The Rise and Fall of Red vs. Blue

so today i wanted to discuss red versus blue a web series matched by a few others in terms of its influence and success for me it's one of my favorite shows of all time i have so many great memories of it however the latest season season 18 aka red versus blue zero finished up a few months ago and it's terrible i absolutely hated it and it instantly became just one of my least favorite pieces of media i have probably ever consumed so i want to talk about that and just talk about what i think it does so wrong in terms of red versus blue but also figured i'd take the time to take a look at the rest of the series what it does so well and why it originally became the internet phenomenon that it did and then we'll discuss red versus blue zero and why it's complete and under garbage also be warned this video will contain full spoilers for all 18 seasons of red vs blue [Music] so i got introduced to red versus blue through halo like a lot of other people did but as time went on it kind of grew past those games and became its own surprisingly well told story with some very well realized characters so let's take a look back to where it all began in 2003 with the blood gauche chronicles so back then the series wasn't really much more than a sketch comedy show with not that much to offer yes it was funny yes it was entertaining but it wasn't really doing anything too crazy besides making the occasional jokes towards halo or other video games in general however it was still hilarious while doing so and the actors did a surprisingly like amazing job embodying their characters and performing the lines in all the episodes that everyone kind of fell in love with this group of idiots that included church tucker caboose sarge griff simmons doc lopez and donut and all the side characters they were going to introduce as well and yeah like i said the story for those first five seasons really wasn't mind-blowing or didn't do anything too crazy but i still think it did the job and all the enjoyment once again came from watching these characters in these kind of like increasingly crazy situations that they just were not suited for and kind of for me going back and looking at them the most important thing that i would say you can take from the first couple seasons of this show is just what an incredible job bernie and the others did of kind of pioneering the machinima genre and just so much they did with literally they've made use of every single tool that was in halo c and in halo 2. going back and watching the episodes today they're just insanely charming seeing how they film the different scenes and just all the creative routes they took to do different things and they just literally took advantage of every single element that was in those first two halo games inside their sandboxes they made use of it and filmed some really insane scenes that are just creative and they're super charming to watch and to my surprise the story actually does get pretty interesting later in the series it does kind of begin pretty simple and then they start moving into some more interesting stuff with the reds and blues trying to stop o'malley and then in season three they introduce wyoming and the whole time travel thing with church and then later aliens tucker sword andy junior sister and it's all just a blast to watch and even during the out of mind mini-series following texts and that story that introduces and also kills off york you'll learn more about later in the series and that for me is kind of where i think the writing really starts shifting into something with a little bit more emotional resonance especially saying how once again that stuff kind of pans out in later seasons it's all extremely entertaining and kind of moving into the second half of season five they start name-dropping more freelancers like carolina and exploring more about wyoming and gamma and the reveal that gary is actually gamma very cool really liked that reveal and especially everything with omega bringing back captain flowers and that whole fight with wyoming's time travel abilities all in season five very cool and once again just kind of signals the start of the evolution of this series becoming so much more than it never was in those first couple seasons and like going back to what i said even before the story starts becoming the forefront for me it always went back to just how funny the characters are and how great a job literally every single actor does with some of the standouts especially for like comedic lines being church tucker griff donut caboose this always consistently hilarious and overall i just can't stress how likable every single character is and how much fun they are to watch literally in every single episode which is a pretty difficult thing to accomplish so i think it deserves some credit every single one is a blast and just all the hours we spend with them in blood goats in those first five seasons really just make you care about every single one which will pay off greatly in later seasons when they start shifting into some more emotional stuff where you really need to care about these characters you will really appreciate these first five seasons and overall even going back rewatching them today they are still a blast and i obviously appreciate them for what they did just for the machinima genre rooster teeth and just halo in general so overall blood mulch chronicles very good very entertaining and hold up surprisingly well even all these years later all right the recollection is where the show really became something crazy and especially the switch to halo 3 starting off with all the theater mode offered in that game and diving more into the story of project freelancer church the director the meta and everything was great and super interesting and once again i can't really stress this enough surprisingly a very well told story for a show that many people still to this day just write off as a stupid halo web series and starting off especially in season six a lot of this is due to agent washington who is a pretty big focus this season and at first he has a likable enough personality but his flaws are still super apparent and it doesn't hide just how kind of brutal and unfeeling he can be and you're like this guy's got some issues he's gonna need to work out some stuff and especially with where his characters goes in the next couple seasons his flaws become even more apparent and like i said you kind of like his character in season six but he definitely still has some growing to do regardless i still think he's a great addition to this series and for me a much needed tether to the central narrative kind of besides just church i feel like one was kind of needed for the other characters the other blues the other reds besides just church and i felt like he served that role very well speaking of church a lot of this trilogy is focused on him and it really dives into his character more and what he knows about his past with project freelancer and really for this whole trilogy it is just super cool finally seeing these group of characters that we've known since blood gulch in a situation with real stakes and actually kind of working together to achieve a goal it's just really cool to see with these characters the story is just super engaging here as it mainly follows the reds and blues trying to find the epsilon ai and dealing with the alpha while fighting the meta and just dealing with all the stuff that comes with that and speaking of the meta he is actually a very cool antagonist that's just so menacing compared to how incompetent the reds and blues are everything from his armor his sound design his weapon i appreciate all of it i think it comes out to be a very cool antagonist and there are also just so many reveals in season six from the reds and blues being simulation troopers and them dealing with the realization of that and of course the reveal that church is actually the alpha ai church there's no such thing as ghosts you're one of them you're an ai you are the alpha which was crazy when i first watched this and it was such a huge reveal but it makes sense and again it's just amazing how much it fit into the story of the past five seasons season six also ends with one of my favorite moments of the entire series where we get the name reveal of the director as dr leonard church okay time to see this works sincerely yours the former director of project freelancer dr leonard church but the music kicks in it's just such an insane reveal that i will never forget and season six just serves as a very very good first part of this trilogy that i think serves as purpose well season 7 is good as well but i will say that the first half of the season is a little slow it's still funny it's still entertaining but some of the most enjoyable characters like tucker and church aren't even there so you're mainly just following the reds and caboose but once they meet up with tucker later in the season who has sorely missed in season six and they introduce epsilon it's back to being great and although this season isn't as action-packed as others i will say that it does stand out as being one of the funniest especially with epsilon there's some hilarious moments as he deals with the modern body he's put into and lopez back in valhalla has some great moments with donut that are super funny as well and then at the very end we also get some nice story beats with wash switching to help the meta for really selfish reasons at the end of the season it's a nice story development and especially you kind of understand his motivation why especially after watching seasons 9 and 10 and getting some more insight into him it makes a lot of sense so season 7 still ends up being pretty decent and as we move into season 8 the main highlight is of course the insane animation that was introduced in the season and much of that is of course because it was led by monty and it just looks absolutely incredible from the first time that warthog crashed through the wall red versus blue changed forever and just became so much more than a machinima they weren't bound by the games anymore and could show up just these absolutely ridiculous fights that we'd only previously dreamed of seeing and the first warthog fight against wash and the meta is a great introduction to it i really don't think i need to say anything about the tex versus reds and blues fight because i'm pretty sure you've seen it it's maybe my favorite fight from the show and just definitely the i probably say the most popular because i think it's sitting at around 17 million views on youtube right now i'm sure so many people