Toa Hagah Origin Ideas

Over the last few months, a handful of posts on these boards have got thinking about the possible origins of the Toa Hagah. In that time, I’ve come up with a handful of fun ideas, and I just recently put some of them together.

The basis of my ideas revolve around answering one of the biggest questions surrounding the Toa Hagah: Why would Teridax ever need protecting? And if he really did, why did he only form his team 4000-ish years ago?

My answer to this question is that Teridax did not form his team for his own protection (although he would have said that it was), but rather to keep six of the best Toa in the universe from interfering with The Plan.

This theory is somewhat supported by Iruini’s behaviour shortly before the team was turned into the Rahaga, when he threatened to quit the team because he felt like they weren’t doing enough to combat true evil in the universe. This either means that Iruini is an exceptionally noble Toa with high standards for his team, or it means that Teridax truly was keeping them out of the action. Either way, it suggests that Teridax was intentionally restricting some of the best Toa in the universe from anywhere that they might learn too much.


And with that out of the way, let’s get to the fun part: individual origins (or 2 out of 6 of them, anyways). These theories have even less supporting evidence than the above section, but I still think they’re fun ideas that fit with Teridax’s theorized motivations. These two ideas were massively influenced by recent discussions and other ideas on the boards.

First you have Norik; his Hagah gear was present during the events of No One Gets Left Behind, suggesting that he might have previously been a Toa Hagah for a different Makuta, back when the Brotherhood was truly an organization for good. From Teridax’s point of view, this makes Norik the perfect leader of this new team; who better than someone with a history of loyalty to the Brotherhood to lead a group of potentially problematic Toa, and keep them in line?

Second, Kualus. Although I have no evidence for this, I think it would be neat if he were one of the four Toa of Ice of the Toa Mangai; specifically, the Rode-wearing one. By recruiting Kualus to his team, Teridax not only weakens the defence of a city that will eventually become crucial to The Plan, but he also removes the Kanohi Rode from the equation entirely, preventing any detection of the deception that will lead to the deaths of the other Toa Mangai.

If anyone has any other ideas for what the other four Toa might have done to make Teridax worried, or any other points to add on to what I’ve written above, I’d love to hear them.

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I like the Norik origin, but I do feel compelled to point out that Terry’s Hagah team was likely the only one equipped with spears and shields. I mean, nothing really contradicts that, but I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to say that Rhotuka Launching Shields are pretty standard weapons of warfare in the MU.

On the other hand, I’m not hyped about Kualus’s origin. I don’t really want to connect the Hagah to any other existing Toa team we know about; it makes the world feel extremely small. I do like your reasoning, though.

Finally, check out Minirigby’s “Three Stooges” team, Bomonga’s former Toa team. The Toa of that team all have crazy weird proportions - a Toa of Fire who’s short and wide (with torso hands), a Toa of Plantlife who’s tall and thin, and a Toa of Water with an upside-down Metru torso. They’re pretty funny. (There were also scrapped concepts for a Toa with a huge right arm and a scrawny little left arm, and a second Toa with a huge left and scrawny right. I believe I suggested that one wear a Mask of Fusion so they could fuse into a single Toa with two normal arms, but they were ultimately excluded from the team.)

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interesting
Personally I always thought they formed Toa Hagah as a sort of “ceremonial guard” just to show their power and influence.

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Personally, I always thought that the other Hagah’s gear was just based on Norik’s. Teri wanted all of them to have the same weaponry, and they decided to go with gear one of them already had, so at least one of them would already be familiar with it and teach the others how to use it.

Interesting idea. Deliberately keeping top Toa out of action definitely sounds like something Teridax might do.

Theory seed: Gaaki wore a Mask of Clairvoyance, which in theory could have helped her see this whole thing coming. In practice, it seems like she totally didn’t - a massive gaffe that really makes you wonder what good that mask even is. Unless… by keeping a Toa with this power nearby, Teridax could carefully convince her that any visions she gets of impending doom couldn’t possibly be him, and her trust in him could offer legitimacy to his façade of totally not being up to anything evil.

…which seems just overly complicated enough to be a Teridax plan.

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Well if Varian is anything to go by your line of thinking is more than likely correct.

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