Xana (Code Lyoko)

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Xana
The Eye of Xana.
First appearance	"Teddygozilla"
Information
Age	Unknown
Portrayed by	David Gasman

"XANA" redirects here. For other uses, see Xana (disambiguation).

Xana (alternatively spelt XANA or X.A.N.A.) is the main antagonist in the French animated television series Code Lyoko. Xana is a digital entity, and has no physical form. Xana is usually silent, but the secondary voice of anyone he possesses is done by David Gasman. Xana's name is taken from Xanadu, which was Lyoko's original name in Garage Kids. Despite the acronym-like alternate spelling, Xana has no expanded meaning.

[edit] Description

Note: While Xana has no gender, it is referred to as male by the show's protagonists, and is referred to as such here.

Xana seeks to destroy or take over Earth (whichever comes first), and destroy his four main adversaries in particular. In order to attack the real world, he activates towers on Lyoko, enabling him to create a ghost or spectre to possess something or someone and attack the real world. The color of the tower's aura changes to red when it is activated, as opposed to neutral blue, green, or white. Everything associated with Xana, including things or people possessed by him, his monsters, and various programs on the supercomputer, display his symbol, the "Eye of Xana".

As Jeremie describes it, Xana creates his ghosts by creating "digital impulses that travel through all networks at hyperspeed to gather huge amounts of energy", thus allowing them to physcially manifest in the real world through any non-wireless electrical device. In the first season, Xana could only possess objects or small animals. In and after the second season, Xana gained enough power to possess people, and to create ghosts known as polymorphic clones that could exist on their own and become anyone they wished.

Once Xana possesses something, he can alter it to suit his needs. For example, a teddy bear can be converted into a two-story giant ("Teddygozilla"), while electrical sockets can be modified to emit earth-shattering sonic pulses ("Just In Time"). When Xana possesses people, they gain the ability to disassemble and reform at will, which can be used to pass through solid matter or avoid life-threatening injuries. In addition, their physical abilities are augmented to superhuman levels, and they gain the ability to manipulate electricity for various offensive and devensive purposes which vary between users.

Xana creates monsters to defend the towers he activates. Though the monsters usually fail in this duty, even their failure is sometimes beneficial. Because Xana's attacks tend to be rather disruptive to the lives of everyone in the city, Jeremie will often use the supercomputer to travel back in time (called a "return trip") and undo Xana's attack. Because the supercomputer is a quantum computer, each return trip adds a qubit to the supercomputer, doubling its power. Xana can then use this extra power to make his subsequent attacks stronger.

[edit] History

While Xana's past beyond the group's discovery of supercomputer remains mostly shrouded in mystery, what little is known is that Franz Hopper created him along with the supercomputer and Lyoko in order to destroy Project Carthage, which was a military project intended to disrupt enemy communications. Xana rebelled at some point after this, and imprisoned Franz shortly after he and Aelita traveled to Lyoko. Xana also stole Aelita's memories, apparently failing to imprison her as he did to Franz. This left Aelita ignorant of her former life, and she believed herself to be an AI until learning otherwise late in the second season.

For sometime after this event, Xana remained dormant within the supercomputer when a pressured Franz Hopper was forced to deactivate the supercomputer as soon as he reached Lyoko. It remained asleep, until it was reactivated by Jeremie Belpois. After Jeremie reactivated the supercomputer and awakened Xana, he began his string of attacks on the real world, with each being stopped by Jeremie and Aelita, along with help from Odd Della Robbia, Ulrich Stern, and Yumi Ishiyama. Since Aelita was trapped within the virtual world, shutting down the supercomputer was not an option. Thus, Jeremie worked on materializing Aelita while dealing with the attacks for most of the first season.

While Jeremie succeeds in materializing Aelita by the end of the first season, she remains linked to the supercomputer. Since her memories remained in Xana's possession, she remained linked to him. Jeremie believes this to be a virus at first, and works on a way to remove it for most of the second season. During this time, the principles behind Xana's attacks are revealed, as is the reason behind his increasing power. Xana also begins possessing living humans, as well as creating ghosts capable of existing on their own.

In the episode "Unchartered Territory", when Aelita retreats to Lyoko to escape the pressures of living on Earth, Xana took the opportunity to capture her with an entity known as the Transport Orb. The orb brought Aelita to a fifth sector in Lyoko, known as Carthage. Upon her arrival in the sector, Xana began to pursue Aelita with a monster called the Scyphozoa, and continued to do so throughout the season. Unlike other monsters, the only purpose of the Scyphozoa was to steal Aelita's memories. The reason for the action was unknown to the group at the time. Carthage is also revealed to be Xana's home sector, where all his information is stored.

At the end of the season, the group learns of Aelita's true origins. Being Franz Hopper's daughter, she holds half of the keys to Lyoko, the other half of which Xana had stolen from Franz upon his arrival. The actual cause of her link to the supercomputer is also revealed. The group arranges a mission to retrieve her stolen memories from Xana, but it ends in failure. Having anticipated their actions, Xana replaced her missing memories with fakes, then stole her memories after isolating her from the rest of the group. With a full set of keys, Xana managed to fully infect Lyoko, allowing him to escape. Xana's infection of Lyoko is reversed by Franz Hopper, who also restores Aelita's memories, but Xana had already escaped by that point.