have seen it because it's just so so great and the reason why i love it besides just the animation looking great is that it still feels like red versus blue it doesn't lose its identity it's still just as hilarious as it's ever been but now the characters can be put in even crazier situations and it's always just so much fun to watch and especially in this season i just love how seamless the transitions are between the machinima and the animation it's done very well and something that could have been super jarring if not done right i just cannot gush enough about the animation which i'm sure i'll do so many times this video but it just looks so incredible every fight has a ridiculous amount of energy to it and the final fight in season 8 with tex wash and the meta is just so fluid so dynamic and this is kind of something that money does with every single fight in the show but is the way he uses the environment and the elements in it to make these just once again ridiculous insane kind of reminiscent of an anime just over the top insane fights are just so much fun to watch and the story for season 8 is pretty much just a natural continuation of the past two and really doesn't even resolve that many plot threads and there's really not that much to talk about with it since most of it just kind of goes straight into season 9 and season 10 where we'll all be wrapped up but a lot of it does follow epsilon church remembering who he is and him in text dealing with her past at project freelancer and a good amount of the season also covers wash dock and the meta as they try to track down epsilon and yeah especially during these parts dock is hilarious and wash continues to still be pretty likable even though he's still technically an antagonist this season and i will say the one thing i do appreciate about season 8 especially towards the end is the focus on the reds it's no secret that the blues are pretty much the ones driving the plot of this show like 99 of the time it's pretty much always the blues it's always either tucker or church or stuff going on with them but there is some really good stuff with the reds at the end of the season star wars dealing with the realization that their war that they've been fighting this entire time literally has no purpose and they're not real soldiers and they're pretty much just wasting their time with everything is maybe some of the most interesting stuff they've ever done with him in the show and the reds are actually the ones that end up fighting the meta mainly and beating him with a really cool callback to earlier in the season so yeah season 8 just like the entire recollection trilogy is great and where the story begins to really treat itself more seriously and where the show just kind of takes off for me and the addition of animation created some insanely memorable and well animated action scenes that would only get better in the next two seasons so overall the recollection an incredible addition and just one of my favorite trilogies in the series so seasons 9 and 10 are where a lot of the craziest and most memorable parts of this series are from and it's all absolutely perfect starting with season 9 it's kind of hard to judge but i would say it's half great everything about project freelancer in the past is surprisingly cool especially being the first thing in the series to be just fully animated very very neat and i just really enjoyed pretty much all of that stuff i was a little worried about them introducing a new ensemble of characters and getting the audience to care about them but the presentation of everything is pretty well done and it definitely helps we had already met so many of the characters like tex wyoming wash south york we'd already met them before in earlier seasons so we already knew some things about their personality and there's really not too much that we actually get to see when it comes to the project freelancer storyline this season we really just spent some time being introduced to the new freelancers like ct and carolina and we also get some once again incredible action scenes and for me kind of going into this season the main thing that the project freelancer saga kind of needed to accomplish was making you care about carolina the director and the alpha story carolina is characterized very clearly in this season it's kind of wanting to be just the best freelancer and as we kind of get reveals later we'll learn kind of why that is more and season 9 also properly sets up what's needed for her to kind of go through her arc later in the series and it all has just accomplished pretty well while she is likeable in the season and you no doubt obviously respect her fighting ability and she's just you know cool she's a generally like cool person to watch fight she's clearly got some growing up to do and then jen brown also gives a really good performance this season that i will say only gets better over time and while i already mentioned it monty's animation is once again insane here i can only repeat myself so many times with just so many memorable set pieces and i know i've already gushed about it like i said last season but it is truly amazing here being fully animated and literally every single action scene is ridiculously engaging with probably my personal favorite being the highway chase in episode 17 with that spiral track playing in the background just so so good they're so well made and there is truly nothing else like them on the internet and while my eyes were glued to the screen during every flashback scene this season that is only half the season and that really is my only complaint like i kind of said with this season is that i just wanted more and while i do think they make up for the lack of kind of project freelancer stuff this season by the end of season 10 it can make season 9 a little frustrating to watch so the other half of the season does take place inside the memory unit with church and a bunch of kind of fabricated fake versions of the reds and blues and it's just not as enjoyable as the other stuff and especially the way they kind of jump between the two stories it's extremely jarring a lot and you get super frustrated because you just want to watch the project's freelancer story progress and it keeps getting interrupted by the reds and blues which is not a complaint i really want to have and it's not like it's unbearably like bad or anything it's not bad at all it's just kind of funny seeing these other versions of the reds and blues at first and the church kind of being aware of this whole like alternate reality kind of thing is entertaining but at the end it just feels like a retread of blood gulch which is kind of the point of it but that doesn't really change the fact that kind of paired once again with the project freelancer stuff it just doesn't really go super well for me this season again i don't hate it or anything the reds and blues personalities are still enjoyable but the fact that none of it really matters too much for the rest of the series really just makes a lot of it feel kind of pointless and yeah there's really not too much to say on that part of the season i mean it got some laughs out of me the last episode actually has some hard-hitting emotional moments the resolution with church letting go of text is obviously a huge moment of the series and there are also some lines in this episode that i just really like as well okay world do your [ __ ] worst because i sure as hell just did mine but i would be lying if i said i wasn't always ready to get back to the project freelancer stuff and once again i can only repeat this so many times but i just think every single element is so so solid once again with the music even being extremely well done and i guess my only real complaint with this season especially the project freelancer stuff would be a few animation nitpicks here and there obviously watching it today part of it is a little dated just because of when it came out especially the faces on a lot of them can kind of catch you by surprise at first and especially once again in season nine some of the faces can look a little rough but once again i think they end up improving on a lot of it in the next season anyways so to end i guess i'll just say that season 9 began setting up the world of project freelancer in a very very cool way and putting all the pieces in place for it to conclude very very nicely in the next season and even though i don't love the memory unit part of the season it is still a solid addition to the series as a whole plus it ends on a super exciting cliffhanger with carolina returning in the present that sets the stage for an incredible finale in season 10. season 10 thankfully takes the project freelancer stuff from season 9 but this time pairs it with the reds and blues of the real world and continues the present-day storyline it perfectly balances the comedy that comes with the reds and blues and also that with the story of church and carolina and it all just works so well and this season is probably in my opinion maybe like peak red versus blue it is so so good in this season you finally get the payoff to this 10 year long story with so many great moments and i will say especially compared to season nine like i was talking about some of my complaints with that this season is pretty well paced the present day story line is some of the most interesting stuff the reds and blues have ever dealt with and especially at the beginning of the season i love how united they all are in this season since they all justifiably hate carolina at first just because the way she treats them and they don't really want to risk their lives again for this kind of personal vendetta that she has against the director but as the season goes along things kind of change and especially episode 12 has that great scene with the recording of york and delta and gets carolina on church kind of more on the same side to kind of get them on united front against the director but then that also comes with its own set of consequences where you feel really bad for the reds and blue since carolina like i said clearly doesn't really care about them and you also feel the relationship between church tucker caboose kind of be strained as church tries to balance his duties between them and helping carolina which leads us to that great scene of church yelling at everyone that sad moment with caboose and then carolina clearly respecting them later after the big fight in the second to last episode just a very solid very simply effective arc for carolina for church i just love seeing the way it all comes together and the project freelancer stuff as well this