The story of XANA from Code Lyoko.
Biography[]
Origin[]
XANA was created as a virus program based a multi-agent system by a computer scientist named Franz Hopper (real name Waldo Schaeffer), to destroy Project Carthage. Despite trying to cover his tracks, his enemies learned of his activities and hunt him down. To escape them, he uses returns to the past to buy him the time he needs to build the virtual world of Lyoko to be a safe place to live for him and his daughter, Aelita. Consequently, repeated use causes XANA to gradually increase its power and intelligence, until it becomes self-aware and autonomous. It secretly takes over the Supercomputer that manages Lyoko and plans to destroy its creator.
Once Franz Hopper and Aelita were virtualized, it betrays and imprisons them on Lyoko at that moment and tries to eliminate them. Franz tells Aelita to hide in a Tower, while he tries to reason with XANA. However, he discovers it has become powerful enough to threaten all of humanity, leaving Franz no choice but to shut down the Supercomputer to stop XANA before it causes more damage.
Awakening[]
XANA possessing electric cables
After ten years, XANA was reawakened when Jeremie reactivates the Supercomputer, discovering Aelita and Lyoko. It sends monsters after Aelita and activates a Tower to attack with electrical shocks, machines, and cables, then manifests a lightning specter after those involved with Lyoko. Jeremie sends Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi to Lyoko to protect Aelita and deactivate the Tower, stopping its attack on Earth for the moment. They decide to let Jeremie continue work on materializing Aelita, now that they know how to neutralize XANA's attacks, officially becoming the Lyoko Warriors.
A XANA specter.
While Jeremie continues research on materialization, XANA launches attacks directed at the group's school, hometown, or the Factory to target its enemies. When it is currently active, XANA is capable of taking over networks and devices, manipulating electromagnetic forces around areas, and can manifest ghostly specters from outlets into the real world. Through them, XANA can interact with objects and possess targets, manipulating their physical matter to turn into threats, like inanimate and non-living objects, transportation or construction vehicles, factory machinery, dangerous chemicals, natural elements, insects, animals, etc. XANA also sent minions to Earth from the Scanners, manufactured nanobots that cause memory loss, created deadly music, and built robots in the Factory using computers and machinery. The group neutralize XANA's attacks at every turn and launch returns to the past to undo the damage caused.
On Lyoko, XANA guards its Towers by virtualizing monsters to fight its enemies or programming alterations to hinder or confuse them, using methods like creating illusions or fake Towers, causing virtual weather, rendering objects invisible, altering landscapes, etc. XANA also made attempts to eliminate them in the virtual world by capturing its enemies in virtual prisons and simulations, trying to stop Jeremie's rescue from digital limbo, or sabotaging devirtualization in an attempt to destroy them permanently when they lose their life points.
When Jeremie at last finds the answer to materialize Aelita with Code: Earth, XANA sends monsters to try and stop them and attack the Tower they were using for the process. Upon failing, XANA steals part of herself during the transfer process to bind her fate to its own, putting her in a lethal coma when the group try to shut the machine down. Jeremie mistakes this event for XANA planting a virus inside of her, but this ensures XANA's survival for the moment regardless.
Growing Power[]
XANA's new monster
XANA is somehow evolving and gaining more power, creating new monsters like the Tarantulas. It sends one which successfully defeats all three warriors. The heroes later discover the Hermitage, an abandoned house which was owned by the mysterious Franz Hopper, who is somehow connected to Lyoko. XANA uses a specter to kidnap Aelita and possesses the house to attack the heroes and tries to boil alive Ulrich and Yumi, while using two Tarantulas to guard the Tower. However, Odd and Aelita manage to outwit the two monsters and thwart this latest attack.
Later, they also discover a fifth sector on Lyoko, which is where XANA lives and all of its data can be accessed, but it is guarded like a fortress by Creeper and Manta monsters, and dangerous traps linked to a countdown procedure. The team regularly infiltrate this sector to access data they need from XANA's memory, mainly relating to the alleged virus linking Aelita to XANA with the hope of finding an antivirus.
The Scyphozoa stealing Aelita's memory.
XANA develops new objectives and methods as it continues to grow stronger. It is now capable of stealing digital memory using another new monster, the Scyphozoa, needing to acquire the Keys to Lyoko from inside Aelita to gain access to the world network and escape the boundaries of the Supercomputer. For this purpose, XANA's attacks are now centered around luring Aelita to Lyoko for its monster to capture her without interference, using calculated misdirection to isolate her from her friends or expose her memory. No matter what happens, XANA has to be careful to keep Aelita alive until it gets what it needs for its own survival.
