You owe a debt of pain too large for one mortal life. Your friends will pay dearly for this, young Donut.Chrovos to Donut in A Stitch in Time
Chrovos is a divine being with the ability to control time. She created the Cosmic Powers, who would later betray her and seal her inside a labyrinth; there, she remained weak, though not powerless, until the actions of the Reds and Blues created a paradox in time. Chrovos is the overarching antagonist of Season 15 and is the main antagonist of The Shisno Paradox and the secondary antagonist turned ally in Singularity.
Overview
Chrovos has the power of time travel and is able to give this ability to anyone through the use of special Time-Portal Guns. She is also very manipulative, able to manipulate and influence those with weak minds into doing her bidding, often by drawing them in by offering them the ability to fix their past mistakes through the use of time travel. Those who give into their manipulation become "Shisno", or Agents of Chrovos.
Role in Plot
Origins
According to Atlus Arcadium Rex, Chrovos is a primordial being brought into existence at the beginning of the universe with the power to control time itself, alongside similar beings called the Titans. Chrovos embarked on a vast, galaxy-spanning project, and created a group of Artificial Intelligences known as the Cosmic Powers to that end. They were designed to manipulate younger races according to the mysterious goals of Chrovos' project by posing as "gods", and were programmed with many limitations to keep them under control, including an aversion to time travel.
Sometime in the distant past, the Cosmic Powers, including Atlus, their leader, decided to overthrow the Titans and free themselves; eventually, they succeeded in killing, banishing or imprisoning all of them, including Chrovos. Burnstorm constructed a labyrinth and a treadmill within a black hole near Starseeds, and Atlus' "son" Genkins tricked Chrovos into stepping onto the treadmill, effectively imprisoning her.
The Pizza Quest
Though imprisoned, prior to and during the events of Season 15, Chrovos is able to use her weakened power to guide Loco into building a Time Machine by influencing his thoughts and dreams. After the Reds and Blues succeed in defeating Temple, the machine fulfills its true purpose, opening a portal to the past and briefly making Chrovos powerful enough to pull Donut back to the time when she was most powerful. Chrovos gives him the power of time travel via five Time-Portal Guns, as well as a cryptic mission: to save the future by "fixing" the past. However, this mission is intentionally vague: time travel weakens the prison that binds Chrovos, and her true goal is to use Donut and the Reds and Blues to finally free herself.
Donut travels through time and returns to the Reds and Blues while they're on their way to Sammie Raphaello's Pizza, and shows them that time travel is real. Soon after, Kalirama arrives and tries to destroy the crew but finds herself unable, as they are under the protection of Chrovos' firewall. Using Donut's Time-Portal Guns the crew split up and escape into the past, setting them against the Cosmic Powers. As the Reds and Blues travel throughout time, Doc's O'Malley personality soon resurfaces and, drawn in by the promise of power, he becomes a willing Agent of Chrovos.
After Huggins, a light being associated with the Cosmic Powers, explains the dangers of time travel to the Reds and Blues, they side with her against Donut, noting that his "mission" is extremely vague. Distraught, Donut returns to Chrovos and learns that O'Malley is also working for them. Chrovos convinces Donut that his friends will betray him, but that they will be spared if Donut completes one more mission. Donut returns to the Reds and Blues and apologizes for his actions, blaming himself for everything that has happened. The group travel to Starseeds and meet with the Cosmic Powers, who explain their origins as well as Chrovos'.
The Cosmic Powers task the Reds and Blues with traveling to their prison and reinforcing Chrovos' bindings using the Hammer, a special weapon created by Burnstorm. Atlus also asserts that Chrovos chose Donut to be their "Shisno", though Donut believes that it was an accident, and the others ridicule him for his stupidity. After they leave the meeting to make their decision, Donut steals the Hammer and returns to Chrovos. Without the Hammer, the Reds and Blues decide on another plan: to save Washington from the neck injury he suffered during their fight against the Zealots. Huggins overhears and rushes to warn Atlus, but she is stopped by Genkins, who reveals himself to be a traitor working for Chrovos. He forces her through a miniature black hole, preventing her from warning the Cosmic Powers in time.
The Paradox
As the Reds and Blues travel back in time to Temple's lair, just before Washington is shot, Donut returns to Chrovos. Though Chrovos tries to convince him to lay down the Hammer, Donut begins voicing his doubts and realizes that they have only been manipulating him, and decides to stand by his friends. Just as he is about to strike the prison with the Hammer, however, O'Malley arrives to stop him, and Chrovos commands him to kill Donut.
Fighting over both the Hammer and a Time-Portal Gun, Donut and O'Malley travel across time to Blood Gulch, the Moon, and various places and times on Earth. Eventually, Donut outwits and defeats O'Malley, and he returns to Chrovos' prison with the Hammer to reinforce it. However, he is too late; Carolina kills the simulation trooper who would have shot Wash, creating a paradox. The universe freezes for a few moments before the Reds and Blues are sent back in time to relive their shared history.
In the aftermath of Donut temporarily reinforcing Chrovos' bindings, Genkins arrives to give a status report on his meddling in the Reds and Blues' past. At his insistence, Chrovos takes on a feminine physical form which she refers to as that of "Vengeance itself". She then commands Genkins to get back to work before greeting an awoken Donut, explaining to him her plan. Chrovos encourages Donut to try to stop Genkins, openly acknowledging that more interference in the past will weaken and eventually shatter the temporary prison, but Donut nevertheless leaves to try and stop her. After Donut's attempts are unsuccessful, only creating more cracks in Chrovos' prison, Chrovos inadvertently reveals to Donut that the past isn't the only place to go - the events after the paradox only have the issue of featuring both the original timeline and the new one where Wash wasn't shot existing simultaneously. This inspires Donut to leave to get Wash.
