Red vs. Blue Was the Freaking Best!

A Fan’s Review of Each Season of Red vs. Blue

April 1st, 2003- a group of six guys, Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldana, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman, embarked on a journey. They uploaded a video online, a creation made using footage from the hit game Halo: Combat Evolved. This video, a tale about a group of silly soldiers in a pointless war over a box canyon, marked the beginning of a web series that would stand the test of time-Red vs. Blue. From this humble start, a digital empire emerged, one that would leave an indelible mark on the early days of the Internet-Rooster Teeth. 

Red vs. Blue started as this silly, nonsensical parody of fps games, sci-fi concepts, and what it’s like in the army. As time passed, though, it became more than just this silly story where everyone preferred to talk trash and say dumb things rather than fight. It became this big epic involving corrupt organizations, people who went through horrific, traumatic events, and how even a group of idiots who started off hating each other could come together to do impossible things. An`

d for a long time, it was pretty good! But, eventually, all good things must end, and Rooster Teeth, the company that Red vs Blue helped create, shuts down on May 15th. But before it does, it’s only fitting that the show that started Rooster Teeth be the one to see it off with one final adventure. 

I’m RJ Writing Ink, and in honor of the final chapter of Red vs. Blue, I’ll review each arc of the popular web series. This will lead up to my review for the grand finale, Red vs. Blue: Restoration. Now, get ready for a trip down Blood Gulch Avenue.

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles

When I started watching Red vs. Blue, I didn’t start with the first season. I didn’t watch the first five seasons until  later , so that gave me a different perspective on what would come to be known as the “Blood Gulch Chronicles.”

My assessment: it was as silly, stupid, and wild as everyone said, and it all started with three lines:

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“You ever wonder why we’re here?”

As someone who didn’t find Red vs Blue, or even Rooster Teeth, until the 2010s, it felt weird going back and seeing how the show started. The first two seasons  were  pretty rough, and it’s clear that the show and actors were still trying to figure out what their characters were like. Once they found their footing by season three, though, the entire story went hard with the comedy. The banter between the Reds and Blues as they fought evil AI, aliens, rogue Freelancers, and what was likely a parody of the typcial lobby for an FPS game was funny. The people at Rooster Teeth were writing what they knew they’d like and what the audience would like, and it paid off. Bungie itself took notice of their efforts and let them collaborate with them on some fun promotional videos. And they even let the cast make cameos in the Halo Games proper. It’s good for a bunch of random guys from Texas.

Recollection Trilogy

For reasons I will get into later, this is where I chose to jump into Red vs Blue. It meant that I watched the series out of order, but considering the jump the series made around this time, I have no regrets. 

The Recollection trilogy was when Red vs. Blue underwent Cerberus syndrome. That’s another way of describing when a silly and lighthearted series starts getting darker, edgier, and more serious. With the introduction of The Meta, Agent Washington, and the revelations about Project Freelancer and how it affected the events at Blood Gulch, the whole series retroactively got a lot darker.

Despite how dark the series got, it always seemed to maintain its comedic roots and focus on the characters that drove it. It knew when to balance the serious things, like trauma and the pain of not being able to let go of the people you’ve lost, with its signature humor. Even better, the characters got some serious development that fleshed them out into something beyond the jokes first introduced. 

Season 8, in particular, was a watershed moment for the series and Rooster Teeth. Thanks to their bringing on a talented animator named Monty Oum, Red vs. Blue was no longer bound by the limits of in-game engines. They could make their fights as epic as possible, and the result was cinematic. It set a new standard for what web animation was capable of doing. 

Especially this moment. It was legendary. 

Project Freelancer Saga

This saga might as well be called the “Monty Oum” saga, because while the present-day moments continued to be filmed using Halo: Reach and Halo 3, the flashbacks were pure animation. And all of it has the hallmarks of what made Monty one of the big names in web animation at the time. The detail for the time, the energetic, fast-paced music, and the frenetic action sequences. All of these would become Monty Oum’s hallmarks, ones he would carry over when he left Red vs. Blue afterwards to make Rooster Teeth’s first original IP, RWBY.

Storywise, the saga’s divided into two parts. The things Monty helped animate served as a prequel to Red vs. Blue, telling the story of the Agents that the Reds and Blues would encounter throughout the series. Most importantly, it would show how the Director’s obsession with his late wife would not only doom the project, but lead to the suffering and death of almost everyone involved in it. It was one thing to hear how bad things got with Project Freelancer, but seeing it firsthand makes everything that happened in Blood Gulch a lot more messed up. 