XANA possessing Jeremie
The group later discover that returns to the past are the cause of XANA's increasing power, confirmed when it took control of them to repeat the same day until it can possess humans, making them pixelized, superpowered pawns to do XANA's will on Earth, like kidnapping Aelita to send to Lyoko alone, using the lab equipment to interfere with the virtual warriors, or attacking its enemies and other targets on Earth. It also used humans to deliver a mind control necklace to Aelita or take her friends hostage to blackmail her as part of its current goal. However, XANA cannot possess Lyoko Warriors who fight on the virtual world, since it could only control Jeremie to destroy the recently discovered diary of Franz Hopper, who backed up and secured the information beforehand and went to Lyoko to prevent further possessions.
Though XANA wants to steal Aelita's memory, it still attempts to eliminate the other Lyoko Warriors. It used an army of Krabs to attack on Lyoko while making damage fatal, tried to get rid of Jeremie through temptation, materialized three Krabs to Earth to break the Scanners and isolate Aelita, possessed Kiwi to be the carrier of a sombie virus, attempted to make Odd and Yumi disappear when they switched bodies, used a pack of wolves mixed with holograms to attack when Aelita could not enter Towers, unleashed a massive blizzard on the city, drained Odd's life energy using Jeremie's own activated Tower, and sent an invisible ghost monster to attack while corrupting the Superscan, but it continues to fail.
XANA's monsters bowing in gratitude.
XANA and the heroes aid each other out of necessity on two occasions at this time. When Jeremie created the Marabounta to attack enemy monsters, and the program went out of control and tried to destroy the virtual world, XANA sent monsters to protect Aelita and help the team eliminate the rogue program, both to save itself and keep Aelita's memory intact. After they succeeded, XANA surprisingly shows gratitude for their help through its monsters before leaving, even though it was unnecessary. Later, when the Supercomputer's nuclear battery fails, putting it and Aelita at risk of dying, XANA takes action by possessing a criminal to steal another battery and kidnaps Jeremie to make him replace the power source, incapable of having the possessed do the task and knowing they both have a common interest in keeping the machine online. Once the new battery is in, XANA's pawn tries to kill him and fails.
As more proof of its growing power. XANA can manifest polymorphic specters, ghosts with pixelized abilities that appear as specified clones or polymorphs that change form at will. Since it cannot control Lyoko Warriors, these specters allow XANA to deceive them using their faces, ambush them on Lyoko, or impersonate Franz Hopper to gain their trust. Also, XANA can send Flying Mantas from Sector 5 to other virtual sectors.
XANA reveals hidden memories to Aelita as involuntary visions to tempt her to find answers in Sector 5 and put her in range of the Scyphozoa, but fails again. Later, the real Franz Hopper makes contact with the group and helps them decrypt his diary, despite XANA's efforts to prevent him and steal its enemies' data. Following the decryption, the contents revealed that Franz Hopper created XANA and Lyoko, but also that Aelita is his daughter, and he virtualized her to Lyoko along with himself.
XANA escaping from the Supercomputer.
Jeremie also learns from the diary what XANA wants from Aelita's memory and that she doesn't have a virus, but a missing fragment. XANA creates a fake memory fragment to set an elaborate trap that leaves Aelita alone in Sector 5 and allows the Scyphozoa to successfully steal her memory and the Keys to Lyoko, giving XANA all it needs to escape the Supercomputer. Aelita and Lyoko were rendered lifeless and left behind, but Franz Hopper brings the virtual world and her back to life, restoring Aelita's missing part: her old memories, making her fully human. XANA has escaped the Supercomputer with all of its accumulated power and shutting it down will not stop the evil virus anymore, making it more dangerous than ever.
Attacking Lyoko[]
XANA's monsters attacking the Core of Lyoko.
XANA's multi-agent system has escaped the Supercomputer and can now access the world network. It hasn't attacked the heroes since then, thinking it is beyond its enemies' reach. When Jeremie upgrades their Superscan to track XANA on the network, it responds by sending monsters to attack the Core of Lyoko in Sector 5. If the Core is destroyed, the virtual world will be wiped out and the Lyoko Warriors can no longer interfere with its plans. The group stop its assault and save Lyoko in the end.
No longer imprisoned in the Supercomputer, XANA is free to target the virtual world itself, knowing its enemies would be powerless to fight without Lyoko. It returns to Lyoko and continues to send monsters to assault the Core of Lyoko and launches Earth attacks or uses other distractions to keep the heroes busy while its monster attack force works to break through the core shields. XANA also targets the Supercomputer directly on Earth by possessing humans to wreck or sabotage the machine, or plant bombs to destroy the Factory completely.
