Review: Red vs Blue: Zero “Viper”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

A UNSC troop transports a powerful artifact to a base, led by Agent Washington who has recovered from his brain damage…somehow, with extra robotic enhancements. No sooner they arrive than the base is attacked by three armored enemies: Diesel, who barrels through all of the security in seconds, Phase, who teleports past by using her glowing knife as a tracker, and their leader Zero. Carolina also joins the fight to assist Wash, though both are soundly defeated, with Zero taking the artifact and transporting out of the base, leaving destruction in his wake.

Meanwhile, an up and coming team of soldiers known as Shatter Squad, race each other in training. Agent One and her co-driver Axel race Agent East and Raymond, though they’re reprimanded by their Commander, West.

OUR TAKE

Only ten minutes in the episode and yet so much to talk about. First off, this was snuck into the First Night livestream of RTX this year, so those who tuned into that got to see this by surprise. I haven’t seen a ton of buzz about it since it came out, which could point to any number of things. RVB is not the flagship series it used to be for Rooster Teeth, which has afforded it both losses and advantages. The losses of it primarily being that it has lost a lot of popularity in its more recent seasons, though that comes from it being handed off to numerous different creative teams since the original writers stepped away to primarily cast roles, up until Season 17, Singularity, which seems to be the last with most of the original cast as it was the last done before the departure of a couple of its cast members, coupled with others among them only really sticking around so they could work with their friends.

As a sendoff season for the Blood Gulch crew, even though it wasn’t made apparent at the time, I’d say it worked very well, going through the casts’ history Avengers: Endgame style and giving just about everyone one more moment to shine, though it kinda feels like it would’ve worked better as a 20th Anniversary season if they had made it that far. But that’s really just preamble for talking about THIS season, handed off to Death Battle animator Torrian Crawford, which takes a radically different approach to the show in a way that could really only be done when it’s been going on for eighteen seasons and shows no sign of stopping. Obviously there have been comments by fans of the previous seasons saying they won’t be tuning in because of this change, but that just comes with the territory of having a long-running show that makes changes every once and awhile, as fans of Doctor Who can attest to. As always, change is not in and of itself bad, so we’ll have to see what this change shows us in execution.

And how is this first episode of this new era? Well, the new villains kick the crap out of some returning characters and we get to see some of the new protagonists. The action is quite energetic in a way that sets it apart from the Monty Oum animated battles of Seasons 8-10 or from 11-17, which is about what one would expect from Torrian’s work based on his previous fight animations. The comedy meanwhile, is more miss than hit, which is concerning considering it’s arguably half of what makes this series. The new antagonists, led by the titular Zero, all have their own unique fighting style to their respective unique abilities, even if their personalities are rather subtle. They’ve definitely established themselves as a threat by stomping Wash and Carolina, two established fighters, though I have mixed feelings about bringing Carolina back for this and EVEN MORE mixed feelings about bringing Wash back after his injury. They seem to be acting as mentors to Shatter Squad, the new kids on the block, who I can’t say I got a good feel for in their scene, other than there’s a bit of a rivalry between One and East (though that’s more from reading character descriptions than the show itself). There’s seven episodes remaining in this season to help flesh this new cast and conflict out, which we will be covering starting this October.