Total Drama Island (2023)
Designed to be an "in-universe reboot" of the series, the season is set 15 years after the events of the first season, and features an all-new set of characters competing on Wawanakwa Island for $1 million.
The first official season of Total Drama to be made in nearly a decade (not counting the spin-offs Ridonculous Race or Total Dramarama), it already faced criticism from fans pre-release for it's complete lack of marketing and slow production (with the season first being announced in early 2021 and no further info being released until the end of 2022), and the last-minute recasting of Chris' VA didn't help either.
When the season was first released, it was heavily criticized for a multitude of reasons: the new cast of teens being depicted as complete Gen Z stereotypes with little to no individual development, lots of unnecessary forced Gen Z slang (such as "slay", "cringe", and "sus") and pop culture references (such as TikTok and Taylor Swift), poorly written eliminations and a bad elimination order (with all the least hated characters being eliminated pre-merge), and completely removing the show's original edgy teen humor, in lieu of much more kid-friendly, Total Dramarama-style humor. The challenges were nitpicked for being too "weak" compared to that in the rest of the seasons, several plot points were quickly brought up out of nowhere and then dropped, and the winner was slammed by many for a multitude of reasons, including "floating", "getting no character development throughout the season", and "having no plot relevance whatsoever". The poor reception to the season was so bad that Terry McGurrin (one of the season's executive producers) deleted his Instagram account to avoid the backlash, nearly all of the character's VAs received death threats and were doxxed online, forcing them to delete their social media accounts as well, and a second season, which was then in the works, was pulled from it's release date at the last-minute despite being nearly completed and was shelved.