Recap / Total Drama: "The Final Wreck-ening"

Mal and Zoey go head to head for the million dollars with help from Alejandro and Heather (on Mal's side) and Cameron and Gwen (on Zoey's side). Will Mike ever regain control of his mind again?

Tropes:

• Armor-Piercing Question: "What part of 'poof' don't you understand?"
• Back for the Finale: Cameron, Gwen, Heather, Alejandro, and Owen. The other campers are present... but promptly blow away in balloons.
• Break the Cutie: Zoey over the possibility that Mike is never coming back. She buries the necklace he gave her.
• Call-Back:
  • The lava and two assisting contestants call back to the World Tour Finale. The island is also destroyed, just like the Hawaiian island was in the World Tour Finale.
  • Speaking of lava being a call-back to World Tour, the remaining tiers of the moat are references to one of the previous seasons as well. The toxic tier represents Revenge of the Island, the natural tier with just water represents Island, and even Chef dressed as a king and the final part requiring the finalists to pull a sword out of a stone, thus being a reference to the Legend of King Arthur, is a call-back to the cinematic theme of Action.
  • Like the first half of the season, the final conflict is a battle between a heroes team and a villians team, with Zoey as the hero and Mal as the villain.
  • Zoey is convinced that Mike is really Mike when he asks her about the necklace he gave her, a reference to how, last episode, Zoey realized Mal was in control when he incorrectly said that last season Mike gave her a bracelet.
• The Cameo: Owen returns at the beginning of this episode in order to fill up the balloons to put the contestants in. He also returns at the end, water-skiing from the Loser Boat.
• Co-Dragons: Alejandro and Heather become helpers for Mal.
• Conflict Ball: Invoked. After Mal's defeat, Chris calls a free-for-all for the million, giving both sides assistants a shot at the million in order to spark up the competition and turn Alejandro and Heather against each other.
• Demoted to Dragon: Ex BigBads Alejandro and Heather become Co-Dragons for the new Big Bad Mal.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Chris' reaction to all the romance after Mal is finally defeated:
  Chris: That’s it! This is the finale! It’s about pain and betrayal... and PAIN! Not hugs and kissing... PAAAAAIN!!!!!
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After half a season cooped up in his own head, Mike gets Zoey, the million, and all of the skills his personalities had.
• Everyone Has Standards: Both Chef and Chris’s lawyers (who usually okay Chris's rather insane and negligent actions) are against his dangerous final challenge.
• Final Boss: Mal acts as this until Mike takes back control, where Alejandro and Heather become Post Final Bosses.
• Foreshadowing: Vito and Manitoba assure Mike they'll always be a part of him, which foreshadows the Split-Personality Merge.
• Gasshole: Owen inflates the balloons the other campers are trapped in with his farts.
• Going Down with the Ship: In a reference to the musicians on board of the RMS Titanic, the butler of the luxury cabin stands outside to play his violin until Wawanakwa Island goes down beneath the waves. It's more than possible he survives, but he's not made an appearance since.
• Graceful Loser:
  • This is the first time where the runner up doesn't feel bad about losing the challenge, given that the finalists are Mike and Zoey.
  • After the Conflict Ball ends with him not winning, Alejandro takes it in stride, as he still has love. Heather is not exactly in the same good mood, though that's more because of her infuriation with the show than him.
• Grand Finale: Of the first half of the season, All-Stars, complete with the most dangerous finale in the history of the series, the end of Wawanakwa, and Mike and Zoey's final confrontation with Mal (an epic battle of Good vs. Evil, indeed).
• Grass is Greener: Upon seeing what awaits in the big challenge, Gwen remarks she envies the other former contestants blown away in the balloons.
• Hand Wave: Vito questions why there's no protection regarding Mal's tower, to which Mike suggests that Mal just never figured they'd never get that far.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Just when it seems like Heather and Alejandro's Relationship Upgrade is a case of Love Redeems and it seems like they're okay with not getting the million dollar prize, Chris, then decides to make the challenge a free-for-all, which causes both of them to jump at the opportunity to get the cash prize. Which results in them turning on each other.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Mike's other personalities willingly let themselves disappear and become part of him in order to destroy Mal.
• He's Back!: Mike returns to the real world uppercutting Fang to rescue Zoey, then promptly proves it couldn't be anyone else by commenting on Zoey's missing necklace.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Invoked by Chris. After Mike defeats Mal before the end of the finale, removing all conflict since Mike and Zoey are to happy about being reunited to care about winning. Chris declares the helpers eligible to win, knowing this is all the incentive Heather and Alejandro need to slip back into there antagonistic roles.
• History Repeats: Heather is once again screwed out of the million dollar prize.
• I Let You Win: Mike in Zoey's ending.
• Karma Houdini: This is the first season finale where Chris gets no comeuppance.
• Keeping the Handicap: Zigzagged. Mike initially refuses to get rid of his personalities. While he does go through with it, he only does so because it's necessary to stop Mal. Manitoba and Vito assure Mike that the button won't truly get rid of them and that they will always be a part of Mike in some way, which clearly comforts him. However, in The Stinger, Mike says that it's possible he won't even miss communicating with his alters, but that may be because of the Split-Personality Merge.
• Kick the Dog: Mal gets under Zoey's skin by telling her that Mike is gone forever.
• Look What I Can Do Now!: Mike wastes no time showing off his new skills, using Vito's strength to punch out Fang and Svetlana's acrobatics to best Alejandro.
• Mondegreen Gag: When Chef warns something is wrong with the fracking machine, Gwen says you can't say "that word" on TV. Cameron corrects her.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: In his mind, Mike summons a barrier, with there being no previous indication he had this skill or anything like it.
• Never Say "Die": Instead of Mal saying he'll kill Alejandro and Heather if they get in his way, he claims he'll "bury them alive".
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Chris upon realizing that Heather and Alejandro hooked up.
  • Alejandro when faced with Fang. Happens to him and Heather in the end, as well.
  • Cameron when he realizes that the moats were dug with a machine that damaged the foundation of the island.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: As Wawanakwa Island sinks due to fracking, water bursts out from every weak spot on the island, animals and humans alike run for safety, and ominous Latin chanting sets the mood.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Heather and Alejandro's lack of reluctance in helping Mal with the challenge and not getting the chance to win the million causes Chris to realize that they're dating.
• Post-Final Boss: With Mal gone, Alejandro and Heather become the final antagonistic obstacles for the finalist to be dealt with, though the two are easily dealt with by Mike and Gwen.
• Pun-Based Title: The title is a play on "the final reckoning".
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  Mal: Here. I. Come!
• Relationship Sabotage: Chris likes Heather's and Alejandro's belligerent romance. He does not like it when they get lovey-dovey and fail to provide any drama. Thus, to get entertaining footage, he changes the rules of the finale midway to where the finalists and the helpers equally can claim the grand prize upon winning. With money on the line, Heather and Alejandro go back to being enemies.
• Relationship Upgrade: Heather and Alejandro finally become a couple after seasons' worth of Belligerent Sexual Tension, yet they retain their completive natures.
• Reset Button: What turns out to be at the center of Mike's guard tower. It resets Mike's head, taking away all his personalities in the process.
• Rule of Symbolism: After Gwen and Cameron spend the season as Token Good Teammate's on the Villainous Vultures and Mal as the Token Evil Teammate on the Heroic Hamsters, this episode puts them on their correct teams.
• Sequel Hook: Chris gets a call saying that the producers want to start filming another season immediately, never mind that it's actually the end of the first half of season 5.
• Ship Tease: The kiss on the cheek Gwen gives Cameron, though there's every possibility it was a simple friendly gesture to piss Chris off.
• Shout-Out:
  • The final part of the challenge is a reference to the legend of King Arthur pulling Excalibur out of the stone to become the King of Britain.
  • As Camp Wawanakwa sinks, the music plays is a portion of the requiem of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, specifically the well-known "Dies Irae" portion.
  • The butler playing the violin as the island sank is a reference to the musicians during the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Heather and Alejandro, to the point that Chris derides their lovey-dovey moment in the confessional as the most disgusting thing that has ever happened in there.
• Something Only They Would Say: How Zoey knows that Mike is really himself again. Mike asks her where the necklace he gave her is, while Mal last episode couldn't even remember that Mike had given Zoey a necklace.
• Split-Personality Merge: Hitting the Reset Button causes Mike and his good personalities to join together. He gains all of their skills and abilities. Mal is the lone exception, as Mike simply erases him.