season really gets crazy with just once again so many revelations that pretty well explain stuff in the present let me also just touch on the animation one last time because there is a significant upgrade i would say from season 9 into season 10 especially like i was mentioning with the faces they do look a lot better here there is i would say a lot more time spent with a lot of the human faces in project freelancer and the animation for me is i would say about as perfect as mommy's animation ever looked and once again every single action scene is just great not much else to say at this point the story for freelancer also gets super intriguing in this season as we actually get to spend a lot more time with the freelancers and all of it is just really great the ais are interesting everything with tech ct carolina the director it's just once again a very interesting story they tell that greatly benefits the present day and especially i really love how kind of all just starts coming together and connecting super closely with the two storylines like neck and neck because they kind of get to ct's death and then washington sees her helmet in the present and just everything with that especially towards the end of the season is very very engaging and you really feel the stakes at the end of freelancer kind of as they try to save the alpha and placing the characters all where they need to be in order for the beginning of season one to make sense and we do need to talk about the final two episodes of season ten the carolina versus tex robots fight is obviously incredible and then the moment the reds and blues come to help with the classic theme playing i'd like to point out the fact that we're standing in a room full of crazy freelancer robots that are ready to completely and utterly [ __ ] our [ __ ] up so cheesy forgiveness speech later yeah that sounds good just oh it's amazing i absolutely love it one of my favorite moments from like any media just kind of for me that same satisfaction i got watching that sweeping shot and avengers when i was watching it in 2012 that same kind of satisfaction is just absolute perfection the episode also has a great conclusion with church in texas relationship as he finally puts her to rest and then we get into the ending of this 10 year long story with the finale church in carolina confront the director as all the info from the past seasons comes together they reveal that the director is actually carolina's father which makes text her mother makes the entire stories in season six just so much more impactful since caroline was really competing with her mother for her father's like attention and it's just makes it so much more meaningful on another level that i really really like literally in this scene every single line of dialogue the conclusion of all the ai fragments speaking to the director through the alpha the video of allison the return of captain flowers as florida and the death of the director once again i don't really have any other way to describe it than just perfect and both story lines concluding with that show me moment that carolina and the directors say that also kind of simultaneously applies to blood gulch and the new setting of halo 4 just i literally think this story could not have come together once again in a better way and that final shot of the season will always make me choke up a little with church just leaving with carolina the finale is heartbreaking and just so well done and once again those final two episodes of season 10 are some of the best in the entire series so in case you can't tell i really like season 10. for me i would say it's just the perfect conclusion of the story and to many people including myself probably the best season of the show it continues with season 9 started with having a pretty perfect blend of comedy action and heart and once again executes all of its story beats to pretty much perfection so i do have some issues here and there with season 9 season 10 brings it all together more perfectly than i could have ever imagined the addition of the fully cg animated flashbacks just took the show to a completely another level that i don't think any of us were really expecting and it ended this arc on a fantastic story after a perfect 10 season run that i think is really the peak once again of this series i just think it ended so so well so after season 10 concluded bernie was no longer directing the series and miles luna became the show's director and to my surprise red versus blue actually continued to be great so seasons 11-13 also known as the chorus trilogy is maybe my favorite of the red versus blue arcs it still continues what the other seasons did but changes the tone a little and also presents a pretty different story compared to the project freelancer stuff it still kind of leans on a few characters and story stuff from project freelancer but it introduces its own cast to both allies and villains that are all very memorable these seasons kind of present the idea of what if the reds and blues were actually thrown in the middle of a real war that has nothing to do with them and what decisions will they make and why i really do just love this arc so let's go ahead and get into it so season 11 very much takes it back to basics as it just follows the reds and blues in a canyon as they talk and that's about it which i actually do really appreciate i think is kind of necessary after the insane events that just took place the past couple seasons i'm fine with a little bit of a breather it feels good and it also makes you remember that although the reds and blues did help take down the director most of them are still you know incompetent and idiots and not really reliable soldiers season 11 does feel very much like the blood gulch days but it also very smartly begins planting the seeds of this new trilogy by dropping little hints here and there and also by introducing felix and locus who are two great additions that i'll get into a little bit later i also appreciate how season 11 begins setting up the tone of this new trilogy and the setting of course especially through the music i love the music for the chorus trilogy and that will continue to be a huge plus throughout the next two seasons season seven also spends a lot of time integrating wash in the blue team and kind of developing his relationship specifically with tucker and caboose and obviously the show is just as funny as it's ever been and i'd really appreciate how especially since they switched to a new game and halo 4 for this they kind of explore and make jokes about all the new items and weapons like the pulse grenades the mantis and just stuff like that and season 11 also makes a pretty cool decision at the end by kind of splitting up the cast and putting each half of the reds and blues on different sides of the civil war specifically i really like how they took the two leaders of each team wash and sarge and kind of separated them from the other soldiers and then put those soldiers in leadership positions which would go on to greatly benefit their characters in season 12. so yeah i really don't have too much to say i do like this season it's not my personal favorite or anything but without it the rest of the trilogy definitely wouldn't have the same impact that it does and i will say that it does set the stage very well for the next two seasons and season 12 is great as well it begins by focusing on tucker simmons griff and caboose attempting to train soldiers of the resistance and actually dealing with the losses of war and the hard decisions that have to be made the twist with felix being a villain and that entire scene in episode 10 is just very well executed you were such a fascinating soldier tucker grenade oh right that was close nice throw tucker felix and the way they portray the two sides of this ward how neither side is really bad but just being manipulated by malcolm hargrove again all just really great stuff i also loved how much of a focus there was on tucker literally this entire trilogy because you kind of get some stuff with him in season 11 and since there's not that many characters in season 11 you do get a decent amount of time to spend with him but especially in season 12 it starts focusing on him a lot more and this really cemented him as being one of the best characters of the entire show he's got a great dynamic with felix after he betrays them and just has so much screen time as you actually watch him grow to become responsible and take on the role of a leader in the resistance he's definitely still a fun character but he very clearly has changed by the end of this trilogy especially after the recollection as well locus as well becomes much more interesting this season as the story kind of dives in his motives a little bit more as he begins to question why he follows the orders he does and what the true purpose of a soldier is it's all just once again like the earlier seasons consistently super entertaining stuff and i loved all of it and the season also brought back a little bit of fight animation but as you can tell unfortunately after monty passed away the fights were just never really the same although it does get better the further we get into this trilogy when it first shows up in episode 10 it's not bad it's just different the fights are a little bit slower they're not as dynamic or insane as the older fights the punches kind of seem to lack the weight they need at first like i said it does get better later in the season and by season 13 they've got a pretty good handle on it it does just feel a little jarring going straight from monty's fights in seasons eight nine and ten to these fights it can be a bit weird at first but again it's not bad they're just a different style of animation and finally season 12 also marks the return of church in carolina which was a very cool reveal on episode 10 and they are an extremely welcome addition especially since they were absent last season and there is a nice little story in the middle of this season about how tucker and church have to forgive each other and come to terms after church just abandoned them at the end of season 10 and again very cool stuff very cool character work with church and tucker especially since those two characters friendship is a very big part of this series that has been in it literally since season 1. last but not least season 12 also explores kind of two more new characters and vanessa kimball and donald doyle who i both really enjoy and we will talk a little bit more about in season 13 when they're able to shine a little bit more and the season ends with a great speech by church getting you