XANA possessing Ulrich's virtual body
Among the attacks XANA uses to distract or target its enemies include possessing Yumi's field trip class to eliminate her, making a monster out of food supplies while raising the Digital Sea, controlling a flock of crows and giant roots in the park, infecting Odd and Ulrich with a hallucinating virus, or creating a Jeremie clone to deceive the team. Also, XANA possessed Ulrich's virtual body when his mind was separated from it to attack the Core of Lyoko and tried to get rid of Odd when he split into three unstable clones using petrifying smoke clouds to immobilize them until they disappear, both of which fail in the end.
XANA's virus code
As part of its plan to destroy Lyoko, XANA seeks to destroy all the virtual sectors by sending the Scyphozoa to plant its virus code into Aelita to control her mind and make her input the code into Way Towers, allowing XANA to take over their functions and use them to wipe out their sectors. It does this to make the Transport Orb completely inaccessible and prevent the group from stopping further attacks on the Core of Lyoko. It succeeds in the order of Forest, Desert, Ice, and Mountain regions, but Jeremie finds a way to virtualize the team directly to Sector 5 after losing the last sector.
XANA enslaving William
Initially reluctant, the team decides to recruit William Dunbar into their group. During his first time on Lyoko, William becomes fascinated by the virtual world, destroying monsters easily. After seeing his power as a virtual warrior, XANA wants to make use of William and possesses him with the Scyphozoa, which was easy due to his ignorance and cocky attitude. XANA has William devirtualize Aelita and puts him at the head of a Creeper army assembled at the Core of Lyoko, using their combined firepower to quickly break through the shield layers. When the other three warriors finally arrive, he defeats them easily and personally destroys the defenseless core, wiping out the virtual world. William was left behind, falling into the Digital Sea in the aftermath, but X.A.N.A. retrieves his deleted essence from inside the network and completely enslaves him.
World Network Takeover[]
XANA William
Using data sent by Franz Hopper, the team manage to recreate the virtual world of Lyoko and program new digital equipment. Soon after, XANA sends William to the real world from the Scanners to deceive the group into lowering their guard to kidnap Aelita and throw her into the Digital Sea, which the team suspect is part of a new strategy. They save her and defeat William, who runs back to his new master in the network.
XANA capturing William from a formerly deleted state allowed it to use a more complete possession on him, binding him to its system and making him a loyal and dangerous minion. William has the strength to match any Lyoko Warrior in battle, can command XANA's monsters, was granted new powers, the Black Manta to summon and mount, and the Keys to Lyoko to let him influence or deactivate Towers like Aelita. Also, XANA can materialize him from the Scanners as a pixelized human without using a Tower to attack on Earth. The evil virus keeps his virtual form prisoner somewhere in the network and uses him when necessary.
XANA summoning Franz Hopper to destroy him.
The evil virus intends to eliminate Franz Hopper, who hides in the network. XANA knows he has the expertise to destroy it, making him the greatest threat. It tries to draw him out by kidnapping Aelita and throwing her into the Digital Sea, knowing Franz Hopper would expose himself to protect his daughter. It mainly sent polymorphs or used possessed humans to bring her to Lyoko, with William prepared to capture her, but also impersonated Franz Hopper in a simulation to lure Aelita and tried to use the Scyphozoa to brainwash her into fulfilling its purpose. The latter failed due to Jeremie using a new program to undo its mind control. XANA only succeeded in summoning its target once with the former plan, but the Lyoko Warriors succeed in protecting him from its minions.
Aside from this main goal, XANA still attacks the Lyoko Warriors to eliminate its current obstacles. It took control of their Jeremie and William clones by using William to influence the Tower and exploiting a malfunctioning program. It also created a lake monster that generates lightning, possessed a biker gang, replicated an army of Kiwi 2 robots, and turned the school into angry, mind-controlled slaves. X.A.N.A. also targets the virtual world by attacking the Core of Lyoko while possessing a wild boar, redirecting a comet to crash onto the Factory, sending William to destroy the Supercomputer, and using an armed fighter jet to target the Factory, yet the heroes continue to thwart its plans.
Meanwhile, XANA has been secretly taking over the world network and expanding its multi-agent system since its escape, infecting many other supercomputers and creating single-sector virtual worlds, called Replikas, inside them using the stolen Keys to Lyoko. These virtual copies allow XANA to survive and maintain power outside of Lyoko and the Supercomputer, have greater machine resources at its disposal, and take control of secret bases on Earth to repurpose for its own ends.