• Split-Screen Reaction: Zoey, Mal, Gwen, Cameron, Heather, and Alejandro respond with a reaction shot composed of trapezoids upon beholding the Moats of Doom. Each of them is differentiated with a unique color background and the composition highlights the characters' relevance. Zoey and Mal, the two finalists, are depicted largest and take up a quarter of the shot each, while the other four, as helpers, have to do with less. As a couple, Alejandro and Heather get to share their own quarter and Cameron and Gwen have an eighth of the screen each.
• Squee: Zoey in the confessional after Something Only They Would Say.
• Sudden Contest Format Change: After Mike defeats Mal and reconciles with Zoey, Chris gets annoyed with the touchy-feely attitudes and lack of tense competition, so he declares that anybody who gets to the target first — including the helpers, not just the finalists — can win the million dollars. This triggers Alejandro and Heather to go from Sickeningly Sweethearts to their typical competitive selves.
• That Man Is Dead: Gwen, Cameron and Mal all try to convince Zoey that Mike is gone and all that's left is Mal.
• Trash the Set/Regional Redecoration: Wawanakwa is sunk.
• Uncertain Doom:
  • The butler of the McLean Hotel & Spa is seen playing the violin as Camp Wawanakwa sinks, and unlike the interns, he isn't seen the following season. Due to his scene parodying the iconic Titanic (1997) sinking scene, his survival chances don't look good.
  • Alejandro and Heather are last seen swimming away from Fang after Camp Wawanakwa sinks, as Mike got Fang obsessed with them by giving Alejandro Fang's missing tooth. However, as no following seasons have featured the villainous couple, it's hard to know if they escaped with their lives or not, and judging by how the seventh season of Total Drama proper takes place 15 years after the first season (which means 13 years after this season), it's likely to never be answered.
  • The eliminated contestants who were never released from their baloons and were last seen flying away inside of them. While Word of God confirms their balloons eventually popped and they survived the fall by falling into the water, it's not specified whether they ever got to return to society and if not - how long they survived wherever they landed. Once again, the Time Skip of the seventh season doesn't help the chances for the question to be answered.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Mal tries in vain to tempt Mike into giving him control, then results to flat out begging as he ceases to exist.
  Mal: No! NO! This is my time! MIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEE....!
  • Chris kind of loses it when he realizes that Alejandro and Heather are dating, significantly decreasing the amount of drama. Then, when Mal is defeated, everything becomes lovey-dovey and it drives him nuts. So much so that he changes the rules and makes it a free-for-all just to get it to stop (Since he knew how Heather and Alejandro react while hearing this).
• Villains Want Mercy: When Mal starts fading from existence, he begs Mike to keep him alive.
• Virtue Is Weakness: Mal mocks how Zoey's devotion to Mike got him to the finale and a shot at a million dollars.
• Wham Episode: Mike loses all his personalites, but intergrates all of them sans Mal into him, gaining their ablitites in the process, and causing Mal to be erased from existance. Alejandro and Heather receive a relationship upgrade, Mike wins the million dollars and finally, and most importantly, Wawanakwa is sunk due to Chris's negligence, destroying the setting of three fifths of the series.
• Wham Line: "Don't you get it? There's no longer a choice. Mike is gone. And he's never coming back!"
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • All the season's contestants, minus the finalists and their helpers, are last seen floating away inside the balloons which Chris and Owen put them in and are never seen for the rest of the episode. Though Word of God claims that they safely landed on the water when their balloons popped, it's left unspecified if they were ever retrieved or not, and judging by how the seventh season of Total Drama proper takes place 15 years after the first season (which means 13 years after this season), it's likely to never be answered.
  • The necklace that Zoey buried under Camp Wawanakwa, how will Mike and Zoey retrieve it back since the Camp have now sunk?
    • Maybe they now have a chance given how Camp Wawanakwa returned from the depths in season seven?
• Would Hit a Girl: Mal throws Gwen off a nasty height and then says Zoey is next.
• Wrong-Name Outburst: When Mal almost falls into the toxic waste, Zoey panics and calls out "Mike!" - despite believing that Mike is gone forever and knowing full well that Mal is in sole control of the body, and has been for quite some time now. Gwen reminds her that she must remember that that is not Mike.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Chris boasts of how fearsome and dangerous the final challenge will be, capping off with how the lawyers told them to change it. When Zoey asks if changes were made, Chris says he told the lawyers he did.

—-