Third Angel

Nothing remains of the Angel's original body, which was never shown; what escapes Cocytus is a skeleton of skull, spine, and insectoid limbs, four legs and four arms in all, anchored to a deeply arched, bulbous midsection kept aligned by a gold-plated brace. The neck and tail both run extremely long, and the skull carries three mandibles with the core housed behind them.

SEELE's handiwork covers the specimen. An emblem of the organization is engraved on its head beside the label 3rd Angel Experimental Subject, the designation 3A-12482 is marked across its bones, and an artificial forced-circulation energy system feeds it power along the spine through paired red and blue cables. Strangest of all is the pseudo entry plug, built for control experiments, dangling from the neck section.

SEELE recovered the Angel from permafrost, with no explanation offered for how it got there, and locked it in deep freeze inside Cocytus, the containment wing of Bethany Base. Thorough analysis, presumably some manner of dissection, whittled it down to little more than bones, its core, and the machinery grafted on afterward.

At the start of Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance the Angel slips containment and races up the Styx Shaft toward the surface, untouched by the tank column firing alongside it. Mari Makinami Illustrious launches in Provisional Unit-05 to intercept, but the Angel evades her opening lance thrust and keeps climbing while she wrestles the Eva through cramped corridors, struggling to stay connected to the pantograph wires feeding it power. Using its halo to slice open the outer hull of the Limbo Area, the Angel floats up to Acheron, the base's rooftop, and begins climbing one of the hex pillars that seal Angels in. Unit-05 catches it there and runs it through at the mock plug, which stalls it only a moment; the Angel's answering optical beam blasts one of the Eva's prosthetic legs, and it soon shears away the legs entirely. With her battery draining and her synchronization with the prosthetics failing, Mari cedes one arm's control to the Eva's own will, and the two of them crush the core together. Unit-05's self-destruct fires as the Angel dies, consuming both the Eva and the uppermost section of Bethany Base in two towering crosses of flame while Mari ejects aboard a jet seconds ahead of the blast.

Hideaki Anno drew the Angel's rough design, dated 25 October 2006, with a head resembling the Fourth Angel's, and manga author Mohiro Kitoh, creator of Narutaru, Bokurano, and Wings of Vendemiaire, reworked it into the finished form by the end of that year. Since the Angel was always intended for a 3DCG environment, Kitoh never simplified the design. Its planned inclusion from the very beginning is why the Rebuild films renumber their Angels relative to the television series.

Even as a skeleton the Angel remains dangerous. Its eyes can set off explosions and focus into concentrated energy beams, one of which cripples Unit-05's prosthetic limbs. It levitates freely despite its bulk, and it wields its halo as a cutting implement sharp enough to slice open Bethany Base's armored hull. The pseudo entry plug on its neck marks SEELE's attempt to steer those powers artificially, and the core sitting behind the skull's mandibles is its single fatal vulnerability.