alongside a plethora of other heroes and villains.

## Plot

After finishing a battle above Earth in the year 25,000, **Kael** and **Dasha Zandar** suspect Xenon Aylson, Dasha's mother to be plotting to kill their newborn son, Adrian Zandar. Coming to realize this is true, the two parents and their child time-travel to keep themselves safe, however, Xenon can time travel as well, Xenon crash lands the two in the year 2003. Knowing they cannot fight back against Xenon, they give Adrian to **Elaina** and **Keith Johnson** and explain everything. Afterwards, Kael and Dasha make a final effort to fight Xenon. Xenon kills them both.

Present day in 2019, we come to Adrian with a multitude of his friends coming to attack a private military foundation. Those alongside Adrian are **Primrose Johnson**, **Chase Müller**, **William Murphy**, **Matthew Smith**, **Andrew Nowak**, **Carter Müller**, **Daniel Rossi**, **Michael Williams**, and **Alexia Adams**. Adrian, Primrose, and Alexia break inside the facility, while everyone else stays outside defending their entrance. However, Adrian activates a bioweapon called ***The Cylinder***, giving hundreds of thousands of people present super-powers. Adrian however is ripped to shreds, Primrose and Alexia are contained, and the rest leave, believing the three to be dead, not knowing they now possess unnatural abilities which will change them for better or for worse.

After being put back together without free will via control chip in his head, Adrian kills Primrose, and begins work on fixing the time-drive within ***The Voidwalker***. However Adrian breaks free of his mind control and breaks Alexia out, and escaping with her after a heated duel against Xenon, which he luckily survives.

After a bit of time, Adrian spends some time with Alexia and thanks to a talk with her, he becomes the worlds first super-hero, Echelon. Starting his heroism career taking down common crooks, thugs and criminals, being sort of a Spider-Manish hero, a friendly neighborhood hero.

Some time later, Carter Müller discovers he has super-powers, the ability to control the whether and atmospherical conditions. Wanting to be a hero himself, he does so in a dark way. Carter makes himself judge, jury and executioner to any and all evildoers he finds. Adrian, not agreeing with this, fights his former friend now dubbed "Cumulonimbus." After failing the first time, Adrian puts together the first members of **The Crusaders**; **Zayn Peterson**, **Grace Holder**, alongside his father. Fighting Carter again with Super-speed this time, he defeats him with the help and advise of his team, however, Carter's mother **Ruby Müller**, shoots and kills Carter to protect this hero who she finds out to be Adrian. Ruby then joins The Crusaders as well.

After defeating his first super-villain, Adrian locks his eyes on the girl he's loved for 3 years now, **Jessa Sokolov**. However, thanks to **Michael Williams**, who is out for revenge against Echelon for killing his friend Carter, Adrian reveals his identity to Jessa, who also then joins The Crusaders. Michael, now known as "Aquatic," has the ability to manipulate water. And uses his power to create a tsumani towards NYC. Making this even more difficult, Michael kidnaps Ruby, who he found out killed her. Stopping the tsunami and saving Ruby, Adrian easily defeats Michael and locks him away.

Chase, Carter's brother, is now experiencing powers of his own that being electrokinesis, and has no clue what to do with them. Crushed by the weight of his brother's death, Chase is in a bad place emotionally. Chase also doesn't even know his own mother killed him. Walking into oncoming traffic, Chase's powers surge and law enforcement surrounds him. Adrian arrives on the scene as Echelon. Calming Chase down, everything goes well until he spoils that Ruby killed Carter. In a fit of rage, Chase becomes pure lightning and flghts Adrian across the city. Halting for a second, Adrians reveals his identity to Chase hoping to calm him down that way. However it only does the opposite, since it was Adrian who Carter fought. In a complete emotional fit, Chase fights Adrian with ease, slamming him into buildings, shooting him with lightning, knocking him unconscious. Chase was easily Adrian's hardest to beat villain yet. Getting rest, and ready for action again, Chase is located at a electic power plant, sucking up more electricity to become more powerful. Adrian arrives with the unwanted help from Jessa. While Adrian and Chase fight, Jessa begins overloading the plant. Adrian connects Chase to the plant, and even Chase can't contain the amount of power from it. Chase releases it all in a EMP and falls unconscious. Chase like Matthew, is locked away in a containment cell.

