Total Drama: Revenge of the Island


Total Drama: Revenge of the Island is the fourth season of the Total Drama franchise. The series' extension was commissioned by Teletoon from the producers, Fresh TV Inc. It is a sequel to Total Drama Island, Total Drama Action, and Total Drama World Tour and is a parody of reality TV shows, with this series taking the contestants back to Camp Wawanakwa, only this time the island is radioactive. Previous contestants from past seasons no longer compete in Total Drama: Revenge of the Island since this season features an entire new cast. The thirteen new contestants who are introduced in here are Anne Maria, B, Brick, Cameron, Dakota, Dawn, Jo, Lightning, Mike, Sam, Scott, Staci, and Zoey. This new season has new friendships, new rivalries, and new relationships. However, the season is only half the length of any previous seasons, with just 13 episodes. The season introduced the new cast to what previous contestants have gone through before and prepared them for Total Drama All-Stars. Such a change occurred again in .

Plot

Like Total Drama Island, this season is a fictional reality show that follows the competition of thirteen new 16-year-old contestants at Camp Wawanakwa, a summer camp on a fictional island located in an unspecified area in Muskoka, Ontario. However, since the island has been forgotten and left alone for the past two seasons, the island has been used as a toxic nuclear waste dump, transforming it into the perfect location for the most dramatic and brutal challenges yet. The new cast of campers must then participate in competitions to avoid being voted off the island as they all try to get ready to compete with some of the most popular original contestants in the fifth season. They spend almost 2 weeks in this camp competing in challenges for immunity and at the end of the season, one winning contestant will have the chance to win one million Canadian dollars. The competition is hosted by Chris McLean, who is assisted by the camp's chef, Chef Hatchet.
At the beginning of the season, the thirteen campers are placed onto two teams, the Mutant Maggots and the Toxic Rats. In each episode, the teams participate in a challenge, in which one or more campers can win invincibility for their team. The losing team is called to the elimination ceremony at night, where they vote one of their own members off the island. At the ceremony, Chris declares which contestants are safe by calling their name and giving them a marshmallow, while the one whose name is not called is eliminated from the game and given a radioactive marshmallow. The eliminated camper is then taken to the Hurl of Shame and catapulted to the Playa de Losers. However, an eliminated camper can still come back to the game if they find a wooden Chris head.
About halfway through the season, the Toxic Rats and the Mutant Maggots are disbanded, after which the challenges continue; the winner of each challenge then only receives invincibility for him or herself, whereupon a camper without invincibility is voted off the island. This process of elimination is continued on until two players remain on the island, where then they are subject to a final contest. At the end of the season, Lightning is crowned winner of the season and is given the million dollars by Chris. Cameron however, wins in the alternate ending, which airs only in the United States and the Philippines.

Episodes

Total Drama: Revenge of the Island premiered on both Teletoon and Cartoon Network 2012. Teletoon has aired Total Drama: Revenge of the Island on Canada on Thursday nights at 7:00 p.m. EST from January 5, 2012, to April 12, 2012, while on June 5, 2012, the U.S. started airing it on Tuesday nights at 7:30 p.m. EST on Cartoon Network. However, the first worldwide airing for this season was in France via Canal+ Family.
SeasonEpisodesCountryNetworkFirst air dateLast air date
413AustraliaABC3May 28, 2012June 13, 2012
413CanadaTeletoonJanuary 5, 2012April 12, 2012
413FranceCanal+ FamilyDecember 21, 2011December 29, 2011
413United StatesCartoon NetworkJune 5, 2012August 28, 2012

Staff

Contestants

The contestant pool consists of 13 new characters, while several characters from the first three seasons make cameo appearances throughout the season.
ContestantOriginal TeamSwitched Team2nd Switched TeamMergeFinish
Staci
Miss Chatterbox
DakotaOriginal Elimination
B
Big, Burly, Brilliant Guy
DakotaDisqualified
Returned to game
Dawn
The Moonchild
Sam
The Nice Guy Gamer
Brick
The Cadet
Anne Maria
The Jersey Shore Reject
Dakota
The Fame Monger
Mike
Has a Great Personality and then Some
rowspan=6
Jo
The Take No Prisoners Jockette
-
Scott
The Devious
-
Zoey
The Indie Chick
-
Lightning
Uber Jock
-
Cameron
The Wide Eyed Bubble Boy
-

Cast

Other than Chris McLean and Chef Hatchet, this season featured an entirely new cast of characters. Another new character featured this season was Beverly. However, although he appeared in four episodes, he had no lines during any of his appearances, except the episode he got voted off on, "Ice Ice Baby", where he screams as he gets hurled.
Voice actorRoleEpisodes worked
Clé BennettChef HatchetWhole season
Carleigh BeverlyDakota9/13 episodes
Jon CorBrick8/13 episodes
Cory DoranMike10/13 episodes
Kevin DuhaneyCameronWhole season
Laurie ElliottJo11/13 episodes
Brian FroudSam8/13 episodes
Athena KarkanisAnne Maria8/13 episodes
Barbara MamaboloZoeyWhole season
Caitlynne MedrekDawn6/13 episodes
Ashley PetersStaci2/13 episodes
Christian PotenzaChris McLeanWhole season
Tyrone SavageLightningWhole season
James WallisScott12/13 episodes

Voting history

Returning cast

Several characters from previous seasons also made cameo appearances in this season.