At this time, the Lyoko Warriors create a hangar in Sector 5 to build their own virtual ship, named the Skidbladnir, to fight XANA in the world network beyond the Digital Sea. Despite XANA taking the opportunity to attack the incomplete ship with monsters and William, they repelled the assault and complete the ship. On their first voyage into the Digital Sea, XANA sends Kongre monsters to attack them, but the Lyoko Warriors use personal Nav Skids to fight them off. Later, it used the Scyphozoa to steal the Skidbladnir's memory. Though the heroes saved their ship, XANA creates Shark monsters and the Rorkal Nav Skid for William from the stolen data to use in further battles. The latter was introduced when Yumi was lost at sea to seize the chance to eliminate her until her friends rescued her.
During their ship's first trial run, the Lyoko Warriors discover their first Replika and intend to destroy them all to weaken XANA. They search the network and find them one by one, infiltrating their sectors and activating Towers to teleport warriors as specters in their virtual forms to its secret bases on Earth, so they can physically destroy its supercomputers. To defend its Replikas, XANA sends Lyoko monsters and William to attack their ship and shut down their Towers, while activating its own Towers to attack the ones sent using its own teleported minions, possessed inhabitants, or weapons built at its hidden bases. To truly eliminate their means of network travel, XANA has also targeted their ship by programming virtual traps designed to immobilize it until its energy depletes or completely destroy it, or sending the Kalamar sea monster to attack the ship while its shields are down, but it continues to fail.
The group have managed to find and destroy a Forest, Desert, and Sector 5 Replika in the network. Their supercomputers were found in an Amazon jungle laboratory that holds cybernetic spiders made by possessed scientists, a New Mexico facility that assembles electronic implants and defended by teleported Kankrelats, and a space station that manufactures floating metal orbs that protrude spikes and generate heat to burn through material.
The Kolossus
Later, when the team travel to an Ice Replika, XANA teleports William to fight them at its hidden base in Siberia, which unwittingly revealed the codes and programs it uses to control him in the activated Tower's interface. This allows Aelita to hack into the data and send the information to Jeremie. After they defeat William, XANA draws power from all its Replikas at once to create its most powerful monster: "the Kolossus," a massive titan with the strength to destroy any virtual target instantly. The team escape the giant, and this event reveals the true extent of XANA's domination of the world network with hundreds of Replikas providing it strength, forcing them to rethink their strategy.
XANA's robot army
After their last mission, Jeremie creates a program to free William and an incomplete one based on a multi-agent system to destroy XANA from reexamining Franz Hopper's notes. The heroes need to return to the Ice Replika for the former task where they discover its endgame of building an army of robots to conquer the world. Jeremie tries to entrap the Kolossus with its unfinished program, but the monster soon breaks free. The group succeed in freeing William from XANA's control, but the Kolossus destroys the Skidbladnir at the end of the battle. Even though XANA lost William, it has achieved ultimate power with the Kolossus, is now capable of destroying the real world with vast machine armies, and eliminated its enemies' only means of travel in the network. Ultimately, Jeremie's multi-agent program is their only hope of beating XANA and stop its world domination plans for good.
Final Battle[]
XANA moments before its demise.
XANA engages its final assault when the group and Franz Hopper meet to complete the Anti-XANA Program. It possesses William to knock out Jeremie and try to break the Scanners and sends the Kolossus and a group of Mantas on Lyoko to wipe out all its enemies for good. While fighting on Lyoko, Yumi devirtualizes herself on purpose to hold off William, while Ulrich fights and manages to defeat the Kolossus. Jeremie transports Odd and Aelita to Sector 5 to launch their completed program. Franz Hopper provides the energy needed for Aelita to run the Anti-XANA Program while being attacked by Mantas, sacrificing himself in the process much to Aelita's horror, who launches the program. It appears as a swarm of agents unleashed from the Core of Lyoko that eliminates the monsters before spreading to the sectors of Lyoko, then across the Digital Sea where it destroys all of its Replikas in the network one by one.
As this happens, the specter possessing William is forced out of him, showing XANA in agony and glitching out in response to its whole multi-agent system being destroyed. Finally, it fades into oblivion while its activated Tower returns to normal as the hostile program is permanently erased. In the end, the Lyoko Warriors were successful in wiping out XANA forever and saving the world from its wrath, eventually deciding to shut down the Supercomputer to mark the end of their virtual adventures.