really hyped for the ending of this trilogy and now that they're not fighting each other they're more than happy to dedicate all of their time to fighting you so dear chairman to you and your idiotic mercenaries we would like to say bring it on [ __ ] we are not going anywhere from your friends the incredibly badass and sexually attractive red and blue soldiers of project freelancer ps sucker balls and that's really all i have to say about season 12. with all that being said it's still very good and has some amazing standout moments while continuing to set the stage for an incredible finale in season 13. brings us to season 13 which is unsurprisingly great and focuses a bit more on the goals of the organization felix and locus work for while exploring the story of these two sides of war they used to hate each other now kind of being forced to work together and while i really don't have too much to say on the season as a whole it's just once again really really enjoyable the stakes are huge and it just brings you to the logical conclusion of this story and it's executed extremely well i also appreciated all the kind of callbacks to project freelancer with the meta's armor the griff shot and shark face and the counselor both returning as villains let's go ahead and once again talk about the animation and action like i said before i think most of it looks a lot better here and there are some very cool fights like carolina versus shark face and the freelancers versus the mercenaries they just made a lot of the fights bigger here which i think kind of reminded you a bit more of mani style and felt a little bit more like red versus blue they still never really match the quality of the money fights and they're not once again bad at all just different i do still appreciate how a lot of them turned out here and i will say the animation in general looks absolutely beautiful in so many scenes this season and although the action isn't as kinetic as it used to be the animation visually looks as good as it ever has and so many of these scenes are just a treat to look at season 13 also has some of the hardest hitting emotional moments of the series for me armonia part 2 not only looks incredible and has great music but also doyle's death is such a great moment and just the execution of that entire scene and the ending of that episode is something i will never forget watching season 13 also continues the character exploration started earlier in this trilogy with tucker continuing to play a massive role in the story especially with his sword being a key needed to activate the temples that felix and locusts are after and church also plays a huge role this season and kind of watching his struggle as an ai play out and dealing with carolina is so interesting once again to explore because we have known this character for so long and for all interns and purposes church is the protagonist of the entire series which again just makes him dealing with this new struggle of being an ai and dealing with carolina so so interesting this season also provides a very solid conclusion to lucas and felix as felix gets exactly what he deserves by the end of the season and is defeated by just the reds and blues with no help from freelancers which i really appreciated and locus's redemption arc is something i was really curious to see how they would handle and i think it was pretty well done and again there's not really that much more i feel like i can say the season continues everything that was great about the last two and gives us as perfect of an ending as i could ask for and speaking of the ending let's discuss the only moment in this series that's ever made me tear up i remember watching the season 13 finale the day released not really knowing what to expect i remember people kind of talking about it we didn't really know what's going to happen but i hadn't seen the season 13 trailer before i watched the season so i wasn't really knowing what to expect and the episodes seem pretty standard and then they make it to hargrove's ship they disable the mantises pretty easily thanks to phyllis and then once they get trapped in hargrove's office you have a feeling that something pretty big is about to happen and let me just gush for one more time this scene looks absolutely beautiful the reflection of everyone's armors the lights on the mark vi armor it all just looks so so good and really the lead up to everything in this scene is just so well done you feel like this is truly the end of the reds and blue story and that this is their last stand and just i love that there are once again no freelancers really involved with this this is all the same reds and blues that were just standing around doing nothing but talking of blood gulch all those years ago that you spent all those hours getting to know and it truly is just one of my favorite moments in any media and the return of the meta sue with tucker wearing it the music i believe the song's contact final like transmission i believe so so beautiful and just when you think the action's about to begin the screen freezes and we get church of speech and subsequent death and this is a moment that will always hit really hard for me bernie did an excellent job with his delivery here and just listening to this speech while looking at these characters who once again we've known for so long and been put in just the craziest situations and it's just so so beautifully done and yeah technically alpha church had died back in season six but it had never really truly been presented as a meaningful emotional death like this before and something inside is telling you that this is truly where his story is gonna end and like i said i am just so thankful once again to have all those scenes back in blood gulge where we got to know these guys and watch them screw around and now jumping 13 seasons later and realizing how much you care for them especially church who is now sacrificing himself to save all his friends it's just absolute perfection and that's where the season ends on a giant cliffhanger but an oddly satisfying one but the hero never gets to see that ending they'll never know if their sacrifice actually made a difference they'll never know if the day was really saved in the end they just have to have faith ain't that a [ __ ] and yeah that's season 13 and the chorus trilogy and as you can probably tell this is the arc that hits home really for me maybe it's just a nostalgia of watching episodes live or the nostalgia of just halo 4 in general but there is something that i love so much about this and really there's nothing that i appreciate more than a perfectly paced and executed trilogy and i think this arc just absolutely nailed it for me it was the perfect continuation of this series and honestly a perfect way to end the series and stories of these characters and i would have been fine if this was the final season of red vs blue [Music] but that was not the end of red versus blue and we got season 14. so season 14 is very much its own thing and not really even a continuation of the main red versus blue story it's more of an anthology season that tells other stories in the rv universe and just does a bunch of crazy stuff and a lot of it is actually pretty cool some episodes utilize different animation there's a mega bloks episode there's a rap battle episode there's a musical episode there's an episode where the reds and blues meet the staff of rooster teeth and all their voice actors just a bunch of wild stuff like that i think all of it is for the most part pretty neat it is kind of weird they took some of their other shows like death battle and made them episodes here but whatever and it is just kind of cool learning some information about other freelancers or backstories on characters we hadn't previously known like the episode with flowers meaning jimmy and implanting him with the alpha was a really cool highlight and definitely a big callback to season one and just everything with project freelancer and a very exciting episode and definitely the felix and locust backstory episodes were super memorable and it was just awesome seeing those characters again and i really really did like the cel-shaded art style of those three episodes i also remember thinking the musical and rap battle episodes were just pretty funny again nothing too crazy just fun enjoyable zany red versus blue fun and overall i really just have next to nothing to say about the season no huge complaints no huge praises it's just very whatever they do some cool things there's some cool art style shifts that i really like but no real episodes that i just absolutely love and unless you really care about the full extent of this universe and just lots of other different elements of it you probably can just skip this season and move on to season 15 where the story actually continues so when season 15 first released it was planned to be a standalone season and not part of an arc however after season 16 and 17 they retractively changed it and made a part of this new trilogy they were doing which is where the first problems kind of start to arise with this season in case you can't tell by now the arcs of red versus blue are i'd say pretty important to how they tell all their stories and just red versus blues ultimate success it gives you proper time to plant the seeds of the full story you're telling without feeling rushed and once again allows actual characters time to develop once again if you just take season 11 kind of on its own it's really nothing too special sure it's enjoyable but it's just so much better and just a necessity when looking at the chorus trilogy as a whole without the trilogy wouldn't have close to the amount of impact that it does so i won't really judge season 15 as part of a trilogy since that's not what it was originally intended to be but let's just go and get into it so season 15 initially starts from the perspective of a reporter named dylan andrews who is doing a story on the reds and blues who allegedly have been going around on a murder spree since the events of chorus dylan thinks something is fishy so she takes her cameraman jacks with her and for the first four episodes it's just establishing her character and the reds and blues are nowhere to be found i think dylan is a fine enough character who isn't super interesting but a serviceable and i also think jax is okay he kind of makes all these weird meta jokes about screenwriting and directing and moviemaking they kind of rub me the wrong way and a lot of time are just more annoying than they are funny he doesn't ruin the season or anything he's just one of the more notable things that