Red vs Blue Season 19 releases this Fall, and it will be the final season of the series. Titled Red vs Blue: Restoration, it follows a string of seasons that range from divisive to outright hated by the incredibly vocal fandom for the series. With the newly released Prologue, however, it manages to diegetically remove those seasons from the equation without quite making them non-canon, either.
Full Spoilers for the Season 19 prologue follow.
The prologue for Red vs Blue Season 19 begins by throwing us straight back into the beautifully satisfying time-frozen cliffhanger that Miles Lune left fans off on at the end of Season 13. Though that season ended with a sort of cliffhanger, it was executed in such a way that many fans, myself included, felt it worked incredibly well as a series finale. The series even spent the following season on anthological episodes that were all either non-canon or took place before that ending, allowing it to breathe a while longer.
If you need a refresher, that season ended with the AI character Epsilon-Church deciding to erase his memories and essentially end his own life so that he could have enough power to run a supersoldier suit to help the main characters win a dangerous battle. He notes that he will never know if he truly helped save the day and just has to have faith, and the season ends, leaving fans just as in the dark as him.
Red vs Blue Season 19 Returns to the Past
This is where Red vs Blue Season 19 will start its journey. As for 15 through 18, the prologue makes clear what its intentions are here. 15 did indeed diminish the impact of the final episode of 13 by continuing the story, jumping some time forward. By showing us that, yes, the sacrifice did indeed work, it’s harder to share the melancholy feeling Epsilon-Church gives when he worries that his sacrifice may not work. It further went on to recreate that ending speech with another character, but instead turn it into a joke this time.
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Following Season 15, things got weird. While 1-13 had some weird stuff, including nearly magical ancient technology, aliens impregnating people, and even time travel (which turned out to be fake,) 16 jumped the shark and saw our cast of lovable idiots traveling all throughout space and time, with a cliffhanger ending where they break time while fighting immortal gods who created and run the universe. You know, a natural step up from… military mercenaries.
Season 17 had to solve this mess, and it did manage to make the weirdness work a bit better, and it delivered some pretty solid character arcs and humor and ended that arc somewhat well. And then 18, titled Zero, with yet another new writing team, came along. It undoes several arcs with throwaway jokes, it features very few members of the core cast and wasn’t even made in Halo anymore.
Red vs Blue Season 19 Cleans the Slate
Red vs Blue Season 19 does not aim to deal with the muddiness these seasons introduced. By dropping us back off at the end of Season 13, it restores the weight of that cliffhanger (at least for now) and the prologue instead reveals that everything from 15 through 18, as well as the non-canon episodes of 14, were instead simulations run by Epsilon at that moment with the hopes of getting his friends ready for whatever may come next. It reintroduces the AI fragment Sigma, a major antagonist previously played by Elijah Wood, though he now has a “new voice,” called out in the prologue itself.
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Whether that adventure will be one final simulation or show us the true outcome for the events that follow Season 13 is unknown, though the prologue hints that it will at least partially be the former when Epsilon says “Let’s run one more…” before the title screen drops.
For me, this sets the stage perfectly for the final season. Though I liked 17, I adore the idea of this final season fully exploring the anxiety of the unknown from the ending of Season 13, and I can’t wait to see how this 20-year series finally comes to a close.
Did you catch the prologue yet? Are you excited about the season, or do you wish the show ended years ago? Are you glad Seasons 15-18 have been retconned, or upset about this change? Let us know in the comments and on our social media feeds!
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