I remember, a lot of people online were pretty mad when they found out Total Drama:
Revenge of the Island would be an all-new cast. Lots of people were expecting reused character
traits and rehashed story beats, but Total Drama did well for itself in providing us with thirteen
new faces. In fact, I’d venture to say that it was this cast which really drove home how good
Total Drama was at characterization. While yes, every teen on the screen has sold their soul for
a slim chance at fame, and we’re expected to laugh at their misfortunes because of that,
the show knew it needn’t always be irreverent. With this cast, they were really able to flex on
how good they were at squeezing genuine emotion out of a cast of caricatures.
I’m Brad with WickedBinge... Here to count down the whole gamut. This
is Total Drama Island Second Generation Cast: Good to Evil. Let’s get started.
As always, we’ll start with the most noble character and work our way down…
These characters are The Good.
In first place, with the Gold Medal of Good... We proudly present Dawn.
To be as otherworldly and ethereal as she is, Dawn comes across on the right side of creepy.
She automatically gets points for filling the “friend to all the woodland creatures”
role that DJ vacated. But Dawn demonstrates the ability to empathize with savage, mutated
fauna as well. Even more remarkably, she shows a pronounced goodwill to all her competitors which,
while perturbing in some cases, was wholly genuine.
Her apparent ability to read the auras people radiated, too, helped her to stay
out of situations where her powers could be used for evil, intentionally or otherwise.
Izzy’s popularity in the original series proved, everyone loves a wild card.
But Dawn’s eccentricities are never played as “crazy” in earnest - she’s different, sure, but
she’s comfortable in her version of normal. And that’s a theme that comes up a lot with this cast,
so it really drives home the point that, among them, Dawn is our Gold-Standard Good.
Brick, the Cadet, is our Silver Standard.
Remarkably, Brick is perhaps the only nuanced portrayal of what military training
does to someone’s psyche. (That checks out, I guess, because Americans didn’t write him.)
While yes, he’s disciplined, commanding, and competitive, he also has a hard time when there’s
no one telling him what to do. It’s also implied that his chilled exterior is a sort of evolved
defense to protect an insecure and sensitive center. But it says a lot about Brick that,
despite his training and his insecurities, he’s no robot. In fact, he can be counted on
to never leave one of his comrades behind, to respect the strength of his competition,
and even to courageously open himself up to new experiences. His decision to attend fashion
school after the fashion challenge, for example, honestly felt like a little arc all his own.
Brick is a really sweet guy, actually. His main role in the season he appears in, is to be Total
Drama’s resident pain magnet. Regardless, he’s helpful, courtesy, and genuine for his brief
and occasionally painful time on the island, and so he places here. At ease, soldier.
Our Bronze Medal of Good goes to Cameron, the Bubble Boy.
Having been condemned to life in a bubble as a child, Cameron’s lack of physical
strength and social skills necessitated an incredibly high intellect to counter them,
a challenge he apparently rose to meet with gusto. Indeed, Cameron is certainly among Total Drama’s
brainiest competitors and (among them) certainly the most sympathetic. A good example of this
is his gradual friendship with the caustic Anne Maria, and another is in ‘his’ ending winning
the grand prize at the end of the season, where Cameron actually splits the prize thirteen ways.
Contrasted with Zoey, who’d been driven to hostility by Scott, and Lightning, who was just
hostile, Cameron was perhaps the most inoffensive finalist Total Drama ever featured. He only ever
used his intellect as a means of aiding others or in self-defense. However, his friendship with
Mike sort of keeps him from a higher tier, because it allows him to be manipulated by Mal later on.
In fact, he actually becomes a pretty pivotal plot in Mal’s grand designs. Regardless,
Cameron deserves his high placement for his many merits. We defy anyone to say otherwise.
Next is Sam. At first glance, he doesn’t seem like much. His lack of physical strength and
incredibly-consistent misfortune really left you thinking he would get the boot
early on. But Sam eventually reveals himself a far more than a punching bag,
being one of the kindest competitors on the island. As we’ve mentioned,
his biggest accomplishment to date is finding the soul in Dakota underneath all the lip gloss.
But Sam did plenty on his own feet as well. Most notably, he kicks his addiction to video games.
Well, not addiction, so much as dependance. We see, when he’s in the spotlight, Sam is held back
by his awkwardness - this is something he becomes better at handling as he persists in the game.
He also returns with the sole intent to be mutated, just so he can relate to his girlfriend
better. All these things help him land on his feet, very comfortably, among our good guys.
Next, Mike. To be real, Mike probably wouldn’t fly today as a concept because the show gets so
much wrong about DID. Still, we can judge him based on his actions, rather than his writing,
because even without his many personas, Mike is a pretty good dude. He’s at least sympathetic
in how he tries to hide his disorder to avoid ridicule, and while it is treated very comically,
they at least try not to make him the butt of many mean-spirited jokes. Mike is pretty dignified
in his own right and certainly well-meaning. He’s kind, upbeat, and somewhat meek - great
fodder for a budding romance with Zoey and a troublesome love-triangle with Anne Marie.
