Same I wish they played a more significant part. Turns out they were just the worshippers of the wired god(which is lain) and it's a interesting critique at religion. People (ab)use Religion as justification for their cruel actions. The knights treated Lain very kind and sweet.. They honored her... But after seeing what her worshippers did to innocent Children and so on(k.I.d.s / other incidents).. She decided to turn against her own believers and indirectly caused their extinction. Their god was no longer giving them the blessing they needed stay safe and sound on the wired. They no longer could fulfill their actual goal without their god joining forces. I mean as a religious person you would probably get destroyed from the inside as well, if you found out that your almighty god turned against you. I mean they literally went on a crusade like real Knights and caused all kind of destruction in their path(Ik the actual name comes from sarcastic hacker organization at MIT called the Knights of the Lambda Calculus) And when I say "Lain is literally god"(like a software) I mean Lain of the wired. Not her innocent human form or the evil Lain. They both portray the good(angel) and bad(devil) side of her but Lain of the wired is actually portraying god and she tries to deny the word "god" or her powers throughout the series.. The story gets told by her POV.
