Review: Red vs Blue: “Club”

Of the “All up in the” variety.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the least RVB episode of RVB! Ever. Of all time.

Now, look, whenever shows decide to go the anthology approach, there’s almost certainly going to be segments that are more “out there” than most. It’s a chance to be experimental and dabble in styles that wouldn’t fit all that well in a standard season. It’s just that usually there’s enough of an indicator that this is still clearly related to the franchise it’s in.

This is the next multi-parter of the segments, focusing on the backstories of Locus and Felix, the two mercenaries who acted as antagonists for much of the Chorus Trilogy (Seasons 11-13), playing both sides of the planet-wide civil war. They acted as freelance aid for the heads of the federal army and the resistance, inching them closer and closer to destruction, until our favorite multi-colored screw-ups got in the way of the plan. Felix was a two-faced little shit right up till his bitter end, but Locus showed a growing displeasure with how dehumanizing their job became. In the end, he left the battlefield to rediscover himself.

This story is also the first time we’ve seen much of the RVB universe away from any sort of battlefield. There isn’t a Spartan helmet or blarg-speaking alien or sentient spaceship to be found, at least in this week’s part. With that in mind, it might be pretty jarring to jump into this, or even somewhat difficult to accept this is even really a part of this universe.

However, there is a humanizing aspect to seeing these characters without their pre-assigned Halo outfits. Seasons 9-10 introduced this concept when we were given a look at most of the Freelancer agents sans headgear, and it seems to carry over in this. A number of fans have been against seeing the faces of the Reds and Blues and prefer that their real features be best left up to imagination, but others find it interesting to finally have an in-canon visual to associate with the character outside of their armor color and specialized helmet. It’s similar to when a book is adapted to a visual medium like a comic, TV show, or movie. Having to nail down a single look for a character takes away the ability for the viewer to imagine one for themselves, but whether they feel that responsibility is particularly important is up to them. As for the looks of the two themselves, they’re not quite what I would have imagined either. I always figured they would be about the same height, and were both white guys since…well, their actors are both that race. Turns out Felix is actually more weasely looking in stature, while Locus is a lumbering ambiguously brown giant. Go figure.

The episode’s plot, meanwhile, is pretty simple. Felix and Locus have a job to capture (or kill?) a gangster target and go through many stylized fight and shooting scenes in order to get said target. The one item of note for this story is that the two meet up with a third partner, Cyrus, voiced by Chris Sabat. Hopefully his addition can mix some things up with this dynamic as we move into the rest of this story.

As with other first parts of multi-part stories, it’s hard to pin down first impressions knowing there’s more to come. Like the rest of these segments, this is a new angle to look at already existing characters, but it’s a bit under-cooked in some areas. Still, this season hasn’t led me wrong yet, so I’m eager to see where this heads.