i didn't love about it when we do finally catch up with the reds and blues it's about what you'd expect from them they do acknowledge church's death and we actually don't really get to see the fight from the end of season 13 which i think is actually fine it was a great cliffhanger and we do know that they fought their way out and that's really all we need to know i actually really like how they handled that dylan shows the reds and blues a message that seems to indicate that church is alive and they eventually discover the real perpetrators of the crimes aptly named the blues and reds before we get into that i do quickly want to touch what i think is probably the biggest strength of the seasons taking place in halo 5 which is wash and carolina whenever they're on screen together it's very sweet or very heartbreaking or just whatever emotion the writers are wanting you to feel they've got a great scene this season while reminiscing about project freelancer that also touches on some of the freelancers we met in seasons 9 and 10 and kind of sets the stage for what could be a relationship for them in the future anyways back to the main story we meet this group of soldiers once again called the blues and reds that were the real perpetrators of the crimes and shocker they are identical to the reds and blues everything from their armor to their team roster to the members personalities are all pretty much identical with some slight tweaks instead of church we have temple who also happens to be their leader instead of caboose we have loco instead of griff we have biff you get the idea and from the second they first appear although they seem friendly you assume that they are probably going to be the bad guys because literally where else would the story go we do eventually get their backstory and i actually think it's a pretty good one basically back in project freelancer carolina and tex were sent to the blues and reds canyon in order to play a game of capture the flag to see who would win carolina obviously is still a pretty terrible person at this point in her life who doesn't care about anything as long as she beats tex and biff ends up getting killed in their fight i'm gonna be a father and maybe a husband if things go that way jesus stop it get off my flag [Music] medic somebody help me which sends these soldiers on a course of revenge for being used as ponds by project freelancer and i think this concept for a story is actually pretty great the idea of another group of sim troopers deciding to take revenge is pretty interesting because the reds and blues really could have done that all along but they just chose not to and there are some really great ideas and just kind of cool and scary stuff they do here especially kind of showing all the freelancers that the blues and reds have killed and this kind of twisted museum thing they've got going on very very cool stuff however what i don't think is cool is establishing in this flashback that this group of sim troopers were the originals and since they were on a stalemate the director saw this and took note in case he would need to create an identical situation in the future which would go on to become the reds and blues and blood gorge i get they're trying to do this like crazy twist thing that comes out of left field and catches everyone by surprise that this is where the reds and blues actually came from but it just kind of feels like a cheap retcon and takes away from the originality and personalities a little bit of all the characters that we come to know over the past decade anyways nothing too exciting really happens in that much more of the story besides a few highlights here and there the reds blues wash in carolina are taken captive by the blues and reds and we get the return of locusts who at the hill from lopez finds griff and they go to save everyone seeing locust again was a great surprise and another nice way to connect this season to season 13. and let's go and talk about griff real quick because he actually does get some serious attention this season he makes the decision earlier in the season to not help everyone follow church's message and it's actually a pretty sad scene that i really appreciated and i was curious to see where his character would go but at this point this season i was a little underwhelmed with where his character was at they kind of touched on him realizing he was wrong for ditching everyone and being selfish but not really enough for it to feel like an earned character just yet he really just got bored not being with everyone else and went insane and figured he tag along with lucas to help and as we near the end of the season we learned that temple plans on building a time machine that will also happen to destroy the planet and because of this we get a lot of action as the reds and blues fight to stop him and once again all pretty enjoyable generally funny stuff with the characters you still love and we do get a very big development for wash when he is shot while they're all escaping temple's base and i remember being shocked when this first happened it's a huge moment that changes his character forever especially in the next two seasons and there are some nice moments between griffin simmons at this point and just kind of cool stuff with the reds and blues taking on their like evil doppelganger or whatever again nothing too emotionally gripping here but just kind of fun generally enjoyable red versus blue stuff and i also really enjoyed how tucker carried over his development from the chorus trilogy and the recollection as he feels much more proactive and like a leader here than he used to be and although gross development wasn't too radical this season it is still nice to see him have some and pretty much save everyone at the end and call them his friends and we do get a pretty nice moment where the time machine activates a portal to the past and caboose is able to actually say goodbye to church which is something he was really struggling to accept this season was church's death and just it was a pretty logical and just sweet place to take his character and he could put church to rest it's a nice moment again not my favorite from the series or anything but a scene that i appreciate nonetheless and finally to destroy the time machine and save the planet we get vic sacrificing himself well i literally don't think i mentioned this entire video but vic all the way back from blood gulch lily had not been in the show since season five he returns 10 seasons later and literally comes out of nowhere to sacrifice himself which whatever it's more of a charming moment and just kind of enjoyable to watch especially since vic's funny he's got a great voice and he wants to die and he's always been a pretty hilarious character so that was a kind of neat moment and then tucker chooses not to kill temple and once again really hits home the difference between these two groups of soldiers pretty well and shows off what the main point of the season was and again not bad at all and at the very end we do get a nice little epilogue wrapping up dylan's story and seeing the return of sister which was a very welcome addition since i really missed her once again a character they brought back that really had not been in the show since around season five and that's pretty much all of season 15 which overall i can call pretty decent it's definitely not the same as the other seasons before but for being the first story told within one season i think it turned out pretty well it hit on some really interesting ideas had some great concepts further developed caboose tucker wash locus and griff and still maintained much of what i love about the series even if it didn't feel as impactful being contained to just one season not bad though and i was still open to whatever was next for the series hmm season 16 which for me was probably the worst season until season 18 recently finished up and i'm gonna try and do my best to explain why i feel this way so the main story for the season is kind of whack and i'm just gonna i guess lay out what i can about it so this season introduces gods into the mix pretty much we'll learn more later that they're not actual gods but for now they are gods and we learn that donut at the end of season 15 was affected by temple's time machine and has been told by the father of the gods named krovos that he has to go fix the past so he goes to the reds and blues tells them about this and they are all scattered throughout time with these time guns and that's the setup to the season as the story goes along we kind of learn more that these cosmic powers as the gods are called are actually ais which kind of makes their god-like abilities really questionable which we'll talk about in a little bit and we also learn that krovos is kind of evil donut does initially side with krovos because he's tired of how he's treated by the reds and blues but then once he realizes krovos plans to kill all of them donut attempts to kill him with this magic hammer thing they introduce but then donut ends up standing by his friends in order to protect them but then doc who also is controlled by o'malley at this point fights him for the hammer in a very cool fight donut wins and traps krovos in this time prison thing and as all of that is going on we do get the main story with the reds and blues as it pretty much covers them just kind of jumping through time doing a bunch of random wild stuff but the story does eventually focus up into them attempting to go back in time and save wash from getting shot at the end of last season and they do end up succeeding at the end which creates a paradox and creates an alternate timeline at the end of the season so yeah that sounds absolutely whack that's because it is and if that sounds not really red versus blue that's because for me it isn't really it's an interesting direction to go but not really what i was expecting for the show just in general the whole aspect of time travel doesn't bother me too much it feels weird that they already did the time travel thing back in season three but then they pretty much retconned it and said that they never actually time traveled because why like time travel doesn't need to be a thing in this universe but no now time travel is fully possible and there's gods and just all that stuff and yeah it doesn't really fully make sense but time travel rarely makes complete sense in any media so that's not really my huge issue before i get into the negatives i did want to talk about what i like this season mainly sister being a main cast member again is great and a very welcome addition i like the idea of donut kind of