Review: Red vs Blue “Incendiary Incidents”

There is a God.

Overview:

Grif desperately tries to keep the team on course.

Our Take:

Grif is still pretty fed up with the happenings of last season and is determined to keep everyone out of another adventure. He did save the day last time, he has no intention of getting involved in yet another thing, so he takes measures to diffuse every possible scenario that can occur. This he calls an avoidance of any incendiary incidents- which is a legitimate term. While it’s used more for disaster situations and is most commonly used for events that kickstart wars, incendiary incidents are happenings which create a larger, more drastic scenario. In this case, it refers to jumpstarting the plot. Grif read up on these and is absolutely determined to avoid any sort of incidents possible. All he wants to do is go and get pizza. This involves avoiding detours, glowing lakes, and ignoring Donut.

Donut also comes back, having been flung across the space-time continuum. He explains that they’ve been tasked by God to preserve the balance of the universe, which is something unusual for Red vs. Blue. As said last review, there’s been barely any sort of detail on divine beings in this universe, much less one that’s actually been confirmed to be real. We know that the orbs of light follow some sort of supreme creature, but now we get a statement that it’s actually god- or what Donut believes is a god. God gave Donut time travel guns, which they eventually use in their escape.

As Simmons points out, avoiding the incident is leading towards the incident. Grif’s refusal to ignore everything ends up directing them towards the pizza place, but also to where the Devil-King takes form. She is a purely supernatural being and is able to cause massive destruction with ease. It’s only by the team separating by jumping through space-time that they’re able to avoid her.

I’m on the fence about how to take this. On one hand, mortals vs a divine being is always a fun thing to watch, and there’s nothing wrong with wild and crazy flashy fights. On the other hand, there’s always some deus ex machina power levels involved, and some last minute justifications for being able to win, that it can seem a little cheesy, depending on the writing. Red Vs. Blue is at core a comedy, so traditional storytelling can be bent a little, but it still has to be justified by the plot. It’s still a little too early to make judgments, but we’ll see.

Score
8.0/10