Quote Originally Posted by Cleretic View Post
This is a theory I've seen come up several times, and I hate it in large part because, while I disagree vehemently with it, it's not a matter of factual evidence or refutation, it's a question of story direction, specifically based on an angle that we don't know where we're 'supposed' to land just yet, because so far the story has provided two angles.
I don't think it's going to be like that at all.

What Mitron was doing was forced/fake re-awakening, using the memory crystals to force Gaia to re-awaken as a sundered Ascian, this indeed in unnatural, pretty much rewriting the person's mind regardless of her soul's state.

However, what is happening to the WoL and every individual in the Source in fact is a more natural process. The soul is just returning to its original form, piece by piece, this does not include memories, not without the echo.
This means every single individual in the source is much stronger than it used to be prior to the rejoinings = the WoL is not OP because everyone in the source is OP.

Currently the WoL is one soul ahead of everyone else in the Source due to us halting the 8th calamity from happening, but Ardberd's soul joining the WoL's soul willingly. This gives us a slight edge over others.
We also posses the echo which makes us different from others, it gives us more control, possibly access to memories long lost.

What we also do know is that once all souls in the source have been restored the Ascians plan to sacrifice every living being in the source to Zodiark in order to restore the Ancients as they were during the peak of their civilization.

This means the restoration of the soul does not equal changing the individual back to being an Ancient or Ascian. Not on its own. It just unlocks your full potential. This is where the echo might come in, giving us access to our past life memories.

If our target will be the "destruction" of Zodiark, I think we will need every bit of power available to us. Present or past.