If the prequel sequences were about how Project Freelancer tore itself apart, though, then the parts that took place in the present-day showed how people started to recover from them. Even after learning they were used as lab rats by the Freelancers, the Reds and Blues bore no ill will and were smart enough to know it would be better to walk away. Church, in particular, learned to finally let go of his obsession with Tex, something the Director could never do. And through all of it, Rooster Teeth was trying to send a message. That for all the high-tech equipment and elite training the Freelancers got, they still lost to the Reds and Blues, because they had the one thing they never did: faith in each other.

The Chorus Trilogy

As great as the Recollection Trilogy and Freelancer Saga are, I consider The Chorus trilogy to be Red vs. Blue’s magnum opus for several reasons.

Firstly, we have the story. Despite season eleven seemingly returning the Reds and Blues to their early days where they stood around arguing, it was dropping hints that something bigger was going seemingly returning the Reds and Blues to their early days where they stood around arguing, dropping hints that something bigger was going on. By the end of the season, the Reds and Blues had gone from fighting in a fake war to fighting in an actual war with real stakes. And as the two proceeding seasons demonstrated, not everyone they knew would make it out alive.

Secondly, we have all the new blood coming onto the show. By the time Season 11 came out, Red vs. Blue, and by extension, Rooster Teeth, had been going on for ten years. They’d grown from being a handful of writers, animators, and actors into an entire studio. And a lot of this new talent ended up coming on to play roles on Red vs. Blue. It should also be noted that many new and returning actors would pull double to work on RWBY. That’s impressive for a studio that was still growing.

The Chorus Trilogy could have been a great place for Rooster Teeth to end the series. It would’ve ended everything on a high note. But Rooster Teeth chose to continue it, for better or worse-Emphasis on the “worse” aspect.

Anthology Season 14

This is the season when I got introduced to Rooster Teeth, and that was due to their collaboration with DEATH BATTLE!, which still operated under Screwattack at the time. After the whirlwind of events that was the Chorus Trilogy, Rooster Teeth must have wanted to take a breather. The result was that this was an anthology season where the studio let writers and animators tell their own stories. The results varied in terms of tone, setting, and even style.

I liked this series for several reasons. Several stories fleshed out the backstories of the Reds and Blues and other characters, which I always enjoy. The rest of it was just the people behind the show having fun and enjoying themselves. Looking back on it now, this was when Rooster Teeth was at the height of its power and popularity. 

Then things started to go downhill.

The Shisno Trilogy

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this trilogy. At first, I was thrilled to get to join in as the Reds and Blues went on their next big adventure. And for a time, it did seem good. The addition of the Blues and Reds not only served as an interesting, if predictable, twist, but showed us a dark mirror of what the Reds and Blues could have turned into. 

Then…things started to…odd. Odder than usual.

The next two seasons they had that whole story with time travel and those ancient gods, which seemed so out of left-field looking back. In addition, throughout much of the trilogy, characters like Tucker and Sarge seemed to backpedal on the important lessons they learned in seasons past. And that cyclops they fought was cringe!

The trilogy did some things right, at least. It helped give us closure over Church’s final death and helped Donut finally grow a spine. As a whole, though, it felt like the writing had really declined.

Red vs. Blue: Zero

I’m going to come out and say it: I barely even watched this season. 

On paper, RvB Zero sounded like a good idea. Turning the show into something similar to an action movie would be cool. However, almost everything about Zero wound up being a misfire. The characters were under-developed, the plot almost nonexistent, and the characters we had come to know and love were barely present. And when they were, they weren’t as cool as we’d come to know them.

The Shisno Trilogy had done a lot to damage the reputation of Red vs. Blue, but after Zero, most of the fans (myself included) agreed the show had jumped the shark. It got so bad that Rooster Teeth announced that they would not continue its storyline in future seasons, but the damage was already done.

Sadly, there wouldn’t be any future seasons. COVID made sure of that. 

Every Story Needs an Ending

Fans went three years without hearing any major news about Red vs. Blue. For my part, I had already lost interest in them, so it didn’t even matter. Or, that’s what I told myself. When I heard in 2023 that the next season of RvB would be its last, I wanted to see if it could still end on a high note. Then came the news of Rooster Teeth shutting down earlier this year. That meant that Red vs. Blue wasn’t just ending. It would also be the one to drop the curtain on the company it helped to build. It felt poetic.

I’ve spent most of the week leading up to the release of Restoration, rewatching the series wherever I can, and…and I wish I had found it sooner. I wish I had joined the fandom in its heyday instead of when it was starting to decline. I wish I could’ve gone to RTX at least once. Even so, I’m still grateful that I found the series when I did. Thanks to it, I made some good memories for myself. And now, I’m ready for one last ride with Rooster Teeth.