Turning the clock back to ZeroIn our last entry, we discussed the season that came out at arguably the height of Rooster Teeth’s influence and animation production, as well as reveled in the seemingly boundless imagination that Red vs. Blue was able to inspire at the time. Now we shift to a few years later to 2020, when the world overall had become a much different place. A global pandemic had brought many things to a screeching halt, among those being Rooster Teeth. By this point, they had put a lot of chips into the marketing of another show, gen:LOCK, which had not managed to meet expectations that would make up for its exorbitant production costs and casting. RWBY was still going strong, having finished its seventh season and heading into its eighth, on top of still generating numerous spin-offs and side stories, but after Season 17 of Red vs. Blue, the show seemed in somewhat of a holding pattern. Seventeen seasons of any show is daunting task that most don’t even get close to at all, let alone while maintaining the majority of the original cast. And with even more of said cast parting ways with the company for a number of reasons, and Halo: Infinite still a year away from release, the powers that be decided it was time to make a big change and start, essentially, from Zero.This eventually became what we know as Red vs. Blue: Zero, a soft reboot for the series that overhauled a fair amount of the show. New writers, new directors, almost entirely new cast and characters, and for the first time completely forgoing the traditional machinima format, instead being totally original animation, which was made somewhat easier with Zero’s showrunner, Torrian Crawford, who had previously made a name for himself on Death Battle, RWBY, and even gen:LOCK. With some new blood in the mix, there was a chance for RVB to begin a fresh start, especially since everyone else who worked on the show seemed to gel incredibly well, seemingly mirroring the chemistry between the original RVB creators. And yet, to put it bluntly, the season became the most infamous in the entire show’s history, for a number of factors and reasons both in and out of the studio’s control. Despite it being a few years since the season finished airing, or maybe because of it, the production history of RVB: Zero is still clouded with varying and conflicting accounts, so I won’t try to put together a definitive history together here. Instead, let’s take a look at the potential good it could’ve brought to the series, how it could’ve been mended, and offer a few less discussed reasons that it ultimately missed the mark.

RVB: The Next GenerationThe idea of a spin-off following a new group of characters within an existing universe is by no means an original idea for serialized TV. After Avatar: The Last Airbender came The Legend of Korra, after the Rocky film series came Creed, and after M.A.S.H came…AfterMASH. And of course, Star Trek: The Original Series had many sequels and spin-offs, including Deep Space Nine, the first show in the franchise that would be made with little to no influence from what started the franchise, much like RVB Zero was to its predecessor. Instead of focusing on the Simulation Reds and Blues that we’d been following up until that point, this season would follow Shatter Squad, another elite group of soldiers similar to Project Freelancer in terms of fighting and special powers, though seemingly without much of the emotional manipulation by management. Three of their members, One, Raymond, and East, were more on the young side, while their two senior members, Axel and West, seemed to run the show. Already, we’re introduced to a different arrangement of characters than we’re used to: A strike team of elite soldiers who don’t have an assigned enemy of an arbitrary primary color and also seem mostly glad to be there instead of a bunch of deadenders who got ditched in a box canyon.As I mentioned in the previous article about Season 14, the anthology had a lot of episodes that focused on previously unknown Reds, Blues, and Freelancers, which easily retained the feel of previous RVB seasons while keeping the dynamics with these new characters familiar but distinct, so it was very much doable for Zero to do the same. Part of that might’ve been that those segments used machinima, but as Zero opted to not use that, we’ll set that aside. The first episode of the season mainly focuses on setting up the threat of Viper, a terrorist group run by the titular Zero, but what if it used that time to establish more of what a regular, boring day for Shatter Squad was like? Not just with training and fighting, but more focus on the humdrum daily life of living on a base like that? Well, we did end up getting that…technically. After the season finished, a smaller (non-canon) series of shorts called “Family Shatters” came out and put the characters, even the ones that had died, in more sitcom-y comedic situations that, to be frank, humanized them more than their main season did. So, I guess what I’m suggesting is that the first episode should’ve been a canon version of that tone with characters who it would make sense for, if only to set up who these characters are during a peaceful time before they enter battle.
A New Shade of Red and Blue:RVB: Zero really feels like it was meant to be a mix of the best parts of the franchise thus far, at least on paper. It has the comedy that many had come to know and love, it had returning characters from popular story arcs, and it had completely original animation like the Freelancer Saga (while having pseudo-machinima movements as tribute to what’s come before). While none of that really ended up working out for it, what didn’t help was what it tried to do to set itself apart. For an organization that is meant to be a present day and still active program similar to the defunct Project Freelancer, Shatter Squad is handled more like a group of armored superheroes who don’t answer to anyone instead part of a chain of command. This would’ve been a chance to see how the UNSC had changed since the events of Chorus and the ousting of Chairman Hargrove. An opportunity to see how the world of the show has developed from the perspective of people who could only hear of the events in previous seasons from afar, if at all. As shown, no one on Shatter Squad seemed to have even heard of the Reds and Blues. So, let’s use that.Putting aside the exposition about dead parent agents and childhood experimentations, what if the season leaned into the idea of soldiers who were committed to the cause? The UNSC is totally reformed after ousting the last Chairman, so now everything’s fine, and an elite strike force like Shatter Squad should feel proud to lead the army into a new era! Except…there’s this band of upstarts that need to be eliminated first, which leads to the introduction of Viper. The season proper was already making use of former troops going rogue, with Zero being a former member of the squad that would become Shatter Squad and East being revealed later to be a result of a failed experiment left behind by the government. Things were pointing towards taking shots at the failed regime of the UNSC, so all that’s left is to give a moral position to the story’s ostensible heroes. With this addition, it gives a bit more context to Zero’s goals than simply wanting more power, as well as giving Shatter Squad moments to consider their own ethics as they conflict with their mission. AND in the context of Red vs. Blue as a whole, it acts as an homage to the Freelancer days (especially if Carolina and Washington are still involved) and the show’s source material, Halo.
Why They Were Here:In the first trailer for Restoration, it’s revealed by Epsilon that every regular season after the Chorus Trilogy was actually a simulation constructed to find a way out of the hopeless situation the Reds and Blues found themselves in. This essentially means that Seasons 14-18 have been retconned to have never really happened, which I’m sure many who disliked Zero were happy to learn. Heck, the top comment on the trailer has someone saying the retcons actually gave them hope for Restoration, if that doesn’t say it all. Still, Zero does get a nice acknowledgement, with Epsilon saying “that one’s just cool”. With the final season nearly here, Zero’s place in the franchise is probably never going to be seen as much more than an experiment that went too far off the beaten path at best, or a harbinger of why the show should’ve ended at worst. But what I hope this essay has shown is that even now, years after it came out, it’s still capable of inspiring better ideas just like the rest of its sibling seasons. Hopefully Shatter Squad gets their part of the action in this final story, but if not, they’ll always be remembered for being game breakers. Suck it, nerds.