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Origin
Long ago in the vastness of space, a great, formless, mindless entity of evil arose. Before it could do harm to the universe, it was set upon by three deities, each one originating from Norse, Egyptian, and Hindu mythologies: Odin (the father of Thor), Ra (the Sun God), and Rama (the seventh avatar of Vishnu the preserver). The three deities fought a fierce battle against the black mass and burned the entity almost completely out of existence with their divine power. However, during the battle, one small fragment of the entity was incidentally cut from the whole by Odin and was never burned away.
Unnoticed by the three deities, that seemingly small fragment floated away from the site of the battle and drifted through space for an untold amount of time, until it eventually, and violently, crashed on Earth during the Cretaceous Period in the Mesozoic Era. It was implied that the fragment of the black mass is the very object that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, although the crash occurred in prehistoric Japan as opposed to the Yucatán Peninsula by a massive asteroid.
Over eons, the fragment evolved into an ever-growing ominous forest of black tree-like spikes, which surrounded a tar-like pit at its center, that devoured any living thing that dared to enter. Eventually, the forest grew so large that The Emperor (Jack's father) decided to kill the evil at its source. After he was armed with a poison elixir that was given to him by a Buddhist Monk, the Emperor, with his cavalry, rode into the forest. As they rode, the forest began to gradually kill off the Emperor's men and left the Emperor himself as the only survivor. Once he arrived at a black lake in the forest's center, the Emperor doused one of his arrows into the elixir that he was given and fired it into the black lake, with him believing that it would destroy the evil forest.
Unexpectedly, the poison arrow's magic had the unforeseen effect of galvanizing the evil mass into a humanoid form: it gave it intelligence, sentience, and shape-shifting abilities. This entity proclaimed itself with the name of Aku and thanked the Emperor for inadvertently helping him. The Emperor then attacked Aku, but with nothing more than his mundane and mortal weapons, he couldn't inflict any harm upon Aku. Aku then easily defeated the Emperor and strapped him to the side of a tree so that he could watch as Aku began destroying his kingdom and slaughtering his people.
However, the Deities, after they sensed the good in the Emperor, summoned him with the aid of Odin's horse, Sleipnir. After the Deities took the good from inside the Emperor, they then used their powers in creating an Enchanted Sword that was capable of harming Aku. After he was armed with the sword and a magical suit of armor, the Emperor plunged into battle against Aku. In the end, the Emperor was victorious and imprisoned Aku into the devastated wasteland in the form of a jagged black tree. As he was sealed away, Aku vowed that he would one day return. During the battle, The Empress gave birth to a son. After he was determined to learn from the catastrophe, and was aware that Aku would indeed one day return, the Emperor hatched a plan while orchestrating the events that would set Jack on his eventual years of training.
Return
Eight years later, during a solar eclipse, the seal that the Emperor placed on him broke and Aku was released. Aku's first target was the village of the Emperor who sealed him away eight years prior. In a castle, Jack was a young child and his father told him the tale of how he defeated Aku. After the story was done, Jack was left alone, and played with a toy sword. Suddenly, the castle was covered in Aku's shadow. Aku then unleashed a vicious attack on the village. The Emperor then attempted to grab the sword, but Aku captured him before he could reach it. The Emperor told the Empress that it was time to enact the plan they had prepared for. Following the plan, Jack's mother escaped with Jack and the sword. Jack then started on a journey to prepare him both physically and mentally for his confrontation against Aku.
Many years later, a formidably trained Jack returned to find his land devastated and his people, including his father, enslaved: they were forced to harvest the rich resources of their land for Aku so the demon could increase his powers and spread his evil across the entire planet. After he was filled with righteous wrath, Jack quickly slew the Minions of Aku and then went to Aku's Castle to slay him. After a vicious battle, Jack eventually overpowered Aku. However, before Jack could finish Aku off, a desperate Aku then tore open a time portal and flung Jack into the distant future, a future in which Aku was certain that his evil would be spread out all over the world.
The Future
Unknown millennia passed before Jack reappeared into the future. During that time, Aku managed to terrorize or subjugate a majority of the entire world and declared himself the undisputed ruler of Earth. Although he began with demonic servants to carry out his will, Aku later became enamored with mechanical ones since his demonic servants couldn't carry out his tasks fast enough. Aku then recruited a council of Mad Scientists into creating the X-Model. All except X-49 were eventually destroyed before the next generation of Aku's Army was developed: the Beetle Drones. Successors to the X-Models, the Beetle Drones became the model for a series of insect-themed robots which served Aku well into the height of his power and were his standard henchmen.
