Eddsworld, Eddsworld Legacy, and The End
Disclaimer: It is entirely possible that I will get details wrong in this essay as I have a very spotty record of first-hand events regarding the history this show, along with coming into the fandom two months or so after The End was released. Also, if there’s any such legal trouble from me writing this, please contact me, I am a broke internet guy who likes dissecting things. You’re not going to get much from a lawsuit.
Disclaimer Number Two: I enjoyed Legacy. I enjoyed The End, to an extent. I’m writing this from a semi-academic perspective because I find it topic interesting in relation to adaptation. Please, nobody send this to TomSka, or Matt, or whoeverthefuck. I’m sure they’re positively sick of being sent this kind of shit, and they do not need to read the ravings of a fan on the internet.
Part One: Eddsworld, The End, and Artistic Essence
Eddsworld is a comic and webtoon that was created and produced by Edd Gould and his close friends up until his death in 2012. One of his close friends and creative partners, Thomas Ridgewell, then kickstarted a continuation of the series named Eddsworld Legacy that ran from late 2012 to early 2016. Eddsworld Legacy worked competently enough, and depending on who you ask, did decently well at keeping the spirit of the old episodes. Then on March 16th 2016, the first part of the final episode of Eddsworld was released.
Immediately, the episode, aptly named The End, was noted for its sudden shift in event and atmosphere. In the episode, the usual theme of absurd shenanigans is forsaken in favor of focusing on the return of the character Tord. The episode ends with a cliffhanger that hints that Tord’s return is only a part of a larger narrative that holds drama and which lacks the usual comedic tone. The End was showing a move toward being darker and more serious.
And it did, for sure. The second part of The End revealed that Tord had actually only returned to get a giant-ass robot so that he could use it to achieve world domination, along with the fact that he is a military and technological genius and the commander of an armed force. Except this isn’t about the change in The End, not really. This is about what happened afterward and how that factors in the difference between adaptation and essence. Whether or not The End was a good episode, it certainly kicked interest back up in the series, creating a surge of people in the fandom. With many of those people having The End as their jumping off point, a majority pursued fandom creations that focused solely on the events of The End. This created a divide in the fandom- and that’s where the catch is. Because The End both is and is not Eddsworld.
Let’s back up.
When I say The End is Eddsworld, I mean that it contains the characters of Edd, Matt, and Tom dealing with or doing ridiculous things. That is to say that it is Eddsworld because it fits a general, workable definition and summary of what Eddsworld is about. It is not Eddsworld because it defies why one would want to watch the show. Eddsworld is a comedy about four (or three, depends on if Tord’s there or not) friends who deal with ridiculous shenanigans and who all take turns being jackasses to one another and/or other people, which everyone is more or less okay with, asides from being a tad pissed off. Edd pushes Tom into a deathtrap for presumably no reason (Ruined), Tom bombs a city among other things because he resents Christmas (Zanta Claws Three), Matt leads a zombie army against his friends twice because he got bored (Zombeh Attack One and Three), and Tord backs up into Tom in his car (Twenty-Five Feet Under the Seat). It’s routine. The End has Tord, arguably Edd’s closest friend in the show, presumably claim he never cared about Edd, and the reaction isn’t one of annoyed indifference, but of actual shock and sadness (At the very least, seems to have been meant too. Admittedly, Edd looks only mildly disappointed at the reveal, but that’s besides the point). What I’m getting at is that though The End and classic Eddsworld have the same setting and characters and the like, the two are radically different in why someone would want to watch them. The End is Eddsworld in the context of being a canon episode and having the same milieu, it is not Eddsworld as it defies the ‘essence’ of Eddsworld, or so to say.
At the core of every creative work, despite all of the outer looks and work, is why people would like it. Which definitely does not mean it’s the same for everyone, not at all. People can have totally left field reasons for liking a thing, a but for a work there is generally some sort of consensus about why people like a thing. An audience, if you will. What happened with The End was that the boom of interest for The End split the fandom into two parts. And they do not get along. The 2016 Summer Eddsworld boom was absolutely filled with content almost exclusively dealing with The End. There were many artists that became extremely popular in making The End specific content, (Not to mention content for the Red Army subgenre, which spawned from plot threads in The End and a bit from WTFuture) and generally it was dominating the fandom. But the essences of The End and the rest of Eddsworld are contradictory by definition, and thus creates… conflict. Generally, whatever a part of the fandom loathes, for the other part, it’s what they see in the show (There are definitely exceptions, but people generally at least show a preference for one over the other). In summary, the fandom split was caused by The End shifting harshly away from essence of Eddsworld, as though The End is Eddsworld by a typical standard of setting and canon, it varies wildly from why someone would enjoy the show.
Part Two: Eddsworld Legacy and Adaptation
Eddsworld Legacy is an adaptation. Not one into a different medium, and also one done by someone who has authority to make it canon, but I’m hard pressed for a better word, so bear with me and my vernacular. The humor style shifts somewhat from classic to Legacy, although I can’t exactly pin down the specifics (I’m no Comedian after all), it’s a noticeable change. Which isn’t bad at all, it’s an adaptation, an iteration. The humor in Legacy, while different, is still good, for the most part. The problem is with Legacy seeming to be somewhat stuck with the worst of both worlds in regards to directions it could take as an adaptation, and nothing shows that more than Legacy’s use of references and callbacks. If you’re any sort of fan of (classic) Eddsworld, (If not, then thanks for reading this, mate, whatever you get out of it) you’ll notice that there are multitudes of references to it in Legacy. There are quite a few, and more than that, references also are more than background easter eggs– quite a few times right in plain sight as props that structure minor bits of the narrative. When reference are just background details, that’s pretty cool, but when they’re regularly inserted in large quantities, the references being used as active setpieces in the plot and the narrative at times seems like its structured around references, one is forced to stop and ask, ‘Is this necessary?’
Whenever an adaptation (or iteration) that’s defined as such from a transition in creator instead of medium, there two general directions in which to go in. One, to continue pretty much exactly what the original iteration was doing and creating more in that same style (In the case of Eddsworld, having a firm enough grasp on the original iteration humor to create things that feel true to what was done before) or going Loose Canon style and making your unique take on the general feel of the series but still generally within its essence. Legacy’s consistent use of throwbacks puts it right in the middle of these two options, and it ends up trying to awkwardly do both. While referencing the past is good and makes for a good ‘A-ha! I see what you did’ moment for a fan, if the adaptation has a good grasp on the original iterations style of humor, then it should be able to create new things that’ll really be worthy callback material in the future, because they’re in the same vein as the original. Legacy has a couple of things that could be argued as ‘referenceable’– the cloudberg and some bits of lines from The End, but neither are really a representation of the original show’s humor.
Going on from that, in the opposite direction, Legacy fails to really break off and become its own thing (Asides from The End, but that bumps into the essence issue and the fandom split), mostly because it seems to come off as having one foot in the past. The history and moments from the original iteration of Eddsworld are referenced throughout the run of Legacy, which takes up any chance of it being able to really branch off and become distinct by its own right. In conclusion, while Legacy is good and nevertheless enjoyable, the biggest failing on its part is that it is caught between the worst of both worlds in that it can’t truly get the originally feeling of classic Eddsworld while being too chain to it to become unique and truly judged on its own terms.
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