In the background of all of this, another one of Adrian's friends, William Murphy, now otherwise known as the Pyrocutioner, threatens to destroy the nations capital with a nuclear bomb made by a kidnapped scientist. As Adrian is about to go off and fight him, William finds him in their underground base. Adrian, now in his pride believes he can beat William easily since he's beaten everyone else. But William toys around with him, and defeats him easily, taking *The Voidwalker* and his arsenal for his army. Making a speech infront of the Capital, he inspires others across the country to join his cause. However, Adrian returning in full strength, confronts William as the timer for the bomb is set while Rudy locates the nuke, and Andrew Nowak helps people escape the capital. This time around, Adrian defeats William, reclaims *The Voidwalker*, and chases **Sara Rossi**, Daniel's sister who has joined William and his cause. Stopping her and capturing the bomb, he flies it out to the middle of the ocean as it detonates there, out of harms way.

As Andrew was out helping with the crisis in Washington D.C, Matthew Smith has left his containment. Matthew's power or ability is turning into a large lava monster, and is dubbed Hellspawn. He doesn't want to be this creature, but he does want to help others. Matthew is also not the only monster out there, There is a dragon, a eagle, and a butterfly. All of these monsters see each other as competition. However the butterfly is Matthew's crush, **Clara Schmidt**. The Dragon, **Tavig**, attacks the Crusaders base in which Grace is killed. Matthew arrives to defend them all after getting Andrews signal. Afterwards, the Crusaders work on and find a cure for him to control his ability, however he waits because Tavig is now attacking the city with his own friend, **Zeommeis**, the eagle. Calling in as much help as they can, Alexia Adams is called in, halting her own shady work and leads Tavig to where he needs to be. However is traumatized and runs home to where she believes she'll be safe, but the house collapses around her. Adrian brings along her friend **Ashley Jones** to help find her during the monster fight, and when they do, Alexia is unconscious but alive. Clara arrives to the fight in order to help Matthew, and she fights and defeats Zeommeis. However, Tavig consumes the power of the electric power plant Chase once used, and becomes absurdly powerful and almost defeats Matthew. However, Clara sacrifices herself and gives Matthew her own energy, in which he is now able to defeat and kill Tavig.

Andrew has realized he's had his own super-speed powers since the crisis at washington D.C, and joins the Crusaders in order to control his powers. However, William was never captured and now instead of collapsing the country, he plans on complete Universal destruction. With such a urgent matter at hand, Chase joins the Crusaders in order to stop the threat. Opening a portal to **Hell** itself, for **Satan** and his armies to run amuck and begin the **Apocalypse**. And it works, until Andrew goes so fast, he travels through time to stop the breaking of the **7 Seals of the Apocalypse**. Succeeding in this times effort, they finally capture and imprison William.

Behind all of this, Alexia Adams herself has become a super-villain in her own making. Trying to undo what *The Cylinder* did, she wants to rid the world of super-powers. Ironic, considering she inspired Adrian to become a hero, however she grew a sudden hatred towards Enhanced people since one of them killed her father. Adrian tries to stop and convince her, however he can't. She starts her weapon, but instead of solving the enhancement problem, it creates a mini black hole, that keeps growing the more it consumes. Alexia apologizes for what she's done, and Adrian absorbs the black hole and its power with his suit. However not even his suit can hold the power of a black hole. He flies out to space where he releases it in a large explosion visible on Earth. Adrian falls unconscious back to the Earth, and is awakened by Matthew as Hellspawn.

At last, the finale of this season ends with Xenon, who has been planning to kill or severely harm Adrian so much he couldn't return from it. Kidnapping Jessa from Adrian, the entire Crusaders team constructs a weapon to hold Xenon in place. However Matthew cannot attend and help as Xenon also brought her back from the dead with Project Revitalization. Matthew kills her, even though it was a hard process to get through. As Adrian contained Xenon, the weapon did not work, and Xenon broke free thanks to the power of another cylinder he had, which gave him enough power to break out. After which, Adrian desperately pleas with Xenon not to hurt Jessa, but Xenon kills her anyway, and the season ends there.

## Cast

* Hayden Christensen as Adrian Zandar/Echelon
* Alexander Skarsgård as Kael Zandar
* Chloe Bennet as Dasha Zandar
* Manu Bennett as Xenon Aylson
* Samantha Ferris as Elaina Johnson
* Jim Beaver as Keith Johnson
* Brooke Monk as Primrose Johnson
* Paul Walker as Chase Müller/Kinetic
* Jake Walker as William Murphy/Pyrocutioner
* Asa Butterfield as Matthew Smith/Hellspawn
* Grant Gustin as Andrew Nowak/Bolt
* N/A as Carter Müller/Cumulonimbus
* Oscar Isaac as Michael Williams
* Aimee Lou Wood as Alexia Adams
* Emma Mackey as Jessa Sokolov
* Bradley Whitford as Zayn Peterson
* Felicia Day as Grace Holder
* Kim Rhodes as Ruby Müller
* N/A as Sara Rossi
* N/A as Satan