Ah, Pahkitew Island. The final Total Drama season to follow the
traditional formula and perhaps the least known of all the seven seasons.
Plenty of people are surprised to find out that this season even exists, and honestly,
that checks out. The cast here is small and we have incredibly little time to get to know them,
and the personalities we get this time around are so off-the-wall that, predictably,
Pahkitew Island performed pretty poorly. But in true Total Drama fashion, we got a great gamut
of thirteen distinct personalities which all deserved to be recognized, so let’s get to it.
I’m Brad with WickedBinge, and today, we’re breaking down the third generation of Total
Drama contestants, starting with the most benevolent and ending with the most vile.
As always, let’s start with the most noble and work our way down… These characters are The Good.
Our Gold Medal goes to Ella because… well, duh.
Ella is perhaps the most good character Total Drama has ever seen, being a thinly-veiled parody
of a Disney Princess. Her songbird-sweetness and Florence Nightingale graces endeared her to almost
all of her fellow competitors, and even some of the island’s feral fauna. But all this makes Ella
“too much of a good thing”, as it were. Her romantic view of the world is highly impractical,
and her time on the island sets her up for some pretty rough collisions with reality. Namely,
she gets bullied relentlessly by Sugar, and Dave unintentionally breaks her heart by rejecting her
fantastical notions of him. During this time, she never raises a hand to defend herself.
This makes her a bit of a martyr and the show never really does anything with that.
Her undoing is self-inflicted, and she leaves the island with a song about her unresolved issues.
Is Ella a good character, certainly yes. But she’s too good - she’s so good that she’s naive,
and that might win her a gold medal here, but as we see, it did her no favors elsewhere.
A more practical good is our Silver Medalist, Jasmine.
Actually, the word ‘practical’ really summarizes Jasmine as a character. She’s a survivalist with
a penchant for getting others to believe in themselves. She’s also an incredibly headstrong
character who sticks by her sense of integrity. Notably, Jasmine worries about intimidating others
and wants to be accepted - she eventually finds acceptance in Shawn, a fellow outcast. And while
most of her development did revolve around this budding romance, she also demonstrated herself
as brave, loyal, and able to stand up for herself. However her most defining moment is in the finale.
After losing faith in Shawn’s honesty and his feelings for her, Jasmine is offered
the chance to torment him for it in the last leg of the challenge to decide the
competition’s winner. Notably, Jasmine stops herself from acting on her anger, and instead
chooses to forgive Shawn because she cares for him. It’s definitely a testament to her character
that pays off in either ending. Jasmine’s a really good person, guys. We should all be like her.
For Bronze, we present Rodney, a simple farm-boy cursed to fall in love with
any woman who gives him a sideways glance, and we do mean that literally.
To be clear, Rodney’s no playboy about it. In fact, the objects of his affection are never even
aware of their significance. But that doesn’t stop Rodney from gutting himself emotionally while he
tries to sort out his feelings. The big lug is undoubtedly our most respectful contestant for
this reason - his commitment to monogamy leaves him regularly devastated and yet he soldiers on,
much to the bewilderment of his former beloveds. But Rodney’s no slacker in the competition
either - while his thoughts are often scattered and his heart perpetually torn, his bulk makes him
a valuable asset and he appears to use his powers for good. To be so sheltered, and so oblivious,
Rodney’s a sweet guy and a romantic. Here’s to hoping he finds the right one out there someday.
Next we have Sky, the Olympian athlete in the making.
Sky was consistently our straight-man despite her athletic prowess. Standing contrast
to past athletes like Jo and Eva, Sky wasn’t hyper-competitive nor inclined towards aggression.
She was also a particularly friendly person who could be counted on to defuse tense situations
and play mediator when needed. In fact, it almost feels like, with all the outlandish personalities
surrounding her, Sky was sort of downplayed by the writers so we’d have an easygoing
point-of-view every now and again. Most of Sky’s drama comes in the form of Dave, a boy-next-door
who gradually charms her into a disastrous will they-won’t they. She does instigate a bit
of the friction in this relationship in fairness (misleading Dave of her intentions); regardless,
she still does her best to alleviate a messy situation. When that fails, she doesn’t let it
throw her off her game, nor does she stop caring about the people around her. She even manages
to find a positive thing to say about Sugar, something few other competitors have accomplished.
Despite her messy on-set romantic life, Sky does manage to make it through the game to the finale,
thanks to her resourcefulness and her dedication. She ranks where she does because,
for her bad taste in men, she’s a good person, and her time on the show makes that clear.
