For the Grand Finale of the season, our finalists Shawn and Sky have to select a partner that will help them in a series of tasks that will allow them to win the million dollars. But Chris' scheming once again gets on their nerves, making the finale a lot more difficult than it normally would.
Tropes:
- Anti-Climax: The two endings of the season only have a few seconds worth of differences and in both, the winner is just whoever was lucky enough to be pushed past the finish line by the avalanche. We barely even see how the opposite competitor reacts to their second-place status, despite Sky's Second Place Is for Losers mentality and the fact that Dave ultimately succeeded in keeping the money away from her and Shawn's trying to be The Atoner and win the million so he can give half to Jasmine as promised both being things that definitely should have elicited a response from the loser. Instead, we don't see Sky's reaction to losing in Shawn's ending while the aforementioned still being Easily Forgiven by Jasmine makes even less sense in Sky's ending. The fact that only two eliminated contestants came Back for the Finale was also a point of contention, leaving pretty much every other unresolved subplot from the season as one of these.
- Back for the Finale: Dave and Jasmine, but bizarrely no other eliminated contestants.
- Bald of Evil: Dave because of the robot cat, he doesn't turn evil though, that is until the third leg when he finds out that Sky, his crush, was already spoken for.
- Batman Gambit: Seeing the robot cat from "Scarlett Fever", Sky taunts it to make it fire a laser beam and free herself and Dave.
- Big Bad Slippage: Dave becomes the season's final baddie, after Amy, Scarlett, and Sugar.
- Call-Back: Chris refers to the Island being rewired.
- The Cameo: All of the contestants appeared on the screen before the challenge started.
- Circling Birdies: To turn an enamored Dave hostile towards Sky for the finale, Chris shows him her audition tape in which she mentions her boyfriend Keith. Dave blanks at this devastating reveal, which is reflected by three Sky heads circling his head while they repeat "boyfriend Keith" in slow-motion.
- Didn't Think This Through: Jasmine dives in to the mud, forgetting about her Claustrophobia. She panics soon after.
- Face–Heel Turn: Dave, upon learning that Sky already has a boyfriend.
- Forceful Kiss: Sky ends up with Dave as her helper. After her earlier rejection of his advances, she knows he'll be a worthless ally unless he has a motivation of his own. Thus, she takes him by the shoulders and pulls him in for a kiss and suggests they can go on a date after she's won the finale.
- Grand Finale: Of Pahkitew Island.
- Heads or Tails?: Chris makes it seem that the one who first gets to pick a helper will be decided with a coin toss. However, he doesn't assign heads or tails to either Shawn or Sky, but rather flicks the coin at them. It hits Shawn in the eye, making him the first to pick.
- Human Snowball: Dave and Sky try to ski down the mountain by going through the snow piles, but because they're too light they're launched upwards. They lose control and go tumbling, picking up snow along the way until they reach the mountain's foot jointly inside a giant snowball.
- Human Snowman: Shawn and Jasmine hit multiple snow piles while skiing down the mountain. This matters not for Shawn, who's on her shoulders, but Jasmine reaches the mountain's foot encased in a frozen snowman. She can only escape because of her amazing strength.
- Karma Houdini: This is the second season finale where Chris leaves unpunished.
- Kick the Dog: What Chris does to Dave for the whole episode.
- Left Hanging: We never get to see what happened to Dave after being left on the island with Scuba Bear.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Dave got eliminated before the big reveals about the island. While the others talk casually about those things, he acts appropriately confused, as well as gets told there's no time for explanations.
- Manipulative Editing: Chris shows Shawn's love interest and helper Jasmine the many confessionals in which Shawn shit-talks her plans for the prize money and his intent not to share. While all are genuine and even recent, by the point of the showing Shawn has come around and wants to share the money. Despite Shawn's pleas for Chris to show his final confessionals, Christ doesn't, because for the final challenge it's necessary for the helpers to be angry at the finalists.
