My Overall Thoughts on Total Drama Island (2023)

(WARNING!: This blog post will contain spoilers for the entirety of the first season of the Total Drama Island reboot. Proceed with caution.)

Well, it's finally happened. The first season of the Total Drama revival has fully aired in the US, and people no longer have to scour the Internet to watch this season illegally. (The second season is currently a different story, though....) Given the whole Total Drama Reunion debacle from 2021 and how soon the revival's announcement came after that, it would have been easy for me to ignore the hype and boycott these two new seasons....but unfortunately, I'm a sheep who had been starved for new Total Drama content other than Total Dramarama since The Ridonculous Race ended. (Speaking of Total Dramarama, I sort of dropped it after episode 18 or 19. I don't remember exactly which one.) That being said, I knew that I'd be able to watch it legally at some point, so even when the Total Drama revival came out in Italy and the English-dubbed episodes were leaked online, I resisted the urge to watch those leaks and patiently waited for them to be released on HBO Max (since I no longer have cable). Being a good girl was very difficult, though, given the clips from the Total Drama revival that kept popping up on my YouTube recommendations as I kept waiting for a US release. Finally, it came out, and I watched the entire season on Amazon Prime (since the Amazon Prime subscription my family has comes with HBO Max).

Now that it's over, what do I think?

To start with, I have some thoughts about the eliminations. When the first episode came out and Caleb was voted out first, I thought that it felt a little bit forced. I mean, it kind of made sense when it was revealed that Bowie had told his team that he seemed like a threat (and given how attraction he had shown toward Caleb, I can definitely see why Bowie would see him as a threat), but given that Caleb didn't hinder his team's chances at winning, it felt weird at the time. I also feel that Ripper should have gotten voted out in the episode where Damien did. Given that Ripper had achieved his goal of reaching the world record for the world's longest fart by tying for it at 48 seconds (although a Google search tells me that the world's longest fart is actually 2 minutes longer than that), I didn't think that there was much of a point in him staying; plus, I kind of wanted to see what Damien could do now that he actually wanted to stay in the competition. Oh, well; there's always next season if I want to see that, I guess.

Other than that, I don't really have any complaints about the eliminations. Everyone left the competition for reasons that made sense; for example, even though Wayne and Raj technically weren't voted out, it made sense for them to leave the competition for the reason of them being too injured to continue. (It was a shame, though, because I really loved their characters. I'll get more into that later, though.) I wasn't too sure about the three-person finale, though, since most Total Drama season finales up to this point were two-person affairs; given how little time each of the two challenges in the finale took, though, I guess they were able to make it work. I expected Bowie to make it to the final two, since that was one spoiler I couldn't avoid; however, for some reason, I was under the impression that he was going to win the competition, which was why I was surprised when Priya won instead. No hate against Bowie, but I think Priya deserved the win; not only had Bowie played kind of dirty by showing her Millie's notes with the last page ripped out, but Priya had worked her whole life to get this far! (I can't say I approve of the methods she mentioned her parents used to train her throughout the season, though....)

Next, the characters. As I mentioned before, I absolutely loved Wayne and Raj's characters; they're both the type of dummies that are funny instead of annoying. I especially loved how supportive Wayne was of Raj being gay; now that's friendship right there, folks! Speaking of which, if there was one complaint that I had about Raj's elimination other than me just wanting to see more of him and Wayne in general, it's that I felt like his romantic relationship with Bowie wasn't explored enough. I appreciate the fact that being gay was far from Bowie's only character trait; I actually liked how strategic and manipulative he could be when the time called for it. That being said, his relationship with Raj did feel like it was put there just to give the gay character a boyfriend, and I really hope to see it explored in more depth in season two so that I can justifiably like it as much as other fans seem to.

To give my thoughts on some of the other characters really quick, I didn't care too much about Axel or Nichelle (although I didn't hate either of them), Zee was pretty funny and got voted out in a very amusing way that was very in-character for him, Ripper was a character I hated at first but ended up warming up to a bit by the end, and Scary Girl was....

....Scary Girl.

The only character I'd say I dislike is Chase. He's got his funny moments, sure, but I just can't stand his attitude. He's like those content creators who do stupid things for views and don't understand that what they did is harmful, which is almost funny, given that he's a streamer himself. One primary example is the fact that he cut the brakes on his girlfriend's car, which is why Emma - the aforementioned girlfriend - initially broke up with him; even when she's telling him off about it, he's just like, "It's just a prank, bro!" Yeah, a prank that POTENTIALLY CAUSED HARM TO INNOCENT ANIMALS AT A PET STORE!!!! On that note, while I admire Emma for holding her own in challenges when she's not distracted by Chase, I don't like how she keeps falling in love with him again because she perceives things that he does all wrong, like how according to her, Chase threw a challenge for Emma when he was really trying to get some pizza. Overall, Chase and Emma's relationship is the worst part of the season, and I SWEAR TO GOD, IF THEY DON'T BREAK UP FOR GOOD IN SEASON TWO, I'M GONNA-

Ahem. Excuse me.

Anyway, I don't really have many strong feelings on the challenges themselves. I will say that as gross as the episode "Jurassic Fart" was, giving the contestants an obstacle to keeping quiet during the challenge was clever, even if it did come in the form of excessive farting. In my opinion, though, the episode "The Wheel of Vomit" was grosser. Seeing a preview of "The Brunch of Disgustingness" back when the original Total Drama Island was airing made me almost not watch the series at all - I didn't start watching each Total Drama season as they aired until Total Drama Action came out - and that episode just gave me flashbacks to it. The contestants' breakfast did camoflauge the vomit so that it looked less gross, so at least there's that.

I could go on about my thoughts on the first season of the new Total Drama Island, but I think this is as far as my brain will allow at the moment; plus, this post is getting really long already. Overall, I think that while this season wasn't quite on par with the original Total Drama (especially if you're talking about the first three seasons of the original), it was very fun to watch each week; if I was reviewing it, I'd probably give it a B+. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to wait for season two of the revival to come out while trying my best to avoid spoilers again.