being a central character for once that actually gets some attention since most of the time he's just used as a butt of jokes and especially pitting him against doc for that big fight in the finale was a cool choice and like i already mentioned that fight looks absolutely incredible going through the different time periods with the two of them is just a very entertaining battle overall i really enjoyed that fight and definitely for me is the highlight of season 16. and my final compliment goes to the eighth episode recovery which just just watch it if you haven't seen it it's more carolina and wash as carolina helps wash deal with his injury it's just so heartbreaking and once again these two and the relationship is just once again the best thing i would say about this trilogy and they also have a great seed in episode 13 as well but it does kind of get undermined by some more of the negatives of the season that we'll get into in a second and speaking of wash i do think a story where the reds and blues try to stop him from getting shot in the past and doing kind of like a flashpoint sort of thing could be kind of cool however they don't really pay it off in an interesting way the next season so it doesn't really end up working that much in this season for me and yeah that's about it for what i like this season really not too much and for the bad well let's just get into it the gods existing for one just sucks i really don't enjoy that for the world of red versus blue it's not like it's always been grounded at least some sort of sense of reality and originally the idea was even that it took place in the halo universe so introducing this entire group of cosmic beings in the mix just doesn't feel right and it doesn't help that none of them are particularly memorable or fun or interesting characters besides huggins who isn't even technically one of the cosmic beings it's just she kind of helps out with like the reds and blues and it's kind of going against them and then we also see gankins who will get more about in the next season and the fact that all the cosmic powers are revealed to even be ais doesn't make it any better since they do these things that literally only gods or god-like beings could do and there's just everything with this entire plot line i'm just not super into it i don't think it really works for this show and it doesn't really help that the writing just takes a massive nose dive this season all the jokes are not funny and it just feels so inferior to how funny the other seasons are and the way red versus blue works is that these jokes are always character based and the problem with the jokes this season is that they're given the characters who don't fit those jokes they continue with more of these meta filmmaking cliche jokes especially since jax is in the season as well and literally just give them to every other character they give them to tucker to griff to sister and every character they can and it doesn't feel like something they would ever say you know that cliche in horror movies where the main character thinks they've killed the monster and lets their card down for a second but actually it's slowly getting up behind them without them not to mention a lot of the comedy this season i just didn't think was funny whatsoever and it was just a lot of it was painful and just kind of cringey to watch like the cyclops it is true i cannot harm you directly however my friend here he ah sorry what was your name again frog here can do whatever he pleases just uh just i did not enjoy that at all it just was the first season of the show where i was like it was a struggle to watch and i was really upset by it i also thought a lot of the characters mainly tucker just were not handled properly for some reason all the development he's had since season seven just disappears this season and he reverts to the immature and underdeveloped version of himself from like before even blood gulch which i understand is kind of part of an arc he has this season and the next but it just feels redundant and not super well executed at all and by far the most frustrating part of the season was how they would never let an emotional moment stick there were a good number of moments this season like the scene between carolina and walsh in episode 13 that were genuinely great and then they would just throw a joke in there when it wasn't necessary and it ruins any emotion the scene might have carried and did you all know no did you no was i the only one who didn't know i have [ __ ] brain damage dude we had no idea i kept it from everyone wash including me donut what are you doing gullible stupid an empty suit of armor thanks for making this easier guys you all need therapy and i don't know i don't absolutely hate the season or anything and you're still watching these mostly enjoyable personalities and like i said there are some good parts that i enjoy but this is definitely the worst season besides red versus blue zero for me and there's just so much that it does wrong and it's such a step down from the other seasons and like i said i'm pretty confident that it is my least favorite season starring the main cast just because of its plot line that i found so messy and just the way that it mishandled all its writing its comedy and the development of all the characters alright season 17 the last season of red versus blue presumably forever at this point this season continues right after the last one and is about one of the cosmic powers genkins who is super evil and basically traveling throughout time creating paradoxes and changing things throughout the history of the series so the reds and blues have to travel throughout time again fix the paradoxes and defeat gankins so this season i actually think is pretty decent definitely a step up from season 16 but still not as good as all the other ones as you might guess going through time and revisiting events from previous seasons of red versus blue kind of in this new light where the characters already know what will happen is pretty fun it's done in a lot of different media it was done in end game it was done in so much like science fiction stuff it's a very popular like tactic but obviously it works because you get to look back on all these moments and they're just very fun to watch and there's a lot of great scenes where obviously the characters are tempted to like save their friends who have died and change things for the better but they have to choose not to because time travel typical time travel story stuff but once again with these characters it's pretty enjoyable the writing definitely feels a little bit better here and although i still don't think the comedy feels exactly how it should it is still leagues better than season 16 and they actually let the emotional moments hit this time which i really appreciated especially once we get to those last two episodes they are some of the best red versus blue since the chorus trilogy basically the story gets to this point where everyone was put in this mental labyrinth kind of thing where everyone has to face their own fears and it's just really great stuff sister story in there with her and griff's parents is great and my only complaint of the conclusion to this season with this whole labyrinth thing is i just wish there was a little bit more some of the stories feel a little rushed and kind of maybe if they took their time a little bit more they could have explored all the characters with a little bit more detail and although the labyrinth stories are interesting the carolina one where she physically fights her past self is very cool and i love that she actually loses the fight because obviously carolina is not as good a fighter as she used to be back in the freelancer days but she wins because she's met the reds and blues who she actually cares for and has people worth fighting for now that have let her significantly grow as a person admirable but you are weaker than me in this time in this place you can't win i don't need to i found something stronger than strength more satisfying than solitude and obsession i found people worth being strong for and right now any one of them could pop you with a finger twitch it's just very very cool and a very solid look at how far carolina's character has come since we first saw her in the beginning of season nine and once again this is probably the most memorable part of this season for me once again watching carolina's dynamic is great this season and especially since wash is just such a likeable character and we've known him for so long at this point seeing him deal with the fact that he's essentially gonna have to let himself get brain damage again it's just very compelling stuff it's a sad scene and especially that ending everyone going back to let wash's injury happen with that rendition of the blood gauge theme playing a very solid moment and yeah that's really all i have to say about season 17. it's just pretty much what you'd expect and the plot itself i still think is very whatever and i don't love it but this season i feel like did kind of do damage control and managed to end this cosmic powers plot line in a decently satisfying way that i wasn't really expecting after season 16. so yeah i think most of the season is actually pretty good with a few great highlights here and there it's hard not to enjoy seeing old characters and locations again and i definitely say this was a drastic improvement over season 16. all right we finally made it the newest season of red versus blue and as i already said way in the beginning of this video i really really do not like it so let's discuss this season follows an entirely new group of soldiers called shatter squad fighting a group of bad guys called viper squad while occasionally featuring a few returning characters like wash carolina and tucker now before we get into it let me first acknowledge the one good thing yes there's literally one good thing about this entire season where everything else is abysmal and that is the animation and action scenes this season is fully animated and the vast majority of it looks very very good it just got a very clean look to it and the fights are i'd say 99 of the time a blast to watch solely from an action standpoint now let's get into everything else episode one begins with viper squad who's composed of zero phase and diesel attacking this organization called the aod and i will say concerning phase her teleporting knife is actually a very very cool weapon and probably the best thing about the action scenes this season during this attack we see wash who is now part of the aod and is clearly up and fighting perfectly fine like