Top 10 Best Early Eliminations in Total Drama
Total Drama is a show full of generally great or even amazing characters. However, since it is a parody of reality TV shows, they have to eliminate some players regularly. This means that each season, there are characters who get significantly less screen time than others due to being eliminated early in the show.It is easy for those early-eliminated characters to feel like they are discarded without any interesting development. However, there are quite a few times when Total Drama does a good job of giving the characters eliminated early a purpose or making them enjoyable and well-characterized. This allows viewers to feel satisfied with everything we got from those characters, despite their early exits.
These are the Total Drama eliminations we will be looking at today. We want to highlight the best eliminations of characters that happened early in a season. If possible, it would be good to avoid characters like Dakota, who was eliminated early but still managed to have constant screen time despite her elimination. That kind of situation takes away from the impressive aspects of an early boot, in my opinion.
That being said, let's get started!
Eva was the whole reason I made this list in the first place. It's pretty much a tutorial on how to make a first elimination satisfying and one of the reasons why The Big Sleep is probably my favorite episode in Island.
First, Eva was a very well-defined character for how early she was eliminated. She is probably the strongest contestant in all of Total Drama when it comes to physical strength. However, it is really easy to make her angry, and said anger is quite destructive.
This leads to the second reason why this elimination is so great: she was eliminated because of her anger issues. Personally, a character being eliminated because of flaws they couldn't handle is a very good way to eliminate someone, since it allows for defining more of the personality of the person who gets eliminated. Eva is probably the best way to do this, with her becoming super angry after losing her MP3 player, and her team now being scared of what she could do to them if she becomes angry again, therefore voting her off.
The additional detail that makes this so great is that we see that Eva actually regrets having those anger issues, which adds some humanity to her character that I hope didn't suddenly disappear when she came back later on in the season. But the best part of that elimination is that it serves to make Heather look like a real threat to the audience, and that she should be stopped.
The reason why Eva lost her MP3 in the first place is because Heather stole it from her, specifically to make her angry and to have the Killer Bass eliminate their strongest player. This is honestly Heather's best plan and best moment as an antagonist, since she actually does a good job hiding her true intentions, and it is an overall good strategic move to eliminate Eva as soon as possible.
So, Eva was really good for how many episodes she was in, the way she was eliminated is tied to her personality in a natural way, and her elimination made Heather peak as... more
I didn't expect it at first when making the list and going through the early eliminations in all the Total Drama seasons, but I realized that the Fashion Bloggers really got one of the best early eliminations in Total Drama, and overall the best early elimination in Ridonculous Race.
First, something that Ridonculous Race in particular is good at is at least making the characters with less development really funny, and yeah, the Fashion Bloggers are pretty damn funny throughout the time they lasted. They are so stereotypical in the way they talk about fashion that everything else is funny.
However, the Fashion Bloggers highlight another strength of Ridonculous Race that we sadly don't see that much in a lot of the early boots, but that we do see here. In Ridonculous Race, most teams get some cute character development of some sort, even if it is very minor. Here we got a really small, but nevertheless really appreciated, arc where Jen and Tom are fighting over who got the idea of their blog, but near the end of the episode, they learn that it doesn't really matter, and that at the end of the day, they are a team.
This is the kind of stuff I like to see in Total Drama, and it makes it so that even though the Fashion Bloggers got eliminated early, we are at least happy for the fact they learned something more important than winning the show in the end.
Unsurprisingly, it is easier to make an early boot satisfying when it's on an already pre-established character. I mean, you can't be too mad that a player didn't make it very far if they already got far in a previous season or at least got some strong character development or something.
To be fair, I don't think they did much with Harold in Action despite him going far, but that is more the fault of Action being Action. Also, he was the best character in Island either way, so I can say that he got enough glory moments in previous seasons for me not to be mad that he got eliminated.
That being said, even without that in consideration, Harold, and in fact most other members of Team Victory, got some great early eliminations, and it's mostly because of one man: Alejandro. Remember when I said Eva had a satisfying elimination partly because it established Heather as a threat, and that I wished she did more of these kinds of plans? Alejandro pretty much does these kinds of plans throughout most of World Tour.
Harold was pretty much his first victim, by manipulating him into eliminating himself for honor. The scene of Harold's elimination is very funny, by the way. Not only that, but Harold was entertaining enough throughout the few episodes he was in, and even after that, during the aftermaths and the final, he was entertaining as well. He was part of I'm Winning This, after all, aka the best Total Drama World Tour song!
