Review: RvB S.15 Episode 1 “Prologue”

Lots of familiar faces running around.

Spoilers Below:

The prologue begins with a boss showing a new trainee around. He is militaristic, harsh, and barks out orders like a drill sergeant. In the middle of his tour, one of his subordinates interrupts him to say that a motion sensor was tripped, and Command wants someone to look into it. Exasperated, the boss leaves.

His subordinate continues the tour and is significantly more laid-back. He says the job is relatively boring since they are stationed far away from Chorus. The trainee happily responds that she’s not interested in action anyway, and she only joined the military for free college tuition. They stumble upon a bomb, and before they can do anything, it explodes.

The explosion takes out the majority of the building. In the confusion, a team dressed in similar armor to the Reds and Blues arrive, and kill off the survivors. A remaining soldier tries to resist, but he is shot and killed. His blood splatters on Epsilon’s helmet, and he removes it, leaving it at the scene.

A journalist, Dylan Andrews, and her cameraman sneak into the crime scene, now revealed to be a UNSC supply depot. Even though they are questioned several times by the personnel stationed there, Andrews manages to avoid arrest by comedically impersonating a bomb specialist and later a military investigator.

They begin broadcasting a live report, undeterred by the interruptions of the military. With the helmet left behind as proof, Andrews says that she believes the Reds and Blues are responsible for the attack. As they wrap up their story, they are arrested.

She is later shown being berated by her boss, Carlos Trabska, for breaking and entering. He had to pull some strings to get her free from jail, and he is not happy about it. She insists that she was following a prominent lead and that this story definitely has some worth. Carlos does not believe her, and reminder, that although the Reds and Blues were hot news weeks ago, it’s been a long time and interest has since waned. Andrews retorts by saying that she covered the Reds and Blues for the Project Freelancer story and that she knows there’s a scoop here. Despite her insistence, Carlos is still skeptical.

She manages to convince Carlos to give her a week to get the facts, and he agrees under the condition that she report everything she finds back to him. He asks her where she first plans to look, and she replies, “at the beginning,” as the episode ends with a cut back to Blood Gulch.

Overview:

The prologue is lengthier than most episodes, almost at ten minutes. However, it acts as a good setup for the season ahead, introducing a mystery and establishing how much time has passed since the last canonical events occurred. Although we see the Red and Blue teams working together to attack the UNSC supply base, we don’t hear them speak. This could lead to one of two things: the attackers were done by imposters, or for some undisclosed reason, the two teams are fighting against the UNSC. If there is a reason, we don’t know what it is, or what prompted the coordinated and swift attack.

Epsilon’s reappearance, or at least the reappearance of Epsilon’s colored armor, is enough to make viewers interested. Last we saw of Epsilon, he had decided to reset his memories to start over as his own person. We don’t know what sort of person he has reformed himself into, or how the two teams have received this new Epsilon. There’s a lot this season has to offer, and the prologue gives us a lot of questions.

All in all, the trailer has action, mystery, and classic Red vs Blue humor, and is a good segue into the season ahead.