Review: Red vs Blue Zero “FOR POWER Pt.1”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shatter Squad race to stop Viper from claiming the Ultimate Power, with Carolina fighting Diesel, West facing Phase/East, and the rest taking on Zero moments before he claims the weapon, which turns out to be a helmet that makes him more powerful.

OUR TAKE

Huh, I didn’t think I’d be able to sum the episode up that quickly, but there you go. It shows just how much, or rather little, this season has done to build these characters and this conflict up when we’re going into the climax and I feel like I know most of these people about as well as I did at the start. The episode is basically just these three fights so I might as well just break those down and how well they work. For starters, Diesel continues to be an enigma, so pairing him up with Carolina in a fight doesn’t really end up meaning anything. I remember back in Season 13 when she had a faux vengeance subplot with a surviving member of Charon Industries that felt forced already, but at least there was something there compared to the nothing here.

East/Phase vs West is a bit more emotionally charged since we actually bothered to build that up little, but the reasons for wanting to kill him are pretty irrational. We know he gave her up to be experimented on in order to save her life, but she’s pissed because of how she was experimented on and that he wasn’t there, instead having the rest of their family dying in the field (which is a new detail). And maybe they’re meant to be irrational thoughts, but that’s supposed to be coupled with some sort of emotional attachment formed by now, which just isn’t there. It gets points for having West completely on the defensive, but having Phase split up into her and East doesn’t really add much since she and East never really differentiated themselves as characters to begin with, so why pretend they’re separate entities now? And why does Phase keep saying her name as if that means something?

And lastly, we have One, Raymond, and Axel (Axle?) against Zero. We had some build up of Axle and Zero knowing each other early on, but they don’t give them a single line together here so I guess they got bored of that. Raymond has no real significance in being here, so not much to mention there. One has a couple scenes to pantomime having learned something or grown somewhat but in reality, she hasn’t done anything of the kind, but that speech she gave last time didn’t really make her any more of a leader than before and apologizing to East for not knowing something she couldn’t have possibly known doesn’t really substitute for it. And aside from the forced connection between her and Zero about them both almost being leaders of Shatter Squad, there’s no actual relationship for them to play on in a fight. Not to mention he’s kicked their asses at least a couple times before this and now he’s even stronger with the helmet of Spencer Porkensenson from Season 15 (did they think people wouldn’t remember that?). So at this point the most believable way I see Zero being taken out is if the helmet completely drains and kills him, because there’s no way I could buy Shatter Squad actually killing him with their own abilities at this point. But we’ll find out next week in the season finale, I suppose.