I was writing this up for the theories thread, but I just saw this thread so I’ll post it here instead. I was speculating on the nature of Marendar, and how he may be immune to elemental powers.
My first thought was: what does immunity mean? Like ok, if a Toa of Fire blasts Marendar in the chest with a burst of fire, the bare minimum assumption is that he can tank that. Maybe he has some special anti-elemental armor or something. But what about a Toa of Earth opening up a crevice beneath him, dropping him in, and then sealing the ground again, crushing him? What’s Marendar gonna do about that?
While we can safely assume Marendar has direct immunity to elemental powers, what about indirect immunity? After all, some elements are more ‘direct’ in their approach then others, so while some immunities are intuitive, others may not be as much. I figured out the solution here. And it goes into (a very pseudo-sciencey) speculation on how elements work.
All elemental powers can be described as a type of “-kinesis” - manipulation of fire is pyrokinesis, ice is cryokinesis, water Is hydrokinesis, and so on. Fundamentally, then, all Toa manipulate a kinetic force of some kind. I posit that elemental powers work fundamentally by emitting a specific kinetic frequency, an invisible wave, that interacts with a certain molecular (protodermic) arrangement that coincides with the Toa’s element. A Toa of Fire’s kinetic waveform is fundamentally different from a Toa of Stone’s or a Toa of Air’s, which is why their wave form will never interact with anything but fire, and can never create anything but fire.
If we are to believe every element is controlled by a specific wave, then we know how these elements can be countered: by playing the equal, opposite wave. You see, if you make a sound, that sound is a wave; and if somehow a sound of an opposite wave plays simultaneously, the two waves cancel each other, and you hear only silence. It’s like if you add the number 5 to something, and you add the negative number 5 to something, you end up with 0.
I posit this is how Marendar works. His body dynamically detects waveforms emitted by Toa, and immediately emits the opposite waveform to cancel out that elemental power. In other words: Toa, in the presence of Marendar, have no elemental powers. They try to command their element, but their element nothing. Why? Because Marendar put a big pair of noise cancelling headphones on them.
Of course, then the question comes where do you draw the line between elements and powers? It would be the ultimate and most hilarious pay-off decades in the making if the way the Toa defeat Marendar is by going up into space, fetching Lehvak Kal from orbit, sitting it down and telling it “alright look, we know we left you high and dry up there, but if you can just do us this one solid…” and getting it to use its Vacuum powers to blindside Marendar who would have no way of knowing how to deal with it.
I doubt that will happen, but while Marendar is immune to elements, that doesn’t mean he’s invincible. Axonn could still donk him on the head and call it a day. In fact, maybe he’s only able to “see” beings with elemental power, essentially making him “blind” to any other type of being. After all, if the Great Beings were paranoid about the Toa taking over, hence why they made Marendar, I doubt they’d make him so strong that they wouldn’t be able to disable him if necessary. So making him a hyper-specialized elemental killing machine would be one way to do that.
