Review: Red vs Blue “The Not-So-Good Ol’ Days”

Nobody listens to you either.

Overview:

As Washington jumps across time, he finds that his progression doesn’t come as easily as he’d have hoped.

Our Take:

It’s now Washington’s turn to jump around time, and his mission is to find Carolina, who’s also been lost in time.

Washington is right in assessing himself over Donut; he is ultimately a strategist above all else. At the same time, he’s clearly put down and disgruntled by his inability to get people to listen to him. During his time with the Freelancers, he’s at the lowest rank, due to people messing up and him overestimating his own personal abilities, so his comrades are less likely to listen to him. It doesn’t help that the strict and rigid military structure means that his superior, Carolina, isn’t someone he can casually talk to. Being in all-combat situations doesn’t help much either.

Ultimately, it’s not Washington himself but a group of mob soldiers that give him the answer. He has a sharp brain, but he’s still overwhelmed and frustrated. Their simple advice of asking Carolina once they’ve reconciled turns out to be good advice, some that ends up working out. Carolina is more comfortable with him closer to the present and ends up spilling the truth, that she went into hiding while working for the UNSC, for it would both allow her to keep her combat skills sharp and pay attention to the situation while staying out of the clear. Naturally, she is highly distrustful of Washington when he does show up.

Washington’s plan seems to be to bring her to the Alpha so that they can destroy it, with the help of several grunts. The low-ranking military is likely to be the Reds and Blues, brought from Blood Gulch, as they are ultimately, unimportant people in the military chain. Hopefully, having them all be reunited in one place would help spark their memories, but that creates a different problem. While the team all cares for Washington in the future, they don’t necessarily feel the same way about him now. As such, there would be no reason for them to be blindly supportive of his endeavors, especially for something as absurd as time travel. Washington will have to use his strategic mind to put things back in his favor, or else.

All the times he hopped through time did probably cause more time paradoxes, but I guess those are alright since we know they can be retconned by solving the original paradox?