Review: Red vs Blue Zero “Shattered”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Tucker is unsurprisingly alive, but everyone in Shatter Squad is pretty stunned about the recent revelations regarding East, most of all West. He explains her situation to everyone else, that she was experimented on with alien medication in order to save her from a fatal disease, leading to her gaining her abilities, as well as that Zero used to be part of a group called Glass that was all set to be a part of the war against the aliens but then said war ended. So Zero, then called One, felt betrayed and went rogue to “prove himself”. It seems East found him after running away from her own treatment. And Diesel is…just some guy I guess. Zero and his group then open the last temple and so Zero decides to gloat and let Shatter Squad know. No one wants to go stop him, knowing they’ll get their butts kicked, but One gets them inspired by the bare minimum of speeches.

OUR TAKE

Just like last week, major revelations are made but only more questions than answers. This episode was the shortest episode of the season yet, with it mainly being spent standing around and having West talk about potentially interesting things that don’t quite add up when you think about them. We were already aware of East/Phase being experimented on as a kid, adding to that explanation by mentioning it was with alien medication…but with no real info on what kind of disease she had, nor what this medication did to treat it. Also no mention of how she showed back up for Shatter Squad, why Phase made the double in the first place, for how long, or anything about that. We did learn about Zero’s possible motivations, but those are confusing as all hell. He was part of a Freelancer-esque team that never got to really go on any missions, so now he’s trying to gain ultimate power to…prove himself? To who? About what? What does he need this for? Why did Phase go to him of all people? Did they know each other? Lots of questions, next to no answers.

But probably the main thing that is brought up but not really explored is the supposed parallels between Zero and One. Zero USED to be called One in Glass and was picked to lead what would be the first Shatter Squad, but they never got a team together because the war ended. So the only real thing between them is that One has Zero’s old codename, which he changed to Zero because…? One is described as possibly being the next leader of Shatter Squad, but that’s yet to be elaborated on in any way, and Zero was ALMOST the leader of Shatter Squad…and that’s the only thing between them. I guess One was trying to prove herself as a leader by rallying the team (by giving the weakest speech in this series by far) but what should be a big character development moment is left a bit lacking by the fact that she’s been a completely superfluous character up until now. She’s not really overcoming any character flaws or trying to prove herself by setting herself apart from Zero. It’s just by the numbers end of Act 2 stuff. Oh yeah, and Zero is needlessly being an idiot by inviting everyone to go kick his ass. Guess we’ll see how this starts to wrap up next week.