Almost exactly one year to the day that I started this blog, we're finally here at the final episode of the show. While this won't quite be the end of this blog as there's two more posts that I will be doing to round of this look back at the show, it's been incredibly fun looking back on the show and documenting my thoughts on each episode. However, all good things must come to an end, so now we must discuss the final episode of the entire show, an episode that is decent in it's own right, but is a bit lacking as the show's finale.
We begin the episode in the Principle Office War Room with the Mainframers watching video footage of Megabyte taking on Specky's form at the wedding. Turbo is on the line via Vid Window, and he suggests sending a squadron of Guardians to deal with the problem. Bob refuses Turbo's help since he'd rather try and reformat Megabyte than delete him, justifying this decision by saying that Daemon would have destroyed the entire net if they'd deleted Megabyte and Hexadecimal when they first arrived in Mainframe. Bob then signs off, telling Turbo that they'll contact him if they need to.
AndrAIa is perplexed at how Megabyte managed to survive in the Web. Bob reveals that Megabyte was protected by Bob's code, which he managed to obtain when he crushed Glitch at the end of Season 2. Bob goes onto explain that he changed in The Web, but wasn't aware that he was missing some of his code. This is why Bob and Megabyte were only partially degraded by The Web, since they both had some Guardian Code.
This conversation is then cut short by Specky alerting them to a commotion outside the Principle Office. Some of Megabyte's former troops are starting a riot outside, chanting that they want to be viral. This ends up being dispersed by a CPU car being driven by binome versions of the Blues Brothers who declare that they hate 'Mainframe Neo Virals'. Then five large Vid Windows open around the Principle Office as Mike the TV gives a news report on Megabyte's return, which causes the citizens of Mainframe to panic. Bob is annoyed at Mike for doing this, but then they determine that this is just Megabyte trying to stir up panic. Welman suggests finding a way to ID Megabyte, but Enzo says this won't work as he managed to fool them all when he was pretending to be Bob, and Phong's scans couldn't tell the difference. They then decide to outsmart him instead, and to do that, they need to find Dot.
Phong sends out a message to the citizens of Mainframe to return to their homes, also including a terrifying artists rendition of Megabyte's new form. Elsewhere, Dot and Mouse are talking in a park. Mouse is trying to console Dot, who is incredibly distraught over nearly marrying Megabyte. Dot feels that the worst part of all this is that she gave up on the real Bob, and isn't sure that he will ever forgive her. Bob and Matrix then show up, but Dot isn't sure that Bob is Bob, thinking that it's Megabyte in disguise again. However, Bob is able to convince her to come with him, as they need her at the Principle Office to come up with a plan to stop Megabyte once and for all.
At Al's Diner, the Neo Virals are gathering and lamenting at their defeat, longing for the days when they were respected and feared in spite of their enslavement. Mike the TV butts in, and the Neo Virals threaten that he'll be the first to go when the revolution arrives. Mike continues to taunt them, which clearly antagonises them. Then it turns out that this isn't Mike, but Megabyte. He tells everyone in the bar to surrender to him, shooting tentacles out of his hands at Al's Waiter, turning him into a zombie in order to show what happens to those who don't co operate with him.
A transport carrying the gateway command being piloted by Bob and Matrix leaves the Principle Office, escorted by a handful of CPU's. Dot's plan is to use the gateway command as bait for Megabyte. The bait works, as a swarm of ABC's instantly attacks the convoy, and the transport carrying the gateway is commandeered by viral binomes. However, no one appears to be flying the vehicle at this point.
Once he has retrieved the gateway command, Megabyte attempts to use it to access the Super Computer only for it to fail - this isn't the real Gateway Command. Then Bob, Matrix, AndrAIa, and Frisket along with some CPU's spring out the back of one of the ABC's, springing the trap and causing a firefight to break out in the room. Matrix uses gun to leave a target on Megabyte, meaning they'll always be able to track him even if he shapeshifts. Matrix eventually corners him, and shoots at Megabyte. This traps him in a tear which Bob turns into a portal that transports Megabyte into a holding cell. Dot contacts Bob and lets him know that Megabyte is in the holding cell. Bob tells Dot that they make a great time, to which Dot replies they always did.
We then cut to the holding cell where Bob and Matrix are doing a scan of Megabyte. Bob explains that the plan is to reprogram him so he won't be a virus anymore. Megabyte considers this a 'fate worse than deletion. And they call me a monster', which brings into question the ethics of Bob's theories. Once the scan is complete, it turns out that there's nothing there. Matrix deactivates the Firewall of Megabyte's cell by shooting the lock and then grabs Megabyte by the throat. Bob reveals that this is just an alias, meaning that the real Megabyte is still out there.