- Motivational Kiss: Sky ends up with Dave as her helper. After her earlier rejection of his advances, she knows he'll be a worthless ally unless he has a motivation of his own. Thus, she kisses him and explains that her earlier rejection was because she wanted to stay focused on winning. She suggests he still has a shot with her after the finale, which is plenty for Dave to want to do everything in his power to make sure Sky wins.
- Not So Above It All: Sky, despite being a good sport throughout the season, throws a tantrum on top of the mountain, showing that even she could get competitive in these sorts of situations.
- Plot Hole: Dave's hair get burnt off after an encounter with the artificial cat from "Scarlett Fever". However, Sky's hair is fine (albeit a bit messy) despite her being stuck in the same huge snowball with Dave.
- Properly Paranoid: After what Shawn said about Jasmine's business idea in the confessional, Sky boasts that she always did her best to avoid giving Chris any ammo.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": A steep and rocky hill is raised underneath Shawn and Sky, which keeps them from the finish line with twenty seconds to go. Shawn takes the loss in stride, but Sky snaps and stomps her foot angrily on the ground while repeatedly uttering "No!" It makes the hill collapse.
- Reed Snorkel: The middle part of the finale requires one of each finalist-helper duo to take the other on their shoulders and wade through a deep mud pool. The one who has to wade through the mud gets a garden hose to breathe through, the other end of which the one on top must hold up above the mud. It also, somehow, serves as a communication line from which the one on top gives directional instructions.
- Relationship Sabotage: Chris rigs the helper selection so that Shawn and Sky both get assistance from their respective love interests: Jasmine and Dave. He lets their interactions play out until the final stretch of the race. That's when he shows the quartet what horrible things Shawn said about Jasmine and what devastating secret Sky's been keeping from Dave. As everything sinks in, he declares the helpers to now be hinderers and that the dangers of the final stretch are up to their choosing. Jasmine chooses to forgive Shawn, while after everything else that's happened Dave only wants revenge against Sky.
- Sanity Slippage: Dave's sanity takes a head first dive after finding out that Sky's already in a relationship.
- Ship Sinking: Dave and Sky officially break up in this episode when Dave found out the hard way that Sky was already dating someone called Keith (who she intended to break up with).
- Sleepless Alarm Clock: Sky only gets to sleep for about one second before Chris wakes her up with an airhorn.
- Sleeps with Both Eyes Open: Shawn demonstrates his ability to sleep with both eyes open and shares his desire to do this permanently one day. His reasoning is that even asleep, his brain still receives information, such as whether or not zombies are approaching.
- Something We Forgot: Following the finale, Chris, Shawn, Jasmine, and Sky leave Pahkitew Island by helicopter without a care, though Chris does think they're forgetting something. That something is Dave, who is left alone on the island and is about to be mauled by a robotic bear.
- Sore Loser: Sky when she thought Dave and Jasmine were going to win. She throws a fit that crumbles the mountain and determines the winner.
- Subverted in the ending where Shawn loses. Although we don't get to see her reaction, she doesn't seem to be too upset in the final shot of her.
- Tempting Fate:
- After being left behind, Dave says things could only get better. He's last seen about to be attacked by Scuba Bear.
- After Sky's boast about how she avoided giving Chris any ammo whenever she talked in the confessional, Chris cues up her audition tape, wherein she mentions her boyfriend.
- Two-Faced Aside: Upon hearing Jasmine's idea to open a combination cage-fighting school and flower shop, Dave chimes in that he thinks that that's an amazing idea. In the confessional, he notes that it's a horrible idea and demonstrates that he misunderstands Jasmine's idea to begin with by asking who would ever get into a fight with flowers.
- Uncertain Doom: By the end of the episode, Dave is left behind on the island, with Scuba Bear about to maul him. Whether he survived and came back from the island or not hasn't been answered and, judging by how the next season of Total Drama proper takes place 15 years after the first season (which means 12 years after this season), it's likely to never be answered.
- Wham Line: "If you pick me to go on the show, I'll really miss my boyfriend, Keith!"
- Wheel of Decisions: