Dexter’s Laboratory: Ego Trip

In the present day, Mandark attempts to steal Dexter's Neurotomic Protocore. Dexter thwarts the attempt and returns to his lab to continue work. The clash sets the stage for tensions that will ripple across time.

Frustrated by Dexter's scolding, Dee Dee wanders into the lab's time machine and activates it. The lab fills with temporal energy as the device powers up and destabilizes. This accidental plunge launches the multi-timeline adventure.

Mysterious robots spill into Dexter's lab via the time machine, and Dexter wastes no time destroying them. The brief encounter reveals the machine's instability and the danger of cross-time intrusions. It signals that time travel will bring bigger threats.

Believing he is 'The One Who Saved the Future,' Dexter decides to travel through time to see how impressive his future self is. He enlists his younger self to join the voyage and they step into the timestream together. The journey marks the start of a sprawling, multi-timeline quest.

In the distant future, Dexter's young adult self is under Mandark's corporate rule. They discover the Neurotomic Protocore stored in a box inside a cubicle, hinting at how its location could influence history. The discovery confirms the Protocore's central role in the timeline.

Dexter convinces his young adult self to travel further into the future to learn how the future was saved. They leave the Protocore sitting on the cubicle floor so it can be found again later. This act sets off a cascade of cross-time consequences.

Further into the future, they reach a utopian society where Dexter is worshiped as an omnipotent leader and Mandark's brain sits in a jar. Their senior self appears but is too old and senile to remember how the future was saved. The trio decides to return to an earlier moment to fix what went wrong.

The three travel back to the period between Dexter's corporate life and the utopia and find a dystopian world where humans lack intelligence and society lies in ruin. Drone robots threaten the citizens, and a fourth Dexter—muscular, bearded, and quick-witted—arrives to help. They realize Mandark is behind this downfall.

Learning Mandark caused the dystopia after finding the Protocore in the cubicle again, the group sets out to counter his reign. They scavenge the ruins of Dexter's lab to build a giant robot capable of challenging Mandark's forces. The plan is to turn ruin into weapon and reclaim the future.

Mandark counters with his equivalents from other timelines, arranging a 4-on-4 showdown against the Dexters. The multi-version duel pits all the boy geniuses against their doppelgängers in a high-stakes clash. The battlefield becomes a crucible for each version's genius.

During the clash, Child Dexter can't reach the switch that would flip the Protocore's output from negative to positive because he's weighed down by the other geniuses' counterpoints. Dee Dee arrives via the time machine and presses the correct button, saving the future and defeating the Mandarks.

The victorious Dexters grow angry that Dee Dee saved the future instead of them, feeling robbed of the chance to seal the timeline with their own deeds. They decide to build the original robots from the opening sequence to destroy Dee Dee, even though the plan targets The One Who Saved the Future by implication. Tension rises as trust fractures among the family.

Child Dexter bids farewell to his future selves and returns to his own time, only to find himself fighting the same robots he just built. He discovers a causal loop formed by his own actions and, overwhelmed, gives up and heads off for something to eat. The loop resolves in a quiet, unresolved strain across time.