To avoid going into Mike’s many alters as their own characters, with one exception who you’ll meet
later, we can also say that Mike cares deeply for his other personas as well as the other
competitors, something that ultimately plays into the crooked hands of another. But for the
most part, Mike, and all his personas, appear to be good people. It should be noted though,
that his personalities deserved better than what they got. You know they did.
Then there’s Zoey, our indie chick.
Going by visual development for the season, it appears that Zoey was added pretty late in the
game. Regardless, she made quite an impact in the two seasons she appeared in for her formidable,
but also vulnerable, characterization. Originally somewhat insecure, Zoey came
across as over-eager to make friends and this sometimes played into evil
hands. She also gave off that “not like other girls” vibe that usually heralds pretension,
however this isn’t to say that her views or her insecurities make her elitist. Actually,
she’s perfectly nice and friendly, tolerant of differences, and fiercely protective of those she
cares about. She even has her own alter-ego, in a sense, in the form of Commando Zoey,
which only comes out when she needs to uphold her own honor, or that pdf someone she cares about.
Zoey is not dominated by her relationship with Mike - that is,
she has plenty of characterizing moments which constitute her as a good person
outside of it. But she really does shine when her relationship with Mike is at the forefront,
most notably in her ongoing fight with Mal, who keeps her from him. Zoey’s a really great
character, guys. We should all be so lucky to have someone like her in our corner.
Moving on, here we find Dakota
For all the absurd stuff that came out of this era in Total Drama history, Dakota helped keep
us grounded in it ultimately being a reality show. Because her father was already rich and
she had no need for the prize money, Dakota entered the competition with the pronounced
intention to win herself a spin-off. This backfires predictably - in her vein to someday
be the ‘biggest thing ever’, she quickly gets eliminated and refuses to leave, prompting Chris
to demoralize her as one of his interns. This riches-to-rags tale softens her considerably and
further drives her into the arms of Sam, who assists in smoothing down her rougher edges.
Dakota also undergoes a monstrous transformation as a result of Chris’ carelessness regarding the
radiation he exposes her to. In this form, she really comes through as a good friend to Sam
and really cementing her transition to a becoming a better person, standing up to a mutant for Sam
and even abandoning her pursuit of a spin-off in order to start a relationship with him.
Dakota’s a good lesson for all of us that we shouldn’t write people off - she enters the
series with a shallow dream but good intentions, and those good intentions are ultimately what wins
out with her. On a literally-corrosive island, that’s a good thing to see.
Moving on, let’s take a look at our neutrals, guys who don’t mean any harm, but fall short in word
or deed of the ‘Good’ spots on our list. This is The Grey Area. Our first few are largely
inoffensive, however, and only stumble at the finish line for their lack of characterization.
For example, let’s take a look at “Silent B” Beverley, otherwise known as B.
B is the least vocal of any Total Drama contestant, not for any particular reason
other than a presumed comfortability with silence. B is a smart guy - at least inventive,
but his total lack of dialogue makes him difficult to rank - possibly unrankable by our traditional
methods. We can say that B obviously means no harm - he’s enough of a team player to utilize
his creativity for his partners. Despite his silence, he wins the favor of his teammates
and the enmity of a villain. This indicates he does care about the people around him.
But B ultimately gets no character arc, due in part to his brief time on the show.
We can’t say a thing against him, but that’s about all you can say for him, too.
This isn’t true for our subsequent entrant, Staci, the Compulsive Liar.
To be fair, we never actually learn if Staci is lying, but it is very heavily implied that
the many tales she tells about her gilded ancestry are complete bull.
And unfortunately, that’s all Staci seemed to be able to talk about, which quickly
estranged her from her teammates. At the first elimination ceremony of the fourth season,
she loses her claim to the prize (and all her hair) for this reason.
In retrospect, Staci is probably the tamest way Total Drama could have portrayed a compulsive
liar. Staci isn’t at all a threat - she doesn’t lie about other people, for example, but she’s
also pathetically insecure and inauthentic. You could argue that she has no ill will to bear,
but she doesn’t last long enough for us to definitively see if that’s true.
So we’ll leave her here, just south of neutral.
Here is also where we find Anne Marie,
a Snooki-esque Brooklyn-ite with the hairspray to prove it.
Anne Marie was clearly meant as a parody of materialistic and shallow reality stars,
similar to Dakota, however she is another case that proves “vapid” doesn’t mean “incompetent”.
In fact, Anne Marie is one of our most active competitors, if somewhat unintentionally.
However, this ambition doesn’t translate well in the goodness department,
which places her fairly low on our list at the bottom of our ‘Grey’ pile.
Anne Marie is unfortunately very hostile to her peers as well as very selfish.
While certainly not as openly aggressive as others, she will defend herself readily
(particularly her hair) without much provocation. She’s also remembered for being a wrench thrown
in Zoey and Mike’s relationship when she falls for his personality Vino. But we can at least
say for Anne Maria that her ambitions never lead her down a dark path. Lacking though
her principles might be, she does have them. Her endgame, though, really seals her as a
not-that-nice person - she’s willing to succumb to Zeke’s advances for the diamond he offers her,
and quits the competition in an attempt to pawn it off, demonstrating that, at the end of the day,
all she really cares about is money, and herself.