Characters

Unlike previous seasons, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island features a new set of contestants, which are Anne Maria, B, Brick, Cameron, Dakota, Dawn, Jo, Lightning, Mike, Sam, Scott, Staci, and Zoey. All of the new contestants have their own audition tapes for the new season. They can be seen online on Teletoon's official website, online on Cartoon Network's official website, or on YouTube.

Main characters

There are two teams again in this season, which are the Toxic Rats and the Mutant Maggots. Here are the original members for each team as of Episode 1:
Note that at the start of the season, Brick was on the Mutant Maggots but then switched to the Toxic Rats in Episode 4, while in Episode 6 Jo and Scott volunteered to swap teams with one another, and in Episode 7 Dakota was brought back to replace Anne Maria and placed on the Maggots.

Original concepts

In the early production stages, the character lineup had twelve contestants, and most of them had body shapes, colors, clothing, heights, hair styles and faces that were completely different from the final designs. The thirteenth character who was added later was 'Jo'. His design was similar to that of the character used in the Total Drama Island special as the man in the car when Courtney "discovered" civilization. That character also happened to be DJ's prototype from the original Camp T.V. promos. Jo was later renamed to B while also getting his final design. The only other character to have their name changed was Mary; she ended up using the name 'Jo'. Despite the rename, this character underwent the least amount of change in design. Anne Maria, Brick, Lightning and Scott had minor modifications made to their outfits. Sam and Scott had different facial hair. The characters who had the most changes made to their designs were Dakota, Staci, and Zoey. Zoey's final design actually used the clothing and body shape from the original design for Dakota. Mike and Cameron had their ethnicities changed. Dawn, who was not in the original lineup, replaced an unused character named 'Molly'. Cameron's initial design would be reused for Jay and Mickey on .

Cameos

Although the original contestants did not compete again in this season, nine of them still had cameo appearances throughout the season: Bridgette, DJ, Duncan, Ezekiel, Gwen, Heather, Izzy, Lindsay, and Owen. However, at the beginning of the season, all of the original contestants were seen together on a yacht, revealing their status after Total Drama World Tour. They were all last seen leaving on the yacht right before the new contestants were first introduced.
A list of all the cameos in Total Drama: Revenge of the Island and their roles during their cameos are shown below:
EpisodeCharacterRole
1OwenAsked Chris why the boat with the original contestants was leaving, but then Chris blew him away with a bomb.
4IzzyDisguised as a gigantic mutated spider to terrorize and capture the contestants during the challenge. Also, captures Chef at the end.
5BridgetteUsed to help Chris chum the water and test the challenge along with Dakota.
6LindsayUsed as a judge at a fashion model contest and also used as a hostage against Sasquatchanakwa during a challenge to rescue her.
7EzekielFound underground in the mine by Anne Maria as the leader over giant mutated gophers.
8GwenWas found buried underground along with Sam as a damsel for the contestants to rescue in a challenge.
9DuncanUsed as challenge demonstrator, but escaped and later returned to blow up Mt. Chrismore.
10HeatherUsed as a test dummy to fly through rings of fire, but later steals the million dollar case and attempts to flee away.
11DJA food eater and a judge for the cooking challenge, but later runs away in fear.
12EzekielFound trying to get out of the mine he was stuck in, but then pushed back down by Lightning.
13EzekielUsed as one of the mutant creatures who were released to interfere with the final challenge.

The fifteen original contestants who no longer appeared after the first episode of the fourth season were Alejandro, Beth, Cody, Courtney, Eva, Geoff, Harold, Justin, Katie, Leshawna, Noah, Sadie, Sierra, Trent, and Tyler. Harold was thought to have a cameo as soon as Brian Froud was confirmed to be part of the cast, but it turned out that Brian voices Sam instead. Out of all the cameos, Ezekiel is the only original contestant who made cameos in more than one episode in the season, while DJ is the only cameoing character who has the same voice actor as a main character already with a major role.

