Review: Red vs Blue:Zero “Encounter”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shatter Squad engages with Viper in the city but is outmatched at every turn. Phase and Diesel get away while Zero pins down Axel with his sword’s abilities before soundly defeating the rest of the squad, including knocking out West. Everyone is sore when they get back to base, including turning on Axel because of him clearly being familiar with Zero in some way. But when One tells Carolina about Zero mentioning he only needed one more key, she decides to disobey orders and look for Tucker, who may have the key Zero wants.

OUR TAKE

Shatter Squad and Viper finally square off properly as we reach the halfway point of the season, showing just how far the new cast has to go to beat their opponents, including understanding the cracks in their teamwork. It’s clear that many of Shatter Squad’s members have some of their own respective issues to overcome, but the problem lies in that it’s unclear what exactly those are beyond general grumpiness coming from One and East. East has her issues with her father West, Axel has some vague connection to Zero making those around him question his loyalties (despite the fact that they had no way of seeing him hesitate, which it’s unclear even if he did, so the “I trusted you” scene comes off as way over the top), and One wants…something? Some have pointed out that, at the moment, she seems a bit of a redundant character next to East, who at least has a discernible reason for her attitude that has potential for growing and evolving, that being her complicated feelings about West. One, on the other hand, has your stock dead parents backstory and wants to prove herself, but that’s about it right now. Oh yeah, and Raymond and Tiny drain my life whenever they’re on screen.

Then we have Viper, who are building their reputations for being real threats with some sort of plan and are distinct enough in personalities and design that you can tell what each one is about. Diesel is the blood crazy berserker (who has long since been recast so I can’t use any of my “Agent Andersmith went insane” jokes), Phase is one with weird powers who has a personal grudge (remind you of anyone else wearing pink in this season?), and Zero is the mastermind who wants to reshape the world in his image. Except the more that I hear Zero talk and the more we learn about him, the more questions it seems to raise and not in a good way. There was that line about “I’m not mere mortal, I’m a ghost” he made last time, he mentions to Axel that there are “real monsters” but we haven’t gotten much more on that, and now he’s calling One an inferior version of himself, who he says is her “shadow”. These all sound like neat lines on their own, but they’re not really saying…anything right now. And they need to start soon. Most we can glean from it is that One has more of a connection to him than just their number names, which already implied a connection, but in these past four episodes, they don’t seem to have ANYTHING in common beyond that.

The other thing I want to talk about this week is my mixed feelings on the directorial choices we’ve see so far. One that I didn’t quite notice until now was this use of the camera where it’s sometimes moving around like it’s filming a reality show, which may be to add some sense of realism but usually only serves to make moments that were meant to be serious less so. Though the more noticeable move was this week which decided to split up the fight in a Frankensteining of jumping between out of order clips that only ended up confusing me about when anything was happening. I have thoughts about Tucker potentially coming back but I’ll save that for next time. My main point to make is that it seems like this new crew is having a lot of fun playing around with different styles and techniques to make this season distinctly theirs and I admire and respect that, I just hope it’s leading to something that makes using all of that worth it.