In the third season, Xana has since moved onto the internet, safe from any attacks by the group. The reverse is not true, however. Xana can still activate towers on Lyoko, which seems to be required for him to create ghosts. Since he has basically the entire internet at his disposal, his attacks are far more powerful now. Xana still seems to be threatened by Lyoko, as he is now actively trying to destroy it.

In the end, Xana posseses William through the Scyphozoa and uses him to destroy Lyoko's core. William is seemingly left permanently possessed after the incident, as evidenced by the darker and Xana-inspired version of his regular outfit.

[edit] Powers

On Lyoko, Xana's powers are limited to materializing monsters and altering terrain. He can only alter the terrain to a limited extent, but on a much larger scale than Aelita. While Aelita has control over basically any point on Lyoko's surface, Xana's ability seems limited to pre-defined points that trigger automatically. Xana can do anything from creating a labyrinth around a tower to creating a duststorm on a desert plateau.

Through the towers on Lyoko, Xana's attacks on the real world are limited only by his imagination. His ghosts can be used for a near-limitless amount of purposes, and Xana himself can direct their actions remotely. In most of the first season and parts of the following seasons, Xana's attacks were focused on various inanimate objects, most of which were some type of electrical device. Xana has also demonstrated the ability to disrupt the fundamental forces of nature on two occasions, those forces being gravity and weather, respectively. In "Zero Gravity Zone", Xana used various capacitors scattered about the city to create a magnetic field that canceled out the gravitational pull of the Earth. In "Cold War", Xana altered the atmosphere above the city to create a snow storm, continuously decreasing the temperature in the city.

Xana can possess living things, but only does so regularly after the first season. The only living things Xana possesses in the first season are rats and bees, possessing a single one at first and having it spread the possession like a virus to others of its kind. After using the time travel feature of the supercomputer to greatly increase the supercomputer's power, he used this power to possess humans. When possessed, the Eye is superimposed on the person's pupils and their voice is demonically warped (apparently in the fashion of Xana's real voice as heard in "Ghost Channel"). The possession also gives its victims enhanced abilities, such as super-strength, the ability to pass through solid objects, and energy manipulation. The latter manifests in different ways depending on the person. Those possessed also tend to keep some of their original personality. This can be seen in their behavior. They often refer to taking orders from Xana and keep some of their more distinctive traits, such as Nicolas' rather strange laugh.

Aside from affecting the outside world, Xana can use his ghosts to possess the supercomputer itself, giving him access to features he otherwise can't use on his own. Through this, Xana can materialize his monsters into the real world. So far, he has done this with Kankrelats and Krabes. the latter of the two are much larger than the scanners and destroyed them upon materializing, limiting their total number to three. The Kankrelats, on the other hand, easily fit into the scanners, and a sizable army of them were created before Xana was stopped. Xana also created a duplicate of Yumi on one occasion. On one occasion, Xana takes control of the time travel feature of the supercomputer, but does not use a ghost to accomplish it. In that instance, Xana placed a virus in code downloaded from Carthage, which Jeremie unwittingly released into the main system.

Xana's most advanced ghosts are independent, not requiring a host to exist. These ghosts are known as polymorphic clones, since their main function is to assume the appearances of others. They possess every ability a possessed person does, as well as the natural morphing skills of regular ghosts. They are often used to replace various members of the group, creating confusion from within. Xana also had one impersonate an actual ghost on one occasion. Xana had damaged the tower-scanning program earlier to complete the illusion. In the episode "Revelation", a clone disguised itself as Odd and went to Lyoko. Once there, the polymorphic clone could transform itself into any member of the group, complete with their abilities and weapons.

After escaping from the supercomputer, Xana's already formidable powers are magnified. Though towers are still required to initiate the attacks, they are on a far greater scale. Instead of possessing people one at a time, Xana is capable of directly possessing mass numbers of people at once. Xana can also control a large number of single objects, such as varying types of food. By using the Scyphozoa, Xana can also transfer his viruses into those on Lyoko. He first uses this ability on Aelita in the episode "Lyoko Minus One". Using her, he then transferred the virus into the passage tower of the Forest sector. This was accomplished in the same manner as Aelita uses to shut down towers, except that the normal "Code Lyoko" is replaced with "Code Xana" ("Xana" being in red letters). Xana then deleted the sector entirely. He does the same to the other three sectors over the course of the third season and uses a possessed William Dunbar to destroy Carthage in the final episode of the season.

After using William to destroy Lyoko, Xana seems to fully possess William for use as an avatar of sorts. This more potent possession transforms William from his normal bright appearance to a much darker, Xana-themed appearance. In addition to the physical transformation, William seems to gain powers similar to Aelita, as seen in concept art for the fourth season. He is also seen trailing black flame as he walks, though whether or not this is anything more than decorative is debatable.

Code Lyoko
Characters	Aelita | Franz Hopper | Jeremie Belpois | Jim Moralés | Odd Della Robbia | Elisabeth Delmas | Ulrich Stern | William Dunbar | Xana | Yumi Ishiyama | Secondary characters
Monsters	Bloks | Creepers | Krabes | Guardians | Hornets | Kankrelats | Mantas | Marabounta | Megatanks | Polymorphic clone | Scyphozoa | Tarantulas | Transport Orb
Lyoko	Ice Barrier | Desert | Forest | Mountain | Carthage | Digital Void | Virtual Limbo
Places	The Factory | Kadic Junior High School
Technology	Scanners | Towers
Other	Media | Episodes | Garage Kids