Donut eventually saves Wash, after making him aware he has memories of two separate timelines, and returns to Chrovos with him to explain the situation. After Wash is caught up on everything, he notices a flaw in Chrovos’ logic of telling Donut he could go to the past. He realizes that she wasn’t trying to get him to go to the past, she just didn’t want him to go somewhere else, and reasons if he and Donut use the Portal Gun to go back in time to before he was shot, and prevent the Blood Gulch Crew from saving him, the first paradox will be undone and everything will go back to normal. Chrovos admits Wash is correct, but before they can put their plan into motion, Genkins returns and disposed of the gun before returning to the Everwhen, much to Chrovos’ amusement. Despite the setback, Wash and Donut run into the Everwhen to find another way to stop Chrovos.
Genkins eventually returns to Chrovos, after the cracks in her prison have begun vanishing. Genkins explains that the Reds and Blues are awake and have been fixing the paradoxes across time. Chrovos angrily tells off Genkins for his failure, stating that now her only wish is that when the Cosmic Powers punish him they do it in front of her so she may watch. Genkins however tricks Chrovos into giving him most of her power, more than she can take back, by explaining if he can trap the Reds and Blues he can continue the plan uninterrupted and once she is free she can kill the Reds and Blues and absorb their power herself to restore her powers. After transferring her powers to Genkins though, he reveals his true plan to her, to weaken her prison until it is just about to break, then trick some other creature into killing the Reds and Blues so he can absorb their power for himself and then return and kill Chrovos to keep her power for himself.
After Genkins traps the Reds and Blues in the Hanger they were in when Washington was originally shot, Chrovos is forced to make an alliance with Donut and the rest of the Reds and Blues to stop Genkins. They manage to communicate with each other via the Time-Portal Guns but can't exit through them. Simmons realizes that objects can pass through though, and after Chrovos reveals the golf club Caboose got from the Cosmic Powers was the one used to beat and imprison her, they use it to impale Genkins. This just angers Genkins though, and he uses his powers to trap the Reds and Blues in the Labyrinth.
Chrovos explains how the Labyrinth works to Donut, explaining it forces them to live their worst fears, or turn their dreams into nightmares, until they are tricked into falling into a black hole. Donut tells Chrovos to take back her power from inside him to send him into the Labyrinth so he can save everyone, but she says that won't be enough to do so. They finally notice Doc is in the room with them, and that his and Donut's fragments combined will be enough for Chrovos to send them both to the Labyrinth and save the others. Donut and Doc manage to save the other Reds and Blues, and Donut defeats Genkins by tricking him into jumping into the black hole, sending him back to the beginning of time, with Donut revealing he figured out that Genkins is actually the past version of Chrovos. Genkins went insane after going to the beginning of time, declaring himself to be Chrovos and creating the Cosmic Powers, only to get imprisoned by them and forget about his past. With Genkins defeated and Chrovos still imprisoned, Wash returns to get shot once again, fixing the last paradox and ensuring that Chrovos remains imprisoned for good.
Personality
Chrovos is highly intelligent and manipulative, usually speaking in a false-friendly tone to either manipulate or condescend to others. She is also prone to making snarky remarks while in stress. Despite claiming she wants to destroy the universe and the Cosmic Powers, it's revealed that she was lying and her true motivations were far more sympathetic, desiring to escape and see if there was another way to reconnect with her children. She also shows regret for her actions before being sealed away, saying that the Cosmic Powers didn't seal her away for no reason. Chrovos, at least in her Vengeance form, has a surprisingly sexually perverted nature like Tucker and Kaikaina, making innuendo themed jokes or full on sexual references at points in the series, even within her monologues.
Trivia
- Chrovos' armor, in her Vengeance form, consists of a Copperhead helmet and body armor.
- Chrovos is partially based on Kronos, a Titan and the father of Zeus in Greek mythology, as well as Chronos, the personification of time.
- In several fictional series, among them the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, Kronos is still conscious and seeks to be freed and restored to powers, similar to Chrovos.
- Despite acting as a pivotal character in The Shisno Paradox, Chrovos’ actual form is not revealed until A Sitch in Time; in earlier episodes, she was always obscured inside her prison or just out of shot. This is lampshaded by Genkins in the aforementioned episode.
- While she isn't introduced until the next season, Chrovos can be considered the true main antagonist of Season 15, as she manipulated Loco into building his time machine in order to set in motion the events of the following seasons.
- Chrovos' origins as the creator of the Cosmic Powers are similar to the Forerunners creating monitors such as 343 Guilty Spark in the Halo series.
- Although Chrovos was frequently referenced as male during The Shisno Paradox, she has since been referenced as female during Singularity. The premiere of Singularity also revealed she has the ability to change at will into a variety of physical forms of any gender. The characters themselves start using female pronouns to refer to Chrovos following the change to a female's body and voice. This makes her the first transgender character in the series.
- Jason Weight said the inspiration for the gender change was due to Kalirama making him interested in a female antagonist in the previous season, and Lee Eddy was chosen to voice the new Chrovos after Weight saw her act during RTX 2018.