Red VS Blue is a Texan Halo machinima webseries about two groups of soldiers – the Reds and the Blues – who are locked in an eternal war until they aren’t. Despite being listed second, the blues are the more important faction for the story overall.

I first found RvB on Netflix, when I was in a Halo mood. Seeing the “Halo helmet”, I decided to start watching it…only to be shocked by the fact it was a machinima, so I stopped watching it. But I ended up getting curious so, much later, I went ahead and watched it. And then I saw everything up to the latest season (which was Season 12 at the time).

The series is split up into big over-arching arcs and each of those has a different feel to it. Seasons 1-5 are the original series – known as the Blood Gulch Chronicles – Seasons 6-8 (The Recollection) are the sequel and then Seasons 9 & 10 (Project Freelancer Saga) are the prequel/sequel series intended to tie up loose ends and finish everything. Then it just kinda continues into the Chorus trilogy with Seasons 11-13. Then Season 14 is an anthology series. Season 15 was a standalone, but led directly into Season 16. I stopped watching during Season 16 because although I was much younger and dumber, I could tell that it was getting very bad.
Apparently there were two more seasons after 16. And, most recently, a film was released to definitively end RvB. Though I haven’t watched it yet.

I consider Seasons 1-10 to be ‘definitive RvB’ because it tells a mostly complete story. Everything afterwards is mostly a bonus. I didn’t really like 11-13 that much for that reason…but also because they moved into Halo 5’s engine, which changed the aesthetic too much for my tastes.^A)
Season 14 is the least offensive season after Season 10.

Though what’s especially impressive is how RvB managed to remain unambiguously good for 14 Seasons before everything went to Hell. That could be down to the fact they had 1 writer for Seasons 1-10 and then another for 11-13…and then…yeah.

Now, putting personal stuff aside, are there any problems? Well, yeah. They ended up doing several retcons following Season 5. Basically retroactively explaining the weird stuff that happened then. Some of these are fine while others are bad. And some of them are just not explained at all, requiring guesswork to figure out.
An example of the unexplained retcon is Church’s time-travel shenanigans involving Gary. Originally, this was played straight as time-travel…but this was retconed. Church wasn’t traveling thru time but, instead, was being tortured by Gary. The only way I knew about that was that I checked the wiki once.

Besides these issues, there’s also an under-utilization or just odd use of characters. Tex – or at least the original Tex – ends up just falling out of the story. It isn’t even super clear that she died as part of the EMP as it is for Church and a few others. It could be argued that she had a proper end in Season 9, but that wasn’t Tex, that was Epsilon!Tex. Seasons 9 & 10 actually make this much worse, because they go out of their way to elaborate on more details…which means that, retroactively, minor characters were made more important with the implication they’d go on to do more…which they couldn’t, because a lot of them were simply dead.
This was definitely noticed because Kakaina Grif was missing from the series until Season 15 (?) and other characters like Sheila also just disappeared.

I also think that there might be something off about the worldbuilding, though I can’t point to anything specific because I don’t remember what the problem is.

Also! It may seem irrelevant, but the mini series are actually important for understanding the plot.

The first season is kinda rough in hindsight and feels a little out of place when you consider everything else (Sarge doesn’t really sound like Sarge for example).

However, this is also the origin of “Hey.” “Yeah?” “You ever wonder why we’re here?”

The second season feels similarly rough, though not to the same degree.

This is also where the plot starts getting a bit more complicated, which is exciting!

I found a lot of the time-travel stuff to be a bit annoying.
It isn’t clear whether the time-travel is just a delusion or not, because the series (until Season 5) actually provides evidence to suggest it’s real. Y’know, Sheila saying it’s been a few years (and being damaged for no explicable reason); the bases in Blood Gulch being rebuilt; their armor changing; everything Church experiences; the fight with Wyoming.
On the other hand, there’s some indication that it’s a delusion: Grif’s sister being able to show up there; the fact this is a theory of the Reds & Blues; Tex & Wyoming inexplicably being in the future as well; the yellow guy; the zealots being in the future; Butch Flowers not being dead.

Also, I think there was a bit too much standing around and talking. I know that’s the point of the show, but it may have gone on for too long.

See Season 3 for the biggest complaints.

This one very much feels like setup for the next Season and consequently feels like not much actually happens here.

Pretty good if anticlimactic ending for the Blood Gulch Chronicles, though it’s interesting to see that they hinted that Tex didn’t explode.

I’ll probably think of more to say later.

Re-watching this again so long after seeing it for the first time (and an initial re-watch)…it’s surprising how it feels very short. It doesn’t feel like anything really happened, which I think is because it was mostly setup for Seasons 7-10.

If you don’t count Out of Mind or Recovery One, this is the season that established most of the more ‘serious’ lore of Red vs Blue. But it’s also very clearly a transitional series from the older more comedic stuff to the far more serious stuff. I think it mostly works, though…again, mostly setup. It’s a bit like Season 4.

I guess my brain mentally categorizes Seasons 6-8 as one continuous season, rather than as separate things. Which is fitting I guess.

There is also a lot of great foreshadowing for the <wrap spoiler>final twist that Church is an AI</wrap spoiler>.

I’ll add something here later.

I mostly don’t have an issue with Season 14, with a few exceptions. I don’t like the episodes that show the assembling of the crew in Blood Gulch…though, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with most of the content there. What bothers me is that a lot of the characters (prior to Blood Gulch) are depicted as having killed people. I can’t articulate exactly why this bothers me, but I don’t think it meshes well with what we know about the Reds and the Blues.

Out of Mind is the first mini-series, though I realized on my re-watch that…it was done in Halo 2 and not CE.

Watching it now is very strange, since a lot of the events were retconned.^B)

Recovery One is the second mini-series (‘sfar as I know) and it follows Washington in his role. It takes place right after Out of Mind and right before Season 6.

I think it’s alright. Nothing much happens, but it does explain how Delta got from position A (York’s corpse) to position B (South). Among other things.

More to be added later.

Red vs. Blue takes place in the Halo universe…kind of. It’s more like a derivative.
There are a few references to Halo sprinkled into the series like Master Chief, the war with the Covenant and the UNSC…though, overall, it’s very light on details.

It’s clear that the Freelancer Foundation is a rival organization to the Spartan-II and Spartan-3 programs.

• Fandom Wiki
• Miraheze Wiki
• I may add more at some point.