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(My husband wrote this entry, so a special thanks to Seraph Mirako/Magus the Fiendlord! I love you!)

Now, there are some points of contention as far as the Magus-Guile thing. A few facts we do have to establish though, are as follows:

When Chrono Cross was first released, fans inquired as to the true identity of Guile, and Square released a statement saying he was not Magus. This would also explain why Guile does not appear to react when Lucca's letter mentions Janus' name, and why Guile does not appear to be very heavily invested in Kid's well-being.

This however, was the result of a lot of behind-the-scenes drama concerning creative control during Chrono Cross' inception. Due to the recent runaway success with the Suikoden series of games, it is likely that marketing creative consultants had a hand in several changes to the base Idea of Chrono Cross, including the decision to remove Magil, who was confirmed as being Magus in Radical Dreamers, and all references to his character. "We were afraid that players would only choose to play as Serge, Magil, and Kid, so we felt we had to remove him." Was one of the reasons cited for this decision, Masato Kato, the lead scenario writer of all three games also stated that "Including the character of Magil, and his backstory would be too difficult to accomplish in the narrative flow of the game." Both reasons are very obviously PR talk for "we wanted to but we weren't allowed." Especially since, in the missing piece artbook, one of the artists actually says "I have no idea why this game has so many characters, it didn't used to." And there are several storyboards, and scenes involving Magil from incredibly late in development present as well.

Now, that was several years ago, and in spite of its' flaws, Chrono Cross was actually recieved fairly well by its' audience, well enough to merit a re-release on PSN, and its' predecessor, Chrono Trigger, was able to recieve a re-release and port to the Nintendo DS, this is where the fun begins.

In the DS port additional content was added, in the form of 5 new dungeons, several new bosses, and a new ending. The ending will be the focus of this post.

In this ending, Chrono and company enter a new gate through the bucket that normally leads to Lavos. On the other side, regardless of whether they opted to kill Magus at Cape Howl; They will encounter -a- Magus from another timeline. He will recognize them, and tell them that he is from a timeline in which they have already defeated Lavos. Confirming that he was indeed from the canonical ending of the game, in which the party chooses to recruit him, and he has a hand in killing Lavos. They will then follow him to an amalgamation of Lavos and Schala, called the dream devourer. And the Magus they met first will attempt to communicate with Schala, but fail, and be knocked out of the way for the player's party to confront the Dream Devourer. After fighting the boss, Schala will awaken breifly, and tell the !Future Magus, that the power he has accumulated cannot help her in her predicament, as Lavos cannot be destroyed in this form by brute force alone, nor can she. She then addresses the player's party, telling them that she would return them to their own time, and erase their memories, as they cannot help, and should not bother concerning themselves with her. The !Future Magus, who was not in your party, will then lament his powerlessness, and say that if who and what he is cannot fulfill his goal, he would cast it away, and hope that, whatever remains, may help contribute to the greater good somehow. We then see one final scene of this Magus awakening in a forest, with no memories, but a fleeting feeling that he needed to do something important.

Guile's chief motivator was that he was chasing an Enigma, or mystery. this would fall perfectly in line with Magus' character at the end of this scenario, so it is safe to assume that as of the DS port, this new scene hereby retcons the previous statement made of Guile not being Magus, and irrevocably confirms that the two are indeed, the same person.