Production

Total Drama: Revenge of the Island was developed and produced by Fresh T.V. Inc. and distributed by Cake Entertainment. Since all the characters in this season are completely new, the studio had to hire several new voice actors to come and voice the new characters, but Brian Froud has returned to voice Sam, one of the new characters. This season was directed by Keith Oliver and Chad Hicks, and Todd Kauffman had a small role in the making of this season. Production started in early 2010 when the season was first announced as Total Drama Reloaded, and the new characters were first released to the public by then. Production continued for almost a year well on schedule for a 2011 release date. However, major delays in 2011 caused the season's air date to be pushed back to 2012, since many scenes consisting of radioactive material had to be cut out or edited. There were some other things that did not make the final cut also, like some backgrounds, extra scenes, a flying squirrel concept and an episode about Dakota hosting the show when she locks Chef and Chris in a closet.

Air date conflict and production delays

As revealed by Christian Potenza on the Total Drama: Live Action Panel at Canada's 2011 Fan Expo, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island was originally scheduled to air in July 2011 in the United States and in September 2011 in Canada, but due to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the nuclear accident which caused many Japanese citizens to receive radiation poisoning, many staff members found some of the season's scenes of radioactive material and creatures to be considered insensitive to victims of the disaster. This initiated the producers decision to modify the storyline of the season in order to remove some of the radioactive references, leading to many scenes being edited out.
This process of re-editing the entire season required more production time, causing the U.S. air date to be delayed until September 2011, but failure to complete the full season by then now caused more delay for both the U.S. and Canada, until the season was fully finished by late 2011 for an early French airing. Now, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island aired three months later on Canada than originally expected on January 5, 2012, while the new rescheduled air date for the U.S. was not until June 5, 2012. However, France has aired the entire season in just 8 days from December 21, 2011 to December 29, 2011, becoming the only country in the world to air the season still in 2011. Although, they only aired the French spoken version of the season that did not include the voices from the original voice actors.
On May 28, 2012, Australia also began to air the season almost as fast as France did, but this time in English. Italy started to air the season on January 9, 2012, while Cartoon Network also aired the season in the Netherlands, Romania, Scandinavia and Hungary starting on March 5, 2012, Russia and Bulgaria on March 6, 2012, Poland and Africa on March 8, 2012 and Latin America on April 2, 2012. Originally, the season finale was set to air in the U.S. on September 11, 2012, but was instead pulled up to August 28 due to that date being a national memorial holiday. The final two episodes were then combined into a one-hour full-length season finale.

History

On March 25, 2011, all the shapes of all the 13 contestants were revealed in . On March 27, 2011, all the names and personalities of the contestants were revealed in a press release. On April 5, 2011, Christian Potenza posted a YouTube video of him recording the first line of Total Drama: Revenge of the Island. The quote was:
This line is used for the that Teletoon showed at the end of the Total Drama World Tour finale, which was first released on April 24, 2011. On June 1, 2011 Christian Potenza released on his Facebook the new season logo along with more final designs of the characters. On June 3, 2011 there were snapshots of radioactive Camp Wawanakwa. On August 25, 2011 the new Total Drama: Revenge of the Island flipbook was released. On August 28, 2011, the first official cast image was released to the public via Facebook. On September 24, 2011, the third official trailer was released which contained new scenes and confirmed the team assignments. On September 27, 2011, at the Total Drama: Live Action Panel at Canada's 2011 Fan Expo, Cory Doran confirmed all of Mike's personalities, and Christian Potenza said that the team name for the Radioactive Rats was scrapped. On October 13, 2011, Christian Potenza revealed some stuff about the intro of the season and said that promos will be out soon. On November 28, 2011 the official Canadian air date for the season was announced for January 5, 2012. On December 14, 2011 an animated interview with Chris McLean and a fan was released and revealed that the new team name is now "Toxic Rats". On December 18, 2011, the official Canadian TDRI website was launched that includes interactive menus and biographies of all the new contestants, as well as videos and season descriptions. On December 21, 2011, France began to air the season's episodes, two weeks before Canada. On Christmas 2011, all of the auditions of the 13 new characters were released on Teletoon's official Total Drama site. Cartoon Network viewers were able to vote for Zoey before the finale due to them airing Episode 12 and 13 in the same day.

Reception

Total Drama: Revenge of the Island has received mostly mixed to positive reviews. In the United States, over 3.3 million people have viewed the season, with over 51% growth over last year, making Total Drama: Revenge of the Island the #1 telecast of the year for Cartoon Network. Tom McGillis said in an interview that both Total Drama: Revenge of the Island and Total Drama Island are the highest rated shows on the series. This season has been viewed in over 100 countries, worldwide. On Metacritic, the season currently holds a 7.3, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".

Media

Madman Entertainment is set to release Part 1 of Season 4 of Total Drama on August 1, 2014 on a Region 4 DVD in Australia with plans to release Part 2 in the fall.