Bob contacts Dot in the war room to tell her about the situation, determining that the real Megabyte is in the war room with them. We then cut between several still frames of the characters in the war room until we eventually get to Frisket, who then turns into Megabyte. Megabyte begins to wreak havoc in the war room as he infects the various binomes. Dot, Hack, Slash, Mouse and AndrAIa are able to escape, but Phong, Enzo, and Welman remain trapped in the War Room with Megabyte.
Bob and Matrix race to the war room, Hack and Slash drag Dot off elsewhere as they panic about Megabyte being back, and Mouse is trying to hack into a door to no avail while AndrAIa stands guard. Then Megabyte's voice booms over the loudspeaker. He informs everyone that the Principle Office is now under his complete control, and while it would be expected for him to give a speech about him turning Mainframe into Megaframe and bringing about a 'New Viral Dawn', this isn't his plan at all. He has no grand scheme, and this is about revenge. He then tells everyone to 'Prepare yourselves for The Hunt!', ending the episode and the series on a cliffhanger.
Some time after they'd aired Season 3 in 1999, Cartoon Network expressed interest in funding another season of ReBoot. Initially, Mainframe planned a 13 episode season, 12 of these would be broken up into three arcs with four episodes each, and the 13th would be a musical episode. At one point, there was even talks of going up to 26 episodes. Whether this would have been a full 26 episode season or two 13 episode seasons is unknown. YTV decided that they would prefer to have movies instead of episodes, so the three arcs would be edited together as movies for YTV and broken down into individual episodes for Cartoon Network.
Cartoon Network had big plans for ReBoot - their plan was to show ReBoot in heavy rotation every day in prime time. During the week, they would be showing Seasons 1 to 3 in heavy rotation, and then on the Friday night, a new Season 4 episode would air in prime time. This lead to toy retailers such as Wal Mart and Toys R Us expressing interest in selling toys to tie in with this, so Irwin Toys along with Mainframe planned out an extensive toy line with multiple waves and several characters. Mainframe's production wing also told Gavin, Ian, and Phil that they didn't need to worry about deadlines and they could use as many animators and directors as they needed. Since they felt they struggled to fit all their story into 20 minutes in previous seasons, Gavin and Ian decided not to worry about it for Season 4 - they would write the episodes as long as they needed to be. While the episodes would be cut down for broadcast on TV, the extra scenes would be included in the DVD of the season, with the selling point being that viewers could get the whole story.
Then Warner Brothers, Cartoon Network's parent company, got involved. They weren't happy with Cartoon Network giving so much coverage to a property they didn't own as opposed to something like, say, Batman or Scooby Doo that they did own. The decision to show Seasons 1 to 3 in heavy rotation was changed so that they would run through seasons 1 to 3 once, and then Season 4 was moved from Friday night prime time to something like half 11 on Saturday evening. The toy retailers weren't happy about this, and tried to cancel as much of the toy line as they possibly could. Since the toyline was already so far along, they couldn't cancel the entire line so the toys that had already been produced were sold, and Irwin, having invested a lot of their own money into the production of the toys, ended up going bankrupt as a result. Then Mainframe's production wing turned round and said that they needed to work to the deadlines they had in place, and the 13 extra length episodes was cut down to 8 standard length episodes. This meant that they then had to cram as much of their story for the first two arcs as possible into these eight episodes.
This brings us to the ending. 'The Hunt' which Megabyte mentioned at the end of this episode was supposed to be the third act of the episode, and it had an ending. While this wouldn't have wrapped up the story completely, it would have resolved The Hunt while setting things up for the next arc. However, when writing the scripts, it became clear to Gavin and Ian that they wouldn't have time necessary to fit The Hunt into the episode alongside the rest of the story, especially as they had already pushed the start of the episode back into the end of the previous one. It then came down to two choices - try and cram everything in with an episode that feels more like a trailer, or end the episode on a cliffhanger with there being a slim chance that they'll get another season for them to resolve the cliffhanger. They thought the latter choice - a decent episode with a cliffhanger would have been a better choice than a crappy episode.
Now, for my thoughts on the episode. Overall, this isn't a bad episode. It's pretty engaging, it's got some great action, and also brings forward some great themes which we'll discuss in a moment. However, while it's a great episode in it's own right, I feel it somewhat lacks a little as the finale to the entire series. I know it wasn't intended to be the ending, but this episode's biggest problem to me is that it feels more like the beginning of a story than the end of one, which becomes incredibly jarring when you remember that this is the final episode of the entire series.