Hungry for more power, Aku established Earth as a space-faring world and opened his ports to surrounding galaxies in order to plunder or conquer worlds beyond as well. The influx of aliens, who ranged from enslaved species to rough immigrants, transformed Earth into a hodge-podge of dystopian societies that were primarily run by tyrants or gangs. The few bastions for peace and hope typically remained out of Aku's wide field of vision. During Jack's revelation to Ashi, he showed her how Aku had apparently spread the word throughout the universe that criminals were welcomed on Earth, which had made it a safe haven for some of the worst scum in existence. They, in some cases, had decimated occupied settlements that were inhabited by innocent, helpless residents without any scruples. Corrupted agents also made the lives of countless citizens worthless under Aku's regime. Unsavory establishments such as the Dome of Doom and Creature Combat Club were common in the world under Aku.
Aku initially had a habit of watching Jack from afar and stewed over his inability to kill him. Aku used any opportunity to destroy Jack, whether through unleashing his minion armies, hiring bounty hunters, using mystical weapons, clever traps, simple trickery, and other methods in an unending struggle.
Despite being highly feared, hated, and despised by almost all sentient beings in the world or the universe, some beings worshiped Aku as a divine figure.
During his last encounter with Jack, Aku managed to stop him from jumping through the last known time portal and then subsequently destroyed it. Aku then revealed to Jack that he had destroyed all the other Time Portals in existence, which ostensibly ended Jack's quest to return to the past, which also inadvertently broke the seal that Jack placed on Mad Jack. After he reveled in Jack's anger, Aku fled the scene after he transformed three baby goats into monsters, which Jack then butchered in his rage. Immediately after that encounter with Aku, Jack lost his sword, but, as Aku had left moments before, he didn't witness this event.
50 Years in the Future
After he destroyed the last known time portal and eliminated Jack's ability to return to his own time, Aku decided to stop confronting Jack personally. Instead, Aku then continued to send bounty hunters after Jack while he simply waited for him to die of old age and believed that his victory would be assured. However, it later became apparent that Jack's initial time-traveling had halted his natural aging process: it eternally left him at the same biological age as when Aku first sent him into the future. This discovery scuttled Aku's plan and left him at somewhat of a loss as to what to do about his seemingly ageless foe. Ironically, despite Aku's fear of confronting him, Jack never manage to recover his lost sword, which rendered the samurai helpless against any potential attack by Aku. Because Aku had given up attempting to defeat Jack personally, he did not discover that Jack had lost his sword, and none of the bounty hunters who encountered Jack ever managed to report back to Aku alive. Somewhat oddly, though Aku never discovered that Jack had lost his sword, he did somehow learn Jack had grown a beard. During that time, Aku also came to realize, much to his annoyance, that stories of Jack's experiences began to inspire relatively widespread rebellion against him. Frightened of encountering Jack, Aku could do little personally to stop the uprisings and fell into something of a depression. Trapped in an eternal stalemate with Jack, Aku began to develop a degree of apathy even towards his tyrannical rule. He even began to see a Therapist in a sense, split himself into two entities, and talked with himself.
At one point, long after his last encounter with Jack, Aku's Castle was attacked by a large military force, which included an army of Scotswomen who were led by their father, The Scotsman. After he hoped to shake himself out of his boredom, Aku then nonchalantly destroyed most of the Rebel Army himself. After he simply flattened most of his enemies by rolling over them in the form of a giant black sphere, Aku then prepared to destroy the group of Scotswomen, who had been instructed to flee by their father. However, before he could do so, Aku was then confronted by the Scotsman. Hoping to distract Aku, the Scotsman mocked him incessantly for being scared of Jack and consequently losing much of his fearsome reputation. After he endured the Scotsman's taunts for a short time, Aku then incinerated the Scotsman with his eye-beams. However, Aku then quickly became unhappy again due to the Scotsman mentioning Jack, returned to his castle, forgot to kill the Scotsman's Daughters, and missed the Scotsman's return as a ghost. Aku also later received a phone call from the severed head of the assassin, Scaramouche, who learned that Jack's sword was missing and hoped to inform Aku. However, random circumstance and Scaramouche's undiplomatic nature conspired to prevent Aku from learning of Jack's plight.
