#like when rs!vlad looks at canon danny he sees that his danny can also be like that he just needs to try harder to reach his good side

[nonbinaryphantom]

canon vlad and danny meeting roleswap danny and vlad would be funny bc rs!danny would side with canon vlad for a cornchip and the opportunity to piss off rs!vlad. canon vlad will just be like omg a danny that knows evil AND will side with me (he does not know that rs!danny is ALSO willing to betray his ass for a smoothie). and canon danny and rs!vlad are like see what i have to deal with. except canon danny would take a lot longer to warm up to rs!vlad but he would go. wow you look weird when you arent powerade blue. and rs!vlad will have his worldview enabled that danny is capable of good

[monotype-on-phantom]

Why Reign Storm Is My Favorite Episode

I’ve gone on record saying this multiple times. Reign Storm is, in my opinion, the highest point of the entire Danny Phantom series, as well as my personal favorite episode. While this is hardly an unpopular opinion, I do still think it’s worth discussing why I feel this way. Why do I like it so much more than other great episodes and other double length specials?

A lot of my reasoning is about personal taste and experience, but there are a lot of things that I think the episode does well, and even better than any other episode in the series. So here we go.

Let’s start with a trip down memory lane.

The year is 2005, I’m 12 years old, and I’m living with my family in a tiny town home because we haven’t found ourselves a house in our new town yet. While things are a bit rough with 6 people plus a baby, things were made easier for us kids by the fact that the town homes had satellite TV!!!

For us, this was a huge deal. We’d never had satellite TV, cable, or even the internet. My family was pretty behind the times. We didn’t have many places to play, but we did have access to countless shows that we’d only ever heard about or seen briefly at our grandparents' house.

Then we saw this “Danny Phantom.”

This shot was basically everything I knew about it. That, and the very lame slogan “no matter who wins, Danny loses.”

I’m not even sure if that was an actual thing, but my siblings and I were all sure that’s what we heard on a commercial for the show. It was pretty crappy marketing. We weren’t aware that it was a show about fighting ghosts. We didn’t know anything other than, apparently, the main character always loses and he looks very miserable in this one shot. To us, it looked like a downright dumb and unpleasant show. Who wants to watch a show about a character who never wins? So, we avoided it like the plague, sticking to shows that, ironically, we’d all like much less years later (All Grown Up, Fairly Odd Parents, and the occasional Jimmy Neutron.)

My first official introduction to the show was Reign Storm. My family was bored, it was kinda late in the evening, and we decided to turn on the TV and see what was playing. All we saw was the second half of Reign Storm part 2, but it. Was. Awesome!!!!!

From that point on, my siblings and I were hooked. We combed the schedule of airing shows every day to see when DP would be playing next. My brother was Danny Phantom for Halloween that year. I was grounded from TV one week, so I hovered outside the living room just to listen to my siblings watching Fanning the Flames (and once I saw it for myself, Ember became my favorite character. No contest.)

My family finally did find a house, and it was two blocks from the local library, where we would often go to actually look up episodes of DP. I did eventually manage to see every episode of the show, including the entirety of Reign Storm. Nothing short of seeing one of my OTPs become canon for the very first time ever compared to that episode, though.

So what is it about this episode that left such an impact?

Well, for starters, there’s the scale of it.

The second half of Reign Storm part 2 was the first I’d ever watched of the show. My introduction to the show was Danny’s town being pulled into another dimension, and him flying off to fight an army of thousands or more and one giant ghost king in a life draining mecha suit.

Then all of these other characters show up to fight alongside him and we get some really cool, creative, and even funny action sequences. Basically, I felt like the episode took me seriously but was still a ton of fun to watch. As someone who’d been without cable or anything like it for most of my life, I hadn’t experienced a lot of shows like this.

When I finally got to watch the entire episode with the context of other episodes in mind, everything about it just got more awesome.

The episode brings back a huge number of characters from previous episodes in one way or another, even if it’s just a brief cameo. We get to see characters interacting who never have before (such as Valerie and Vlad or Poindexter and Skulker). These character interactions and developments are extremely entertaining even if you’re not familiar with the series, but it gets even more so when you are.

Valerie’s growing closer to Danny, but she’s also being put under Vlad’s thumb. Danny’s finally viewed as a hero, but at the same time he’s made some more powerful enemies. However, he also had many of his previous enemies fighting alongside him. There are mysteries set up that won’t be addressed until later episodes (or at all, but we’re ignoring that.)

As I’ve mentioned before, the episode also has the greatest stakes out of any that came before it. Danny’s entire town has been sucked into the ghost zone. He’s surrounded by enemies on all sides. He has to battle against a giant army and the most powerful ghost he’s ever faced, and the tool he’s using to do that could kill him. His friends are waiting for him to come back, and while he’s promised that he would, there’s no guarantee of that. That’s not even counting everything going on with Vlad and Valerie individually.

In spite of all of that, though, the episode still has down time. We see Danny chatting with friends, going to school, and dealing with Dash. There are also some great jokes thrown in, and this is probably the best the show has ever done at mixing comedy and drama. I can really laugh at a lot of the jokes (especially any involving Vlad) without being distracted or losing investment in what’s going on.

And speaking of things the show had never done before, there had never been a single “to be continued” in Danny Phantom prior to this. A cliffhanger? In Danny Phantom? A reason to seriously want to tune in next time and see what happens? Not only that, but even once the main problem of the episode is resolved, there are still things that aren’t. Valerie’s story arc is still ongoing. We haven’t figured out all of Vlad’s plan. We don’t know what he’s plotting with the Fright Knight or what happened to the ecto-skeleton.

While a lot of these things weren’t resolved as well as they could’ve been (if at all), they still offered the opportunity for the show to go in another direction. One that could’ve been amazing.

The show could’ve had more overarching plot points. There could be more cliffhangers, ongoing character arcs, and mysteries that needed to be solved. Honestly, if what I’ve heard about Elmer gambling with this episode (and TUE) is true, I’d say it could’ve been a really smart gamble. I think the main problem was airing RS and TUE so close together without resolving anything or building anything up between them.

Had the series taken its time after Reign Storm and built upon what it brought to the table, we could’ve gotten something truly amazing. Sadly, that’s not what happened, but what happened after doesn’t affect the impact Reign Storm has on me. I still love watching it and speculating about what could’ve happened afterward. There’s almost nothing about it that I would’ve cut or changed (though there are a few things that could’ve been improved.)

While there are other episodes that have great stories and stakes and add a lot to the show, in my opinion, Reign Storm was the most well-executed and balanced of them all. On top of that, it’s an episode that could’ve easily been the turning point of the entire series.

And besides, the episode will always have a special place in my heart as the one that introduced me to one of my favorite cartoons of all time. Can’t complain about that.