But selfishness alone doesn’t make someone a villain, especially not on an island
literally brimming with toxicity. So what makes a villain in such
a wasteland? Let’s take a look. These characters are The Bad and Evil.
Then there’s Jo, the Jockette.
Jo was probably the closest we came to rehashing an old contestant - I honestly would call her
a continuation of Eva’s early character, before she went crackers, that is. Like Eva, Jo is hyper
competitive and adamant about being the best. She feels due a level of respect, something that comes
out in her interactions with others. Further, her short temper leaves her difficult to work with.
Indeed, she only forms alliances with the intent to use or even betray her comrades,
and has no qualms being underhanded in how she uses her amazing strength.
Jo is definitely a loner. Though she appears to genuinely want to be loved and accepted deep down,
she visibly lacks the tools to get there. When in others’ company, she is territorial,
and thus isolating, and this costs her the game in the fourth season.
It also does her no favors in the fifth, where she gets ousted early for her uncooperativeness.
It might be said of her, though, that Jo is a pretty good person to have as a rival - in this
role, she’s likely the best ‘friend’ that her adversary Lightning was able to make.
Speaking of Rudolph “Lightning” Jackson, we have a Bronze Medal of Evil with his name on it.
It probably burns him up to receive Bronze, too, because Lightning is characterized by his egotism
and unsportsmanlike arrogance. AN athlete sorely lacking in the thought department,
Lightning had none of Tyler’s loyalty or Sky’s good humor. Actually, he was one of
those unfortunate instances where “brawn” is synonymous with “bully”. In fact, Lightning’s
general douchebaggery operates under almost no provocation. Good examples of this can be found
throughout his relationship with his competitors, perhaps none so much as Cameron, with whom he
shares a very ’80s teen movie-esque rivalry. Perhaps the most damning evidence we have that
Lightning is just a bad dude in general, is how bleak the ending is if he wins,
compared to Cameron’s. You can just tell, no one likes the guy. But to Lightning’s credit,
it shouldn’t be said that he hasn’t earned his arrogance for his athletic prowess and tenable
determination. Is he a good guy, no. But he’s good at what he does, we’ll say that for him.
Finally, our heart of down-home darkness, Scott, takes SIlver.
Scott might actually be Total Drama’s cleverest villain, both in terms of writing and in his
character. Unlike our last few antagonists, Scott isn’t terribly charismatic, nor is he trying to
be. He doesn’t care about manipulating people or using them to get ahead, he schemes simply because
he enjoys it. And that’s… pretty brilliant. At the expense of any particular emotional arc,
Scott sort of gets to be a force of general chaos, a trait we see again in Mal. He causes trouble
because he thinks its funny. Him not necessarily caring about his team lets him be an antagonist
in different ways, namely acting as a saboteur against his own team. His most villainous deed
is the wrench he throws in the budding romantic relationship between Mike and Zoey,
even blackmailing Mike off the island. Scott is one of several contestants to return,
and his tendencies are curtailed significantly. He even finds himself outdone, and terrified, by Mal.
To be as odious as Scott is, he’s equally irreverent. He doesn’t have some larger
motive to accomplish - he isn’t trying to prove his worth or some cliche - he just enjoys being
devious. His return largely establishes this as a facet of his personality. Truthfully,
that’s pretty good writing. Sometimes it’s nice to have a villain who’s evil because
they want to be - it certainly makes it more entertaining when they finally get theirs.
So Scott’s our most evil, or he would be, if not for one other.
Of course, for our Gold Medal of Evil…
We present the aptly-named Malevolent One, known otherwise as Mal.
Mal is a really weird case, being a malicious and outright ruthless split personality of
the contestant Mike. Unlike the other personalities, who tended to fear him,
Mal sought to separate himself from Mike and even ‘overthrow’ him as the dominant persona. To
illustrate the battle for Mike’s subconscious, Total Drama literally took us into his head to
watch the action play out. And that raises more than a few questions considering Total
Drama was supposed to be reality television. Like, what if you were watching X Factor and
all the sudden they started broadcasting from inside Simon’s brain? Admit it, it’s weird.
But, that plot contrivance aside, Mal was undoubtedly Total Drama’s wickedest villain,
and for the absurdity of his concept, he was played straight as a violent criminal. Total
Drama gave us a Psycho Killer with a Chainsaw and a Hook, but this emo-haired beanpole was scarier.
Further, Mal only appears in one season, and his single-minded focus on his evil ambitions left
him nothing in the way of redeeming qualities. Instead, he filled his air-time with horrors,
hijacking machines, traumatizing the competition, and managing the perfect balance of cold composure
and chaotic evil. He’s so evil, in fact, that Mike has to hit a reset button in his brain
(…okay?) in order to be rid of him for good.
The length and breadth of Mal’s criminal history is unknown,
though it apparently even gave Duncan pause when they were in juvenile hall together. Regardless,
we remember him as Total Drama’s most vile contestant. But he rests in pieces now,
thanks to Mike’s bravery, and so let the people say, “Good riddance.” But real quick,
in the comment section, do you guys think he’s worse than Chris?
But what do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
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