the events of the past three seasons just never even happened they will later explain that like a cerebral enhancer or something fixed his injury but i really do not like this development at all they literally took everything interesting about wash's brain damage and all the development he went through with that in the past couple seasons and just threw it out the window it's not like he ever does anything this season really besides see a few lines here there and get kidnapped and tortured and a bunch of stuff will get into so i just really don't understand the point of making this decision carolina has also joined the aod since season 17 ended and the first time you hear her and wash speak you know something's kind of weird agent carolina what took you so long a fan you want an autograph or something thanks carolina let's do this the voice filter they've always used in red versus blue to kind of simulate the sound of their voices coming out of their helmet speakers is not present here or they're using some sort of different filter and it's just super jarring listening to those previous characters speak and sound kind of completely different than they ever have it just creates a huge disconnect and something that immediately kind of turned me off about the season viper squad defeats carolina and takes wash captive to torture him after stealing some artifact that we don't really know what it is yet and there's already at this point in the season some incredibly cliche and vague writing concerning temples that hold ultimate power and just from this first episode it just starts to rub me the wrong way elsewhere we're introduced to our protagonist called shadow squad who's composed of one axel west east and raymond and nothing really stands out with these characters here yet other than the fact that the voice actor for west is kind of insane all you had to do was pick up the rookie instead commander west i'll take responsibility lock it up agent one drop and give me 50. like i can't be the only one when i first watched this thought that this had to be like a joke or he was just doing a terrible job and i'd like to say he gets better throughout the season but i really don't think he does you just kind of get used to it but i still don't think it's very good ever then we get a very jarring montage of carolina lazily exposing the strengths and weaknesses of each character where we learn some details of the squad like west being east's father one not being a very good team player and raymond being the rookie of the team then we get another action scene of axel east and one training and a fight between one and east against carolina and once again the fights are great but already feel a little unnecessary after the entire first episode was just an action scene and i will say that's kind of a big issue with this entire season there's so much action and just not enough time to spend fleshing out the characters we do get a little bit of that here with some information about east where we learned that she was dying when she was younger and west gave her up to some people who experimented on her but that also saved her life but now because of the experiment she has these like super speed powers that she uses which also kind of come into the action scenes which again are usually pretty well done and something else that bothered me a lot throughout the season was a lot of just the enemies and weapons in these action scenes in case you can't tell the obvious issue is that they're not from halo they don't look like they belong and red versus blue just feel so much more grounded when they're limited to not only the games but at least the game assets themselves it was always so cool seeing halo maps and seeing halo weapons and enemies inside the red versus blue and now when literally all of that is gone seeing all these non-halo guns and enemies it just doesn't feel right and it doesn't feel like red versus blue but by the end of episode two it's still not terrible really just a bunch of action scenes that look good and a few things that bothered me here and there but still generally okay then episode three is where the writing really starts to bother me i have no mere mortal guardian underestimate me and you'll learn i'm something more it's all just the most cliche and generic tropes and vague writing that i have ever heard like at one point i literally thought it was like a joke or a parody of i don't even know what it's trying to be it just frustrates me beyond belief when it's used over and over and over again literally in all eight episodes this season and again the action is good but by this point you're already starting to get bored of it just because there's nothing else to the season we're just following viper squad fight these things what are these these are some monster things that are guarding these temples i guess because they have to get the swords that are keys to the temples that offer ultimate power okay whatever still not super interested but let's see where it goes and as we move back to shadow squad east and juan are not getting along since east is an angsty teenage girl who's mad about her past and one doesn't like working on a team but those two kind of traits being both those characters definitive character traits really throughout the entire season again that's not terrible decent enough setup i guess whatever and i do want to touch on the comedy real quick because that's kind of a huge part of red versus blue that i've discussed with a lot of the other seasons and there's really not too much of it here it's mainly through the new character raymond who once again i said was the rookie and when it's not through him it's just really really stupid and even when it is through raymond it's just very whatever never really made me laugh it's nothing too funny and it's just coming out of a character that doesn't have a super interesting personality i think the voice actor does a fine job but again just nothing super engaging and then episode 3 also starts showing off this really gross looking animation where what is this they're trying to animate full-on animation as if it was in the halo game so they're trying to animate it like it's in halo and like it's just a machinima it just looks so unnatural and it really distracted me the first time i watched the season anyway shadow squad learns that viper is planning to steal another artifact in a city and they tell carolina she can't come along because she was recently injured in the attack in episode 1 and then we get guess what another action scene where we learn that axle and zero used to be part of the same organization but then zero left for some reason and it's just more of the most cliched generic dialogue i have ever heard and again at this point i still don't hate it but it's just so uninteresting and we've seen it all before and this whole car crash around the city once again is pretty neat and faze continues to be the highlight of the action scenes with her teleporting knife and then episode 4 is where they really start going for the emotional beats in the show and it's just terrible like laughably bad over dramatic moments that don't even come close to landing we're in over our heads west is doing okay but for now i think it's best we stop pursuing viper what you're pulling us off the mission you can't do that just until west recovers he'll know what to do that that zero guy you know who he is don't you i i do i did you ditched us to go after him i had orders tell us the truth what's going on axe i trusted you i trusted you and it doesn't help that once again most of the voice actors for characters like west and one just i don't think do a good job whatsoever especially west it is ridiculously distracting and especially his character i found one of the more engaging out of shatter squad but the voice just made it so distracting to connect with him and it was a huge negative throughout the season also throughout this action scene in the city it is very clear that shatter squad is incredibly outmatched and has lots of trouble working as a team now keep in mind this is the same struggle that they established in the second episode of the season and now the season is already halfway over and literally nothing has changed so viper needs one more key to unlock the temple and carolina tell shadow squad they need to save lavernius tucker obviously because his sword is a key and when i first heard that line come up i was admittedly pretty excited since like i said before tucker is one of my favorite characters and i was pretty curious to see what they do with them and that brings us to episode 5 which made me so so angry first off the voice filter thing bugged me so much again here since tucker just doesn't sound like himself and his movements are so over animated when he first shows up like what is going on it's so distracting i don't understand what they're trying to do here it doesn't fit what he's saying it just feels so so distracting so viper attacks the base where tucker is currently at and shatter squad is there to protect him in another action scene not much to say at this point and this episode in case you can't tell was one of the most painful things to watch as a fan of the series i let's just okay so tucker barely says a word this entire scene and it feels so unnatural the animation doesn't match his lack of dialogue and it literally seems like someone snuck into rooster teeth and cut out his lines in post that they had recorded that's him that's zero you three get tucker out of here now all other objectives are secondary axel and i will take care of zero hey go get him shatter squad run it that was weird it's embarrassing and one of the few lines tucker says is of course his signature catchphrase and it seems like the writers of the season had absolutely no idea how to incorporate it so it's just thrown in there and terrible and once again in this entire fight tucker says nothing and does nothing he turns on his sword once but oh my god it was the most frustrating thing i'd watched in a while so then tucker and east make it to the ship and then you have no idea what you've done what east time's up [Music] huh carolina it's it's tucker he's dead oh my god what the [ __ ] just happened okay don't freak out cause tucker's not actually dead but i fully thought he was because of the incompetence when it came to the writing of the season you lazily bring back a fan favorite character for this season only to kill him off for some cheap shock value and to i guess elicit some sort of emotional response from the audience because an actual well-written character was just killed off for