Other Continuities[]
XANA reappears in the live action Evolution series and the alternate continuity of the Chronicles novel series. It should be noted that neither of the two continuities are completely canon, as Evolution was disowned by the original showrunners, who confirmed that only a few of their ideas made it into the show and that the events within were not canon. Similarly, while the novels were written with the original documents in hand, not all of their events are noted to be canon either.
Code Lyoko: Evolution[]
In the live-action Evolution sequel, XANA has survived its last battle with the Lyoko Warriors by hiding an unregistered Replika, called the Cortex. From this mysterious virtual world, XANA causes short circuits and strange bugs in the Kadic school computers, which compels the Lyoko Warriors to reactivate the Supercomputer and Lyoko, renewing their struggle with their old enemy.
Before its presumed demise, XANA had implanted its own Source Codes into the four warriors in their last battle, which contain portions of its power. Its new objective is to regain its full strength and take control of the world network once again, by sending specters to Earth, which can steal the source codes from the Lyoko Warriors through physical contact. Also, XANA takes chances to get rid of allies, destroy the recreated Skidbladnir, and bring William back to its side.
At the same time, XANA also keeps itself hidden from the owner of the Cortex Replika, Professor Tyron, so he does not try to purge the evil virus from his systems. The group discover the true connection between the two sides when they witness Tyron's Ninjas and XANA's monster army fighting each other, the latter needing to destroy a security update that was making it behave erratically. The team try to warn Tyron that XANA lives inside the Cortex, but does not believe their story and ignores them, forcing the team to deal with two dangerous enemies.
XANA has eventually recovered 95% of its full power from the Lyoko Warriors, but the group have also diligently worked on a virus that would wipe out the Cortex and XANA with it. They were forced to plant the virus immediately, but Tyron shuts down his supercomputer before it was fully uploaded. Unless Tyron finds an antivirus, XANA is rendered eternally frozen as long as the Cortex stays shut off. If Lyoko stays active, the evil virus will escape destruction again. The group shut down the Supercomputer but will remain on guard if XANA returns.
Code Lyoko: Chronicles[]
In this alternate continuity, the events of the first four seasons are severely streamlined as the first book indicates. While the events of the prequel and the first season are followed relatively the same as before, the climax of the rest of the series is compressed into one event. Franz Hopper reveals himself to the group before any equivalent of The Key occurs. He informs the group how to destroy XANA, by launching the multi-agent program into the Core of Lyoko. Hopper sacrifices himself to provide the energy needed, while at the same time restoring Aelita's memories and informing the group about her mother.
As for XANA, the entity's core is destroyed. It is purged and ejected from Lyoko, left to drift in the network without its memories or core functions. Over several months, XANA wanders the network and begins to gain its memories and strength back, and searches for a human vessel in lieu of a virtual world, choosing a girl known as Eva Skinner. It acquires directions on how to get to France and hacks the Kadic files to enroll as a new student, planning to gain the Lyoko Warriors' trust and eliminate them.
Over a time period, it gradually gained enough trust that they "tell" Eva about the Supercomputer, Franz Hopper, and their search for Anthea Hopper. Seducing Odd, XANA managed to brainwash the boy, laying the groundwork for its return and plan to destroy humanity.
However, XANA would later learn from Hopper's archives multiple shocking truths. It was made to be the Guardian of Lyoko and the First City to prevent anyone from using both for evil purposes. Moreover, he had been close friends with Aelita, a friendship Hopper encouraged as a way to teach it human emotions. However, all this changed when it was corrupted by leftover coding from a dark zone program, Project Carthage, whose templates Lyoko had been created from, acquiring vast powers, but losing its memories and human emotions in the process.
Shaken by this, XANA leaves Odd and Eva and takes an appearance of his own in the Mirror, ousting its true nature to the Lyoko Warriors. It then sought out an opportunity to speak to Aelita alone and share what he remembered. While rightfully suspicious of its motives, she nevertheless agreed. Appearing to her as a young man greatly resembling William, XANA spent many hours talking with her. But though they rekindled their former friendship, the discussion ended in conflict when XANA mistook her reluctance to help as a declaration of war. Leaving her, it began preparations to dominate the world.
Aelita, not giving up, pursued it. She persuaded it to listen to his original programming and fight off the virus still infecting it. XANA would thus ally itself permanently with humanity, helping the Lyoko Warriors to defeat a terrorist group that was hoping to use Lyoko as a substitute for Carthage. While XANA seemingly sacrificed itself to upload a self-destruction program that would delete Lyoko for good, its programming was salvaged by Aelita, who managed to recreate XANA and bring it into the real world as a human.