Eventually, however, Scaramouche managed to reach Aku and reported the status of Jack's sword: unknown to Scaramouche, that the information arrived too late. After Scaramouche told him, Aku then angrily pushed down hard on Scaramouche's head and asked him if he was sure. Excited with the news, an immediately reinvigorated Aku confronted Jack for the first time in decades with a full-bodied Scaramouche, only to discover that Jack had already recovered his sword. After he destroyed Scaramouche in anger, Aku casually attempted to leave the area until he noticed a familiar smell that came from Jack's companion, Ashi. After he suddenly remembered the time that he had visited the Cult of Aku and offered them some of his essence, Aku quickly deduced that Ashi was his biological daughter and then used the essence inside her to control her into fighting Jack. Aku casually remarked to a giant robot corpse how his (last remaining) daughter had fallen and run off with his mortal enemy. After he was already bored with Jack's attempt to free her, Aku then simply tossed the robot onto them before he corrupted Ashi with a new bodysuit in his likeness. When Jack couldn't bring himself to kill Ashi and surrendered, Aku then ordered Ashi to stand down, claimed Jack's Sword for himself, and relished in his victory..
Demise
In the Series Finale, Aku captured Jack, stole his sword, broadcasted his victory to everyone in the world, if not the universe, and, once again, relished in his victory. Aku then prepared to kill Jack in front of the whole universe, but was confused as to how he should kill him. After a period of indecision, Aku decided that it was best for Ashi to kill Jack. As Ashi prepared to kill Jack, all of Jack's allies soon arrived and fought Aku and his forces in a grand-scale battle while Jack dealt with the corrupted Ashi.
Aku found amusement in the army's attempts to save Jack: while they may have been able to fight off Aku's forces, Aku himself was nearly untouchable. Eventually, Ashi freed herself of Aku's corruption but retained his powers. After Ashi realized that, she quickly took Jack's Sword back, and, before Aku could stop them, she warped Jack and herself back to the past with her own time portal. The last time that the Future Aku was seen he uttered his last words: "Oh no...." with an extremely worried look on his face and knew that his end would soon come.
In the past, the events of the first episode played out: Jack had just defeated and weakened Aku, who promised that he would destroy Jack in the future, opened up a time portal, and sent Jack into the future. However, Aku was soon caught off guard when Jack and Ashi arrived in the same spot where he was cast in the future, ten seconds after it happened, which confused Aku as to how Jack was "back already" and was unaware that the Jack who stood in front of him had spent fifty years searching for a way back to the past. Jack then rushed at Aku and attacked him without mercy.
Jack made short work of the weakened Aku, and sealed him inside his katana again. That time, however, Jack used his sword to destroy Aku once and for all: Jack plunged his sword with Aku still inside into the ground, which then caused Aku's Castle to explode, took Aku with it, which prevented the rise of Aku and spared both the universe and the future from his tyranny.
Legacy
Tragically, since Ashi was Aku's Daughter, Ashi "passed away" before she and Jack were married. This may or may not have happened to anyone and potentially everyone else from the future, as Aku's long-term conquest had shaped all their lives in some way or another; if they did exist in the new timeline, most would be very different people living in likewise radically, albeit positively, altered circumstances. Despite these implications, Aku's destruction meant that all the evil that he had inflicted was undone, thus sparing future generations from life under his tyranny.
Ironically, it was shown that Aku still, albeit indirectly, was capable of hurting Jack emotionally when his past destruction affected Ashi's existence since she was his daughter.
Battle Through Time
In a desperate, last-minute attempt to prevent his destruction at the samurai's hand, Aku transports Jack into a time pocket, a rift of time and space that is not affected by the main timeline and under the demon's complete control, forcing Jack to relive many of the challenges he has faced before in familiar locations. Aku also corrupted the royal family's kamon crests with his black magic and scattered them throughout the world.
Fighting through various robots, demons, and bounty hunters, as well as Ashi and her sisters again, Jack cuts through the remains of Aku's armies with the aid of Scotsman and his daughters, Da Samurai, and Sir Rothchild and engages in a final showdown with his hated nemesis within his fortress.
Finally defeating Aku, the rift of time the demon created begins to fade away as the portal back to Ashi and the past opens back up for Jack. Expressing disbelief that his final plans have failed, Aku refuses to surrender just before Jack delivers the final blow,
After Aku's defeat, the time pocket collapses on him and Jack slices through him. Jack is reunited with Ashi as both are transported back to the past where Jack finally destroys Aku, alongside his fortress, undoing all his evil in the future. It is unclear whether the future Aku's onscreen defeat before the final time-jump actually killed him in the same capacity as his past demise, but if not, the alternate ending where the future is not erased would imply that he is now permanently trapped in his own created pocket dimension.
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