Shawn, the doomsday prepper, comes next. An indie character with a certain proclivity
towards beating down the undead, Shawn is a good mix of outlandish and reasonable,
much like Sky. Unlike Sky, however, Shawn is somewhat unintelligent emotionally,
something that comes around to bite him in his pursuit of romancing Jasmine. It also makes
him a somewhat polarized figure in regards to his loyalty. On the one hand, Shawn is a survivor and
that makes him valuable given the conditions that Pahkitew subjects the competitors to.
Not only that, he’s willing to share his expertise with those who need it. On the other hand, though,
he’s a bit of a coward who’s willing to leave people out to dry, even his crush. His worst is
during the finale, where he actually goes back on his offer to split his prize money with Jasmine.
His shortcomings aside, though, Shawn’s pretty cool in his element.
He’s a unique presence if nothing else, and he definitely earns his spot in the finale.
Next is our resident LARPer Leonard, who doesn’t last very long for obvious reasons.
Despite having apparent good intentions, Leonard is so preoccupied with his fantasy universe that
he’s impractical, even useless, in the real one. His delusions that he can do magic are perhaps his
biggest drawback, and they end up costing him the game. He’s the only member of the cast to return
for another season, and his time away hasn’t done much to curb his overactive imagination,
though he does manage to find his people, seeing as he found Tammy. Leonard’s heart
is definitely in the right place, even if his brain doesn’t seem to be. Like any good witch,
he uses his powers to stand against evildoers and, honestly, you can never fault a guy for that.
Then we have Sammy, the Good Twin. Well, sort of.
Sammy has spent her life as “Samey” by the time we meet her, repeatedly humiliated and scorned by
her wrathful sister Amy. So we can’t blame her for being resentful, especially when her time
on the island proves that she doesn’t really deserve it. She’s incredibly kind and helpful,
even going out into the woods at the crack of dawn to help gather supplies.
She hears out other people’s suggestions that she stand up for herself, though these all
ultimately backfire. In the end, she’s reduced to cheating, and having Amy voted off in her place.
The thing is, though, the show doesn’t really give her the benefit of the doubt.
Her time concludes with her and Amy arguing in the cannon, literally unable to be differentiated,
as if to say that Samey wasn’t any better in the end. All things considered,
this was a pretty underwhelming arc for the fandom and their lukewarm response sort of echoed that.
Is Sammy a victim? Well, yes. But she isn’t only a victim - her time on the island helps her to grow
a backbone. But then they punish her for it, and send her away with her evil sister in tow.
For the unorthodox (dare we say, bad) way that the twins were handled, though,
Sammy was one of our nicest competitors. It really is a shame that she never caught a break.
With our Good section wrapped up, we now begin our very small Grey Area…
Starting with Beardo… just about perfectly neutral.
To even comment on Beardo’s personality is hard because we see so little of it. He appears to be
shy and a little aloof, if his facial expressions are anything to go by, and the only contributions
he makes are in the form of sound effects he produces with his mouth, even at inopportune
times. All this points to him being a pretty jaded individual. He definitely leaves no footprints
though - he hurts about as much as he helps which is to say… not very much. And being the first
camper to get the boot is always hard, but he’s at least gracious about his fate. He even admits
that he enjoyed meeting the people on his team. Certainly, there wasn’t a lot of time this season
to flesh out the characters, so we can’t fault Beardo for being the first to go.
It is unfortunate though - had he found his people earlier, maybe he would have stood a chance.
Our next grey is Topher, the Wannabe Host who’s only real ambition is to take over Total Drama.
Topher might be a bit of an antagonist - he certainly isn’t a nice person, anyway - but we
rank him where we do because he doesn’t antagonize his fellow competitors so much as he does Chris.
There are instances where his penchant for taking over as host inconveniences his team,
something that they’ve all commented on, but it’s less about the game with Topher and more
about the bigger picture he sees. But he does manage to win Chris over by being his sycophant,
only to turn around and backstab the host for his own gain. This was one of the more
interesting arcs of the season, as it gave Chris a glimpse of his mortality,
introducing him to a previously unseen level of insecurity. He does, however,
best the guy at his own game, and as he’s eliminated, Topher can only gape.
The thing about bullying Chris is that you can’t really say the guy doesn’t have it
coming. Still, for as harmless as Topher ultimately was, he was incredibly vain,
selfish, and dominative. He didn’t do anything that he did for noble reasons,
nor did he have a problem with Chris being a generally bad person. He just wanted to be him.
Moving on from unintentional evil, let’s take a look at a guy who wanted to be evil and
failed at every turn: Max. Even Ella could only describe Max as a ‘little gnome’ for his crass
and obnoxious nature. A wannabe supervillain, Max was unintelligent, uncharismatic, unmotivated,
and incredibly unfortunate. But all these things aside, he seems like a pretty nice kid.