Megabyte's return is well handled for the most part. His ability to shapeshift allows him to mess with the heroes in more ways than he was able to previously, such as creating mass hysteria or infiltrating the Principle Office. His way of thinking has also changed. While for most of the episode, we're lead to believe this is the same Megabyte as before with the same agenda - to take over the system and rebuild it in his image as well as access the Super Computer and take that over. However, Megabyte already did this in the previous season. He doesn't see the need to do this again, but he's making it seem like that's his intention to the other characters. Then once he gets the opportunity, he reveals his true intention - to hunt down all the main characters for revenge.
While sure, Megabyte did manage to take over Mainframe and then caused it to crash to the extent they needed to restart the entire system to fix the damage he'd caused, he was also utterly humiliated in his defeat by Matrix at the end of the previous season. Not only did the operation planned by Dot allow Matrix and the rebels to take back the Principle Office, but he was defeated by the 'mere delivery boy' he was used to intimidating and mocking. Then when he tried to flee, he ended up having his escape route blocked by a portal to the Web which dragged him in. Because of this, he has a personal vendetta to settle with the rest of the characters. This is an incredibly interesting plot point, and it's only a shame that it comes up at the very end of the series as it would have been awesome to see Megabyte attempting to execute his planned revenge.
We also get the flip side of Bob's views on converting viruses into sprites. Megabyte describes it as a 'fate worse than deletion'. He loves being a virus, and clearly doesn't like the idea of being forced to be someone he's not. His line also suggests that it's not too different to what he does - infecting a program against their will to perform how he wants them to. Based on how many times this gets brought up throughout the season and some vague comments made here and there by Gavin Blair, I can imagine that the unmade third arc/movie for this season would have covered this idea a bit more. It's just a shame that they never got to tell that story.
As for the season as a whole, I feel it's a mixed bag overall, and not as good as Season 3 or even Season 2. The Daemon Rising arc was a brilliant start and that's almost on par with Season 3 for me. The stakes were higher than they've ever been, we got more exploration of the characters and the backstory of the show, and while the pacing could have been a little better, overall, Daemon Rising genuinely feels like a ReBoot movie (which is a given since that's how it started life). My Two Bob's is kind of where things begin to fall apart for me. For the most part, the plot isn't as engaging and, the characters are somewhat out of character, and the plot kind of just stops abruptly at the very end just when it's starting to get interesting.
Ideally, I'd have liked for this season to have been made as it was intended with the 12/13 extra length episodes. However, if I was in the position that Gavin and Ian were in of having to condense the story down (although I don't have the benefit of knowing what was planned for The Hunt or beyond), I would have possibly merged the second and third episodes, maybe having Glitch Bob try and separate from Glitch during the planning for the wedding between Bob and Dot (Dot seemed to have made up her mind at the end of the first episode anyway before still struggling to choose between the two in the next one) and then have the next two episodes deal with Megabyte and wrapping up that storyline as planned while leaving the plot open for the next arc. Heck, even if we ended it a scene or so earlier than what we got where Bob and Matrix have just captured Megabyte. It wouldn't be a perfect ending, by any means, but it would end the show on a somewhat positive note. However, who knows, it could have turned out even worse if executed this way.
Sadly, Gavin and Ian never got the chance to finish their planned story. In 1997, Mainframe became a publicly traded company complete with shareholders. The downside of becoming a publicly traded company is that you then have to appease these shareholders. As a result of this, Mainframe then began focusing more on work for hire projects (i.e. a company like Mattel would send them a script for a Barbie movie and then Mainframe would have to animate it) as opposed to original projects. This saw Mainframe produce movies based on Barbie and Casper as well as producing a Spider Man series for Sony in 2003.
Not liking the direction that Mainfame was taking, Gavin, Ian, and Phil one by one left the company, leaving the rights to ReBoot behind with them. The franchise remained dormant for years until a fan campaign known as the 'ReBoot Revival' started in 2006 with the aim to get the series back on the air and get a conclusion to the cliffhanger. Then in 2007, Rainmaker Entertainment (who purchased Mainframe and all it's assets in late 2006) announced that they would be bringing ReBoot back. Little did fans know at the time that it would take them 11 years to do so, and when it finally arrived, it proved to be a case of 'be careful what you wish for'...
Next week: We take a look at the toy line produced for Season 4
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