Review: Red Vs Blue “Paradox”

This is the… finale?

Overview:

The team goes back in time one last time- to save Washington.

Our Take:

This episode definitely went in a direction I didn’t expect it to.

Donut, despite having control over the hammer, has a climactic moment. He knows that he’s just being toyed with by Chrovos, and that his friends sideline him over and over again- but they’re still his friends. He makes the decision of what he should and shouldn’t do, and he made a promise to choose his friends. He decides at the last minute that he’s not going to lay down the hammer, and that he’s going to fight Chrovos with all he’s got. He may be upset with the team, but he’s not going to stand them being annihilated.

In doing so, he fights with O’Malley for possession of the hammer. He flounders, but manages to get the upper hand, and brings the final blow to Chrovos, intending on setting things right. He’s the star of the episode, and it’s a shame that the finale is out of his control.

Grif confronts Genkins and we find out what his endgame is… he’s simply bored. He’s gone tired of the status quo, and he finds everything rather dull being all orderly the way things are. It doesn’t that he particularly wants Chrovos to win, but rather, the time paradox that’s caused by saving Washington will create a number of untold universes, and he wants to experience those for himself. He’s an avatar of mischief, so this isn’t too surprising, but would he even be around to experience this if a paradox is created? Are the Pantheon and Chrovos outside of a paradox’s influence?

But the harsh truth of the episode comes as this- Washington’s state is permanent. He has to sustain brain damage in order to right the timeline, as them trying to fix it creates the paradox. He was never meant to be saved- the timeline is supposed to be self-contained. In trying to save their friend, they doomed the timeline.

Boy, that sure was an ending. I expected things to be taken out of proportion, considering the cosmic level at hand, but I didn’t expect the protagonists to actually fail. They end up saving Washington, thus unraveling time and space and creating a paradox, which zips them all back to Blood Gulch, without their memories. Church also sounds different. Not sure if this is due to voice actor time conflicts, or if it actually means something. A really good episode, but what an ending.

It’s going to be a long wait until the next season…