YMMV / Red vs. Blue: Season 14

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Did Sarge subtly manipulate the other Red Sergeant candidates into killing themselves, leaving him as the sole man left for the position, or did he simply luck out? He admits to bluffing Daggerknife into a corner, with him either not being willing to die for the Red Army or to call his bluff and shoot himself, and afterwards smugly chuckles as he states that the job goes to him by process of elimination. And in the final seconds of the episode, he shoots Buckshot's corpse to make sure he's the only one left. Heck, even him killing Lemons could be him either trying to Leave No Witnesses or invoking Obfuscating Insanity for anyone watching so he would still seem like the ideal leader of Red Team.
  • Additionally, there's Locus killing Gabriel Lozano at the end of "Call." Was it just Locus coldly removing someone who was of no more use to the Mercs, or was it him helping protect Siris' family since Gabriel would be the only one who could tell anyone else about Siris' wife and kids?
• Awesome Music: The Musical Episode had some great songs, though sadly there were only two ("Red Rockets" and "Leonard's Lament") or technically three full-length ones (the third being the dance number "Plan D"; the fourth, opener "Hey", is quite short). The later rap battle helped soothe the itch for more great music, though.
• Broken Base:
  • The season as a whole. Is it clever Worldbuilding that fleshes out why they're here, or a pointless Filler Arc that detracts from the dramatic Bolivian Army Ending of Season 13? "The Brick Gulch Chronicles" and "The #1 Movie in the Galaxy: 3" are particularly divisive, as they are funny as hell but have no connection to the series' events. Many felt that season could have been used to answer the lingering questions left by the previous seasons, but feel that Rooster Teeth didn't take proper advantage of the potential of it. See They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot below.
  • The art shifts, especially the Telltale Games-esque cel-shading in "Club". Some say it's Awesome Art, while others say it's too far from the series' Halo machinima roots. "Club"'s non-futuristic firearms and Locus and Felix in sharp suits rather than Powered Armor are particularly jarring. Though this seems to have died down some now that the three episodes have aired and turned out to have an amazing story. Many fans are even calling for a spinoff now.
  • The crossover with DEATH BATTLE!, mostly between the fans of RvB and DB. The RvB fans are quite happy to see a match up that had been denied previously and seeing a battle being done on Death Battle while the DB fans are quite upset over the outcome and the fact that it's another Rooster Teeth-related episode after the very divisive match up between Yang Xiao Long and Tifa Lockhart. This died down a good deal after many episodes of the third season have drawn controversial outcomes. In hindsight, Carolina vs the Meta was seen to be more evenly split between advantages, even by those that watched without prior knowledge of RvB.
  • The decision to re-release the pilot for the scrapped animated series as the season premiere did not result in this, as most fans hadn't seen it before, the pilot was released many years ago, and there was an added segment of animation to it. However, the decision to release the "Warthog Flip" episode of Immersion as the penultimate episode of the season did, as the episode in full had been released as a straight-up Immersion episode just the week prior, and many fans felt stiffed.
• Continuity Lockout: In the first four episodes alone, a wealth of references have been provided that tie many small details from the earliest seasons together that would make all but the hardcore fan confused.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Pretty much all of the interview sessions in "Fifty Shades of Red," along with Donut's Disney Death in "The Brick Gulch Chronicles".
• Fanon:
  • It's easier to count how many people that will question how Sarge is Boomstick's father than not.
  • A common interpretation of "The 'Mission'" is that Sherry and Ohio's groups are the first Red and Blue teams, or they at least gave the Director the idea. Furthermore, most fans seem to think that they were all abandoned on Sidewinder (as it's the only other ice planet seen in the series).
• Genius Bonus: When Lopez refers to the movie Speed , he calls it Maximum Velocidad, which is the Latin American title for the film. It's also a fairly remarkable detail for the crew to add given that Lopez's Spanish is usually pretty bad.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • As of "Why They're Here", the scene when Alpha-Church recounts Tex's attack on Sidewinder from Season 1 comes off as subtly horrifying, if not for the reasons that you'd think.
    Tucker: Wait a second.. how do you beat someone to death with their own skull? That doesn't seem physically possible.
    Church: That's exactly what Jimmy kept screaming.
  • This also applies to Caboose's Image Song "Your Best Friend" as of "Caboose's Guide to Making Friends", where we get a taste of the impact that Church's demise has had on him.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Many viewers were especially impressed this season with Ed Robertson's voice work as Captain Butch Flowers/Agent Florida, with him playing the role with a perfect mix of goofy campiness and terrifying sociopathy to make a fittingly unnerving and yet captivating character.
  • A more downplayed case, but "Red vs. Blue: The Musical" surprised many viewers by showing that both Jason Saldaña and Burnie Burns are actually pretty damn good singers in their own right.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • "Fight the Good Fight" makes the scene in Reconstruction where Sarge can't comprehend that Grif is a Sergeant even funnier, knowing that they've tried and failed to get that through his head before.
  • "Mr. Red vs. Mr. Blue" ended up being oddly prophetic of Season 15, from the general theme about movies, to the characters recreating movie scenes (specifically from Reservoir Dogs), to Sarge having a sudden interest in acting outside of the PSAs. What makes it funnier is that Ernest Cline, the person who wrote this episode, isn't the same person who would go on to write the next season.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Codenames.
  • Santos' obsession with wine bars keeps popping up in the YouTube comments.
• Narm: The series' Cerebus Retcons can make for some awkward moments, but trying to make Private Jimmy ("This doesn't seem physically possible!") a dark and edgy moment just falls flat on its face for some. However, for others it falls under Narm Charm, emphasizing Florida's cruelty and getting a previously outlandish scene to make sense.
• Shocking Moments: Despite not impacting the overall story or plot of the series, the Merc Trilogy reveals that Locus and Felix's birth names are Samuel Ortez and Isaac Gates, and we see their faces. It's pretty huge, considering very few outside of the Reds and Blues have been fully named, and only the faces of some selective Freelancers have been seen.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The background music in "Club" sounds quite a bit like "Lone Digger" by Caravan Palace.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Episode 16 is a look at what Omega saw when he entered the minds of the Reds and Blues back in Episode 100 of the Blood Gulch Chronicles. And what happens when he gets to Church, who is in fact the Alpha aka whose rage Omega is the embodiment of? He simply finds the setting of Sidewinder familiar and merely gloats that he finally has a body to control. Sure, the implications were there, but it would've been far more interesting to see Omega's reaction to realizing that he was almost rejoined with his "father".
  • Many unanswered questions could have been used as the basis for several episodes and this season would have been the perfect way to answer questions such as how did Tucker and Junior reunite? What happened to 479er? Who were the other three Freelancers mentioned in Recovery One as being killed by the Meta? These questions are still left unexplained and unaddressed.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The CGI for the Blood Gulch Crew in the real world in "Red vs. Blue vs. Rooster Teeth" is very impressive. The animation for both "The Brick Gulch Chronicles" and the Merc Trilogy - stop-motion for the former and cel-shaded CGI for the latter - is also fantastic. "Caboose's Guide to Making Friends" is also a very impressive use of 2D animation, especially given the intentionally silly aesthetic the episode is going towards.

---