What If Dr. Light Was Up To Something?
Sorry if this is already theorized or disproven, but in A Show of Force’s liner lyrics, we’re shown both that Dr. Light has some ability to interfere with Wily’s control of his army (his device he also uses in No Way Back) but also that he knows something awful lurks beneath Wily’s compound.
In Light’s Last Stand, Dr. Light says that if he stands a chance, it is because he’s no hero. Light’s self-recrimination is a throughline in all three acts, but perhaps here he is referring to something else.
Light shows up with a knife, only to plead for Wily to let it all go. If he disabled Wily’s guard, there’s a reasonable chance Light could actually have killed him. That implies Light’s device is elsewhere.
It seems likely to me Dr. Light has disabled the worst of Wily’s mechanical monsters, weapons Wily set to ravage the city after his death. In Act IV, we may see Wily, desperate and terrified, try to call upon his weapons of last resort, and find them disabled—or worse, infected with Light’s conscious machine software, unwilling to follow their erstwhile master’s orders.