literally no reason i actually want to turn this season off but i stuck through it and the season literally never gets better not only that but this big reveal here where east is actually a hollow echo a phase and they're really the same person okay not only do i not think that makes any kind of sense but you're not emotionally invested in it because these characters are written with about as much depth of characters from pornhub it just is so embarrassing to watch and terribly terribly done anyways tucker wakes up in a room because once again he's not actually dead and he's there with carolina and wash and not even this scene where it's all classic red versus blue characters feels like red versus blue just the writing of them here combined with the voices and the animation it just stops you from feeling any kind of emotion other than just confusion and once again embarrassment in this scene and that's the last time we see tucker that scene is literally the last time we ever see him for the rest of the season so what was the point of doing any of that i have no idea just a complete waste of his character and shatter squad is bummed that of course east was a traitor and west is obviously not happy as well west also explains the history of this whole program that everyone was a part of called glast that specialized in making teams of elite soldiers blah blah blah not super interesting turns out zero was part of the program and then when they were shut down after the war zero is now mad i guess because the program was shut down and i guess his motivation is he just wants to prove that he's stronger than everyone okay extremely thin motivation at this point i'll take it whatever i don't i don't expect anything now we also see phase turn on tucker sword that they established what back in season 4 can only be turned on by him but now she's just turning it on whenever she wants whatever then for some reason zero calls shatter squad and tells them to come try and stop him and he also tells them where the final temple is for some reason because why have the characters figure it out in some way when the bad guy can just tell him honestly i just want to kill myself by this point and i had already lost all motivation to watch but let's go ahead and get into the two episode finale one gives a motivational speech with literally no motivation because quite literally nothing has changed with the characters relationships or shatter squad's abilities that would in some way indicate that they could win this fight that they literally just got destroyed in a few episodes ago but regardless they go suit up and fight zero and i can only mention this so many times but it literally seems like a parody or like a bad comedy sketch of action movies sometimes he's right we've already lost too much we're not going to lose you two look at you all don't you get it this is what zero does he manipulates he scares he taunts also you forget that he's just one man just groan-worthy dialogue that by this point in the season is unbearably terrible and as once again we move into the finale it's of course a big action scene with non-halo weapons and non-halo enemies terrible writing mediocre comedy and once again some decent looking action but even by this point i was starting to get bored of the action scenes since it's literally all this season has offered so far and especially the fight between carolina and diesel was just boring literally no other way to put it in this finale we do get some cliche moments where characters kind of complete their arcs if you can call it that it doesn't feel earned because once again you don't care about the characters because they're so so thin and it's just stupid and one of the moments i actually didn't hate was when we get the scene when west refuses to fight his daughter and we get a moment i actually like i said don't mind where it looks like faze will kill west but then it turns out she doesn't and she just punches him a bunch to let out her anger and it's a decent moment and uh yeah i'm really desperately searching for compliments now and then we get into the temple where zero meets um this thing what is this i am known as the black lotus keeper of the armor oh okay my bad the black lotus don't worry we never get any explanation on what this thing is other than it guards an armor set that gives the user ultimate power okay whatever zero puts on the armor and it becomes insanely overpowered and so then we get in order for them to explain how shatter squad is actually able to fight zero when he's literally a god raymond disables their armor ability restraints which like i said i guess is their explanation for how they all don't immediately die but no that's sorry that's not how that works they were still getting destroyed even with their normal armor abilities when zero wasn't a god but now they'll be a little bit more powerful but also tire more easily and that doesn't change the fact that zero has only become more powerful and now has god-like abilities anyways carolina defeats diesel who i literally don't think i've mentioned since i first brought him up when they attacked the aod because he's not a character and he's barely spoke a word but he's dead now so whatever and pretty much this whole fight with zero just is not interesting carolina gets knocked out and there's literally no way once again that shadow squad should ever win this fight let alone not instantly get killed by him we do get the ending of this story with faze and west where faze decides not to kill west but still kicks him in the face and knocks him out and then faze decides to fight zero and help shatter squad her kind of old teammates and it doesn't make sense there's literally no difference in her mindset from when she allied herself with zero to now other than i guess coming to some sort of understanding with her father faze even says in this scene right here right now right you with us no i'm not with you or your team but i will help you take zero down that's good enough for me so i guess she just wants to take out zero but why did she ever ally herself with him in the first place especially diesel too what was deal's motivation why was he even a character i don't know the entire story with phase's redemption is wack and just once again i think very very poorly done and then we get this fun little teamwork moment with one in phase as if anything has changed between them when it comes to how they fight as a team by this point it's just cringy the black lotus does whatever this is to zero and they won that's it we did it they all reveal their real names and everyone lived happily ever after and everyone's just cool with face slash east or whatever you want to call her now even though she betrayed them and is like half a person and yeah that's it everyone lived happily ever after and it's over thank god so in case you can't tell red versus blue zero is truly truly terrible it misses the mark on literally every single element of red versus blue excluding the action which by the end once again even gets really tiresome the characters are embarrassingly hollow with most barely even having anything meaningful to do the entire season and i guess you could say once again the most interesting story is west east and faze but it's just written so so poorly that even though it's kind of some interesting ideas you just can never get invested in it because you're too busy laughing at how terribly it's being portrayed every cliche in the book is present this season with once again some of the worst writing i have ever heard in the show web series or movie and worst of all it's not funny i didn't laugh once this season unless i was literally laughing once again at the embarrassing attempts to put some emotion in the series really just everything about this makes me hate it and the horrendous usage of tucker just turned the season into something truly terrible that doesn't even deserve to be called red versus blue and it really shouldn't be and i feel like most people would generally be a little bit more understanding if it was actually a completely separate side story with none of the returning characters but just set in the red versus blue universe kind of like some stuff in season 14 but no they were scared to do that and they wanted the red versus blue brand recognition so people would tune in so they made a season 18 and threw in some red versus blue characters who either don't do anything meaningful or somehow made worse by their inclusion in this season so yeah red versus blue zero hot hot garbage and i will never be watching it again and hopefully you guys understand why and that is every season of red versus blue that currently exists and from the looks of rooster teeth these days will ever exist since most of blue team has either been fired or left the company and honestly i'm pretty okay with that all good things must come to an end and we got 13 excellent seasons of this show with some incredibly likable characters and hilarious writing it pioneered a new medium of storytelling and gave us some incredible action scenes that still have yet to be matched by other online shows it somehow evolved from a silly sketch comedy about a bunch of guys in the middle of nowhere to a gripping science fiction adventure that told a beautiful 10 year story and managed to give us one more great trilogy on top of that and even though i have my issues with seasons 15 through 17 they are still red versus blue and did some interesting things that i appreciate it's just unfortunate that it all had to come to an end with red versus blue zero which was such a poorly told story with embarrassingly weak characters and writing that it made it impossible not to hate it especially after watching the other seasons so yeah guys that is it for this massive video let me know what you guys think of red versus blue every single season every single character every single story in the comments down below and thank you all for watching majestic gaming

Channel: MajesticGaming

Views: 241,303

Rating: 4.8995833 out of 5

Keywords: red vs blue, Red vs Blue, red vs blue review, red vs blue zero, red vs blue retrospective, breakdown, rvb, rvb zero, blood gulch chronicles, the recollection, project freelancer, the chorus trilogy, season 14, the shisno paradox, red vs blue season 18 bad, red vs blue zero trailer, rvb clips, red vs blue season 18 review, tucker death, rise and fall of red vs blue, red vs blue clips, halo infinite, halo red vs blue, tucker, church, grif simmons sarge, red vs blue season 18

Id: 1NF4o7rpVdE

Length: 73min 11sec (4391 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021