Season Review: Red vs Blue:Zero


Rooster Teeth as a company first put itself on the map with Red vs Blue, what was initially meant to be a handful of shorts using gameplay of Halo: Combat Evolved for story that became a surprise hit and launched them into internet fame. And while it has waned in popularity in the nearly two decades of content, the company still felt the need to make more, shifting to new Halo games and eventually completely original footage altogether. Yet the main constant throughout the first seventeen seasons was mostly the same cast. However, for whatever reason, whether it was the increasing cast departures or purely creative changes, it finally became time for a major overhaul. And honestly, I was all for that when I heard about it. As much as I have enjoyed this series and the characters that started with it, I’ve seen plenty an ongoing show that has survived by being open to major changes along the way: Doctor Who, Star Trek, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Gundam, just to name a few, while keeping the core of what made that series great to begin with. Unfortunately, it is unclear if that is what happened with this soft reboot of the franchise, Red vs Blue: Zero.

When the initial trailers for the season came out, there was an increasing outcry that this was so far removed from the old series, the most notable difference being the tonal shift and near complete removal of the old characters, that this wasn’t even the same show anymore and should change its name to fit that, perhaps as a spin-off outside of the main series. And as much as I tried to keep an open mind throughout the first half of the season, I reluctantly had to admit that those complaints had something behind them. Though honestly, I may not have really had as much of a sense regarding what exactly RVB “is” until watching this, which really worked to point out what it is not, or at least really shouldn’t be. What I mean by this is that the main priority of RVB Zero is very clearly action first, everything else last. The opening intro is pretty much just fight scenes, the music is just pure adrenaline, the show is basically fights with the occasional character scene, the ending credits in the finale highlight only fight scenes. It’s fights, fights, and more fights. And this isn’t much of a surprise given that the new showrunner is Torrian Crawford, known previous for animating fights in another RT show, Death Battle. It reminds me a bit of when the company brought on future RWBY creator Monty Oum to do fights for seasons 8-10, only they didn’t let him take over the show nearly as much. The internal focus was apparently to make this more like a Saturday Morning Cartoon and/or Fast and Furious, and while I have not seen much of the latter (and really shouldn’t have to in order to enjoy this), I have seen plenty of the latter.

Not to mention, while I love a good fight scene as much as the next guy (and the fight scenes in this season are certainly one of its strengths), they don’t mean nearly as much as they could with meaningful characters involved them. Sadly, the characters involved in this season are pretty far from being very involving OR much of being actual characters. We’re given informed traits to throw onto Shatter Squad, the new protagonists, but so many of them barely get utilized. Axel is said to be a family man but that rarely comes into play, Raymond is a tech guy certainly but it doesn’t give us much about his character which is just being the comedy relief among several comedy relief characters, and One’s ostensible leadership skills only pop up suddenly near the end of the season when the show realizes “oh shit we’ve barely made her relevant at all this whole time”. Oh yeah and Tiny exists. The only ones that really get some notable utilization would be East and West with their dysfunctional daddy-daughter dynamic, though the resolution to that is just plain confusing. That leads me to talk about the villains for the season, Viper, all of whom have increasingly perplexing motivations. Diesel gets NOTHING so we don’t even know why he’s here. Phase’s whole deal is kind of revealed later, but only raises further questions as things escalate, and Zero plays up the mustache twirling villain angle at the cost of any meaningful characterization, which is made all the worse when we’ve had a parody of that kind of villain before in this series and it was a lot better written.

There are some returning cast members, Washington, Carolina, and eventually Tucker, though they might as well have been cut entirely for all the good they do. Wash is brought back from a seeming retirement last season just to be immediately benched, Tucker is only brought back to further Viper’s quest for plot devices (and didn’t even need to show up for it), and while Carolina takes on a bit of a mentor role early on, the veteran wisdom she brings to her scenes with One could have been easily said by Axel or West without changing much. So even if this was done to appease old fans who may have lapsed because of the sudden change, they probably would have been better off simply not bothering.

Not that the characters matter much anyway because the story is barely even a story, but more pantomiming what seem to be what the writers remember as cool scenes from anime and movies they’ve watched without understanding the context that made those scenes work. More often than not throughout this season, there were moments where I knew I was meant to feel something specific but the feeling just wouldn’t come to me, mainly due to the lack of connection I had to any of the characters involved. But here’s a synopsis: Viper wants to gather keys to unlock an ultimate power so Carolina and Shatter Squad try to stop them. Given what I’ve seen from this series, I expected this to be more layered or having more to say about this sort of plot, but no, it’s just as basic as you would expect and that’s all that’s really worth going into it.

But out of all the things I feel disappointed about regarding this season, what I hope I am making clear is that I don’t mind if this series has to change to survive. What I care about is that change making use of the story and themes built up over these many years, which Zero has zero interest in doing. I am very interested in seeing what the pitch meeting for this was, or if the overwhelmingly negative reception this has gotten will impact things for Season 19. Not that I don’t want Torrian Crawford to feel proud of his work, but clearly this needs to be looked over. I won’t stop watching the show after this long, but this is most definitely the first season that I have mainly disliked, so my expectations for next time are pretty low. Yet I still have hope for things to get better.