He at least has a soft spot for children and pretty good manners, and unlike his ‘sidekick’,
Max never tries to hurt anyone. He admits himself his secondary goal is simply “to meet people”,
since he “doesn’t get out much”. Still, his general ineptness made it difficult for him
to succeed at anything relating to his evil grand designs, and he even gets disqualified
arbitrarily, without doing anything wrong himself. Or at least, not paying for it.
Max is hard to place - it seems an insult to all villains to label him as one. So we’ll say he’s
the very bottom of our grey pile, unpleasant to be sure, but a far cry from truly wicked.
With that said, we arrive at The Dark Side… These characters are The Bad and The Evil.
Next we have Pageant Queen Sugar.
The fandom has long suspected that Sugar is meant to be a parody of Honey Boo Boo,
a realty-show child pageant queen whose popularity was at its peak when Pahkitew premiered. Sugar is
appropriately ostentatious and self-centered. She takes every opportunity to make a spectacle
of herself, never realizing that the audience is laughing at her and not with her. Not only that,
she’s an incredibly antagonistic presence on the island despite her overexuberance. She
lies without remorse and rarely with cause, she enjoys seeing other people get hurt, and somehow
manages to make you pity some pretty terrible people for having to deal with her. So for that,
we place her here. May she never resurface again.*
Then we have Amy, the evil twin.
Another weird villain to have, Amy seems like she’d be a shoe-in for the main finale,
but she isn’t. Rather than a cutthroat Aryan -beauty ice-queen,
Amy’s incredibly petulant and only really interested in dominating her weaker sister.
In fact, Amy really only exists to be spiteful. She’s not particularly ambitious in hoe the
plays the game, she just orders around Sammy and derides her in front of everyone. As mentioned,
this leads to Sammy snapping and poisoning her, leading to her being eliminated from
the competition. Notably though, Amy manages to come back to right the wrongs that have
been done to her, demonstrating a shred of conviction. But even this falls short,
and she and her sister are sent blasting off into the horizon.
Amy probably could have been a great final antagonist. She certainly felt like she had
potential, but this never goes anywhere. Nevertheless, we can comfortably give her
Bronze for Most Evil, considering the lengths she was willing to go to torment her own family.
Our Silver entrant is remembered as the worst possible break-up: Dave.
To be fair, Total Drama does have a habit of sort of “pairing folks off” and it was fun to see that
trope averted. But the souring relationship between Dave and Sky really did expose this guy
as manipulative and incredibly caustic. Originally a germaphobe but otherwise pretty tame, he becomes
increasingly stalker-ish and entitled as Sky starts to slip away. Perhaps his worst moment
is the finale, when he makes numerous attempts on Sky’s safety to punish her for rejecting him.
When offered a chance at the million he swore to burn it in front of Sky, to punish her.
The thing is, Dave isn’t 100% at fault for how things went down: Sky did mislead him about
her intentions and it could be argued that she strung him along for being useful. But you can’t
even give him that because he makes everything so much worse for himself by being a venomous
person underneath all that. In true Total Drama fashion, it costs him his dignity, and his hair.
And who are we to defy the gods? So Dave gets Silver, but loses out on Gold thanks to one other.
Of course, we’re talking about Scarlett.
Scarlett’s a quiet brainiac who only talks when she gets excited, at which point,
she becomes pretty talkative. This charming feature is her whole personality at first,
and then she gets suckered into an alliance with Max which forces her to do all the heavy lifting,
but then the island starts to malfunction. Here, Scarlett’s true nature (and design)
are revealed and it turns out the girl is a grade-A malefactor. With the island at
her fingertips, Scarlett demands the prize money and offers an ultimatum:
Chris surrenders or he and the contestants die in a horrible fiery explosion.
To be fair, other characters have cheated for the money in the past. But Scarlett was willing to
“permanently eliminate” a whole cluster of teenagers who had never personally wronged her
for her goals. And that’s before you realize that her evil nature had been foreshadowed,
particularly in her audition tape, which posits world domination (or worldwide devastation) as
her ultimate goal. She also traumatized her kid brother with his own toys at one point which is
just… I mean, ouch. But credit where it’s due, Scarlett was a really good villain, even if she
was more of a plot contrivance than a character. We present her with the Gold for that reason.
And that’s all three casts of the great Total Drama. If you haven’t already, be sure to check
out our first two videos on the subject and be sure to drop us a line in the comments
about what sort of TD content you guys might want to see in the future. Hit the ‘subscribe’
button on your way out and of course, stay wicked.