You can probably guess it, Bridgette is here for pretty much the same reason as Harold, except she was eliminated one episode later, so I guess it's less impressive.
In the case of Bridgette in particular, we are able to see the extent of Alejandro's charm, and see how dangerous he can be to any female contestant. If there is one thing you could argue Bridgette's elimination has over Harold's, it is that we saw the impact of Alejandro's manipulation skills on her relationship with Geoff, and how she had to try and get her respect back from Geoff, which is some good stuff.
Also, we got two top-tier Total Drama World Tour songs from that event, with Stuck to a Pole and I'm Sorry. But yeah, overall I have nothing really wrong to say about Bridgette's elimination in World Tour.
Also, I could say an honorable mention to Leshawna and DJ in World Tour for the same reasons as Bridgette and Harold, but I don't have them on my list because Leshawna had to go through some character derailment from her learning to respect Heather more after Action in order to get eliminated. I am not the biggest fan of DJ's animal curse plotline. They are still good enough, I guess.
I am surprising myself by not having Revenge of the Island characters higher, but hey, the competition was tougher than I expected.
One of the strongest aspects of ROTI is how this season managed to make every single character in the season fill their purpose, including those eliminated early. B is no exception. B is a really fun character to watch. He never talks, but he is a genius who can build complex contraptions out of nothing really fast.
This makes B one of the most competent campers in Revenge of the Island. However, this is precisely what made Scott target him with a scheme to eliminate him. Yep! We have another early elimination that served to establish the main villain of the season as a threat! I mean, when it works, it works! What can I say?
By spreading the rumor that B hates his teammates and making it look like he made their team lose the challenge, Scott caused B's elimination. Because B was such a cool and chill character, it does feel unfair that he gets eliminated this early, but in a good way.
You probably guessed it at this point. Dawn is here for the same reasons as B, except she was eliminated after B, so I guess it's less impressive.
She is a very fun and lovable character who was a victim of one of Scott's plans after he learned she knew about his true intentions. In fact, I am not alone when I say she is a lovable weirdo, because despite the low number of episodes she appears in, she is one of the most popular characters in the franchise!
If anything, the most common complaint I hear about Revenge of the Island is that Dawn's elimination was unfair and she should have stayed longer. However, I disagree with that because the writers did pretty much all they needed to do with Dawn for that season, and the other remaining characters were much more important to keep if you ask me.
If anything, the fact that people don't like this early elimination shows how great it is. They made an early boot an instant fan favorite, and you just hate Scott even more for causing that elimination, which is good because he is the villain of the season.
If I have to be honest, despite All Stars' many flaws, the early boots in that show weren't too mishandled. Not only is it a pre-established cast, but it is an All Stars cast, which means that they all had their glory moments before and don't necessarily need to be fleshed out more. So eliminating any of them early usually isn't too much of a wasted opportunity.
Even outside of that fact, aside from Lindsay reaching flanderized levels of dumb here and Heather not keeping the Chris immunity statue there, the early eliminations do make sense. Lightning's elimination in particular is pretty solid. He already was a finalist last season, so of course he would be eliminated at some point, and having already been fleshed out, he doesn't have as much opportunity to create tensions in the show as other characters.
I feel like him being eliminated for how full of himself he is, is appropriate, on top of having Jo wanting him gone for the potential threat he can be due to his physical prowess. I can't say any bad things about that elimination, and I can even say there is some substance to it here and there, rather than a character being eliminated for the sake of it.
As you may know, I don't like Total Drama Action for its tendency of having absolutely nothing happening. However, DJ's elimination was one of the very few interesting things (in a good way) that this season had to offer.
I found DJ doing an alliance with Chef an interesting storyline, and DJ ending up leaving the show to not feel guilty about that alliance was kind of sweet.
I will say, Leonard is here just to have some Pahkitew representation on the list. However, you could see Leonard as the representative of every single character that was made to be a pathetic joke and therefore perfect for being eliminated early. You know, like Ezekiel and Staci.
I think those eliminations, while not impressive, work well, and it's okay to have a few Leonards or Ezekiels in our season. Just don't have them everywhere. That and Leonard is really funny.
Now, you might be wondering why I have Leonard instead of Beardo here. Well, it's because while I don't see any real potential for Leonard aside from being a pathetic first vote out, I feel like there was some legitimate missed potential with Beardo. This might be a discussion for another time, though.
The Newcomers
He didn't even bother helping his team!
Noah was a pain in this season! I'm so glad he changed later on!
Dude, stop coming back onto the show!