What are the Techno Blades?

 Since I just finished the first arc of Rebooted, I felt it was appropriate to talk about the main McGuffin, meaning the Techno Blades.

 

 

They are tools created by Cyrus Borg for the purpose of purging the Overlord's conciousness from the hard drive it was possessing at the time. To facilitate this, they are capable of hacking anything the holographic blade part touches. I would presume that the original intent was for one of the ninja to simply hack the hard drive, something that became impossible after Pythor stole it, leading them to instead reboot the hard drive from withing by entering the Digiverse.

Now, you might ask what I find so intriguing about this. After all, they are pretty straightforward, no? Cyrus Borg created all the machines we saw being hacked, so it figures he probably programmed a backdoor into their systems the Techno Blades could exploit. I eould be inclined to agree with this, but there is something that leaves me thinking there might be more to these blades than what meets the eye.

Look at their deactivated form for a moment and tell me what you think.

 

They still look more or less the same as their activated version, right? The only difference is that the chain on Cole's version is not extended and, much more importantly, that there is no blade.

Like Zane already mentioned in "The Surge", these aren't blades. But the ninja can turn them into blades. We see them getting activated in multiple episodes, such as this one:

Whenever a Techno Blade is activated, it happens in a burst of elemental energy. The same occurs during a hack, as whatever is being affected transform in a similar burst of energy. What's more, the affected machine will, with the exception of PIXAL, take on an aesthetic appropriate to the element of the Techno Blade's wielder.

 

 

Now, this brings up a number of questions. Why can the blades appear and disappear as needed? Where do the particle effects come from? How come the Techno Blades just so happened to land with the ninja of the corresponding elemental power, when their deactivated form offered no hint as to their elemental affiliation?

Well, my dear fellows, I do believe I have a somewhat plausible explanation for all of this. First off, as mentioned in my review of "The Surge", I believe the Techno Blades didn't actually end up with the correct ninja. Just look at their shapes!

 For reasons I already explained in the mentioned review, I believe the Techno Blades, going from left to right, were developed for Zane, Kai, Cole and Jay respectively.

Now, you might be asking yourself why the blades correspond to the ninja's colors and appear to use their elemental power, if they're not the intended wielders. The anwer to thies question lies, from what I can tell, in season 2. Yes, before the Techno Blades were ever introduced.

Do you recall the Elemental Blades? Golden, dragon-shaped hilts that could manifest a blade made from crystallized elemental energy when activated. These weapons enabled the ninja to wield their dormant elemental powers, even though they were incapable of accessing them the normal way. The metal from their hilts presumably came from the Golden Peaks, as we know that this kind of gold can carry and conduct elemental powers, since it was also used to forge the Golden Weapons. Unlike the Golden Weapons, however, there is no indication the Elemental Blades are capable of manifesting their blade if the wielder possesses no elemental powers themselves. As such, I propose that, unlike the Golden Weapons, the Elemental Blades do not have any power stored within them, but rather aid their wielder in manifesting their power.

As for the Techno Blades, I believe that Cyrus Borg reverse engineered the Elemental Blades. Yes, you heard that right. He built his tower at the site of the Final Battle, and presumably has plenty of access to footage from said battle, meaning that he could see the power of these blades. As such, he used metal from the Golden Peaks to create his Techno Blades. The reason for this? To prevent anyone but the ninja from using them. Think about it for a second. Ninjago is a futuristic nation, there is technology everywhere. By controlling its technology, the Overlord could take over all of Ninjago entirely off-screen. If the Techno Blades were to fall into the wrong hands, such as those of the Overlord himself, their wielder could control every piece of technology, even those not connected to Cyrus Borg's servers.

To prevent anyone but an elemental master, which to most people in Ninjago at this point means "anyone but the ninja", from using them, Cyrus Borg created the Techno Blades in such a way that only an elemental master can activate them, as the Techno Blade creates its blade-part from their elemental energy. This actually makes the Techno Blades more powerful as, rather than exploitng a backdoor Borg left in his creations, the Techno Blades instead infuse their target with elemental energy, transforming it into an equivalent of the vehicles the ninja could turn their Golden Weapons into, leaving it disconnected from any wider network, including the Overlord's.

Of course, this is all just a theory. But it does make sense, doesn't it?