Spear of Longinus

Also localized as the Lance of Longinus, the spear predates humanity entirely. The First Ancestral Race, an ancient extraterrestrial civilization, built it to restrain the Seeds of Life it scattered across the stars; every Seed, Adam and Lilith included, traveled with a matching spear, seven in all. The spears function partly as security devices protecting their makers' design should it be compromised, and lore holds that they are technically alive, each carrying a will of its own. The weapon featured in the series belongs to Adam, Lilith's counterpart having been lost or destroyed in First Impact.

Physically it is an enormous crimson bident, taller than an Evangelion, its shaft wound into a tight double helix that gradually unwinds into two massive tines. The name references the Roman soldier who, in Christian tradition, pierced the crucified Christ; contact with holy blood supposedly gave his weapon supernatural power, making it a coveted relic across centuries of legend. ADV's localization popularized "Lance", though an on-screen computer display in the series spells the official English name "Spear". A 2015 crowdfunding drive to land a miniature replica on the Moon raised over 54 million yen but fell short of its 100 million goal.

Where N² weapons only manage minor to moderate harm against weaker Angels, and Evangelions must first neutralize an enemy barrier before their armaments matter, the spear skips the problem entirely: it penetrates any active A.T. Field on its own and can immobilize entities of god-like power such as the Seeds of Life. It also changes shape. Thrown at the Angel Arael, its tines spiral shut into a single seamless bolt, then open white gill-like structures that propel it forward through the Angel's field. During Third Impact, Unit-01 pulls the two helices apart, reshaping the weapon into something resembling a stretched infinity symbol.

SEELE manufactures nine imitations, the Copy Spears of Longinus, for its Mass Production Evangelions. The copies keep the original's dimensions and its field-piercing power but shade bluish grey, and they cannot initiate Instrumentality with Lilith herself. They first sortie disguised as huge double-edged blades, called Heavy Spear in the script and Giant Sword elsewhere, and snap into spear form the instant one touches Unit-02's A.T. Field. When destroyed, the copies bubble apart into masses of LCL. Designer Ikuto Yamashita kept the original's look deliberately simple, a single twisted strip of metal conceived as the barrel of an anti-Eva firearm storing enormous energy in folded space.

In the television continuity the spear shapes every Impact. After the Black Moon's collision with Earth destroys Lilith's spear, Adam's own locks his spread of life, leaving the planet to Lilith's descendants. The Katsuragi Expedition unearths Adam and the weapon in Antarctica in 2000; when the Contact Experiment spirals out of control, the team turns the spear on Adam too late to stop Second Impact, though the artifact appears responsible for reducing the Seed to an embryo. Years later, on Gendo Ikari's orders, Rei plants it in Lilith's chest within Terminal Dogma, then retrieves it to destroy the orbiting Angel Arael, hurling it like a javelin from Evangelion Unit-00; the throw exceeds escape velocity and strands the spear on the Moon. It returns of its own accord for Third Impact, answering the awakened Unit-01 and merging with it to form the Tree of Life. When Shinji rejects Instrumentality, the regurgitated spear shatters the nine copies and departs Earth alongside Unit-01.

The Rebuild films multiply the spear. Lilith hangs impaled by one in the first film, for reasons never explained. The second shows Unit-05 wielding a lance-like "pseudo-restoration" weapon bearing the Longinus name, and a Second Impact flashback reveals four spears descending with four Adams. In Evangelion: 3.0, Kaworu finds two identical Longinus spears embedded in Lilith's corpse where Cassius should rest; Evangelion 13 rips them free, detonating Lilith's body and igniting Fourth Impact, which Kaworu halts by impaling the Eva with both spears at the cost of his life. The final film confirms five spears existed all along, Gendo having arranged the destruction of all but two. Within Minus Space, Unit-01 claims one and converts it into a new Spear of Cassius, hope set against Longinus' despair, and both weapons ultimately sink into Evangelion Imaginary to form a new Lilith.