license to thrill…or be thrilled

Epsilon, moments from his death, must solve the impossible, paradoxical problem that he himself created by unleashing an old enemy—who now inhabits the body of a friend.

church: G E T . O U T .

[tucker and caboose are screaming, swearing, afraid, terrified]

[wash, unfazed, walks up to the wall]

wash: whose blood is this?

church: Y O U— what?

wash: on the wall.

[the wall has blood seeping out of it]

tucker: what the fuck are you doing???

church: what do you mean “whose blood?” why does it matter???

caboose: maybe it’s the wall’s blood.

wash: so the house is made of flesh?

church: what? no! it’s just a house!

caboose: then why is it bleeding.

church: THE HOUSE ISN’T BLEEDING.

Why?

“It’s because we could […] If we don’t do it who will?” Throughout the episode, Burnie also mentioned: not wanting RT to become lost media; wanting to create opportunities for himself/past employees of the company; wanting to work with old properties again; being able to collaborate with new talent; and the Rooster Teeth brand being good marketing. “One of the main motivators for this was preserving the media, and I’m happy to say, it is preserved.”

Also spoken about over multiple questions, Burnie says that Warner Brothers might have been planning to sell off the whole company, including employees etc., and he did not want (/couldn’t afford) to buy it then. It was only after the shutdown, after it became clear the WB was selling off individual shows, that Burnie started trying to buy things. I mention this specifically because I’ve seen a lot of people talk as if the company itself is coming back; it is not. What Burnie owns right now is the brand and IP rights to a lot of the properties. The actual “company” of Rooster Teeth is actually Burnie’s production company “Box Canyon Productions” and right now only has two employees.

What properties does Rooster Teeth still own?

“It’s a very, very long list.” Burnie says they have the rights over 50 shows, some specifically named ones being The RT Podcast, Red vs Blue, and The Know. Most of the shows that were hosted on the Rooster Teeth YouTube channel were a part of the acquisition. Nothing from Achievement Hunter, Funhaus, or RWBY are owned by RT anymore. Heavy emphasis was put on AH no longer being under RT’s brand anymore.

Are the scope of these new projects going to be more in line with smaller content like the RT Shorts, or is the hope to try and focus on larger productions like Day 5, The Schedule, or Lazer Team?

“The sweet spot for scale is going all the way back to the early episodes of Red vs Blue.” The focus is going to be on “compelling writing and great characters,” and making projects with smaller productions. Throughout the episode they reiterated that their main focus is going to be on individual projects and shows.

Does this mean there are hopes of getting a complete boxset of RvB?

“I also would love a complete boxset of Red vs Blue.” Burnie says he wants to do this, but doing physical media in 2025 is complicated and a financial risk, so they’re going to have to figure out how it would be done. He mentions possibly doing a preorder for it.

What happens if this just fails again?

“It’s not bulletproof, but I don’t know what it would take for us to have to shutter this thing at this point.” Burnie says that they’re already profitable, that they maintain themselves, and that unless they do something that would put them in tremendous amounts of debt, as long as YouTube still remains a platform that lets them host videos, he’s not worried about the company shutting down.

Could this lead to some of the old RT merch being available again?

“Yeah, it would have to be within the brands we’re talking about.” They talk about there being a lot of old merch, so figuring out how to provide the specific pieces that people want will be a challenge. Burnie how his personal philosophies on making merchandise in a way that does not produce “junk” may also make selling merch more difficult. Ashley says it is going to be a “slow start.”

More questions were answered and things discussed on the episode but this is what I found to be important to share here.

1) it’s literally been rendered non canon. what’s the point of 15-17 being retconned if we can’t write off the shitty ooc decisions made for the characters in them 😭

2) even if 15 was still canon, it’s not actually evidence he doesn’t pay? we know by the start of 15 it’s been ten months since the end of 13. tucker has been in hiding for nearly all of that. it’s very likely that tucker was away for literally the entirety of the pregnancies. he had no idea this happened. the kids are, at most, a couple of months old. he was not being told that he was actively skipping out on child support payments, he was being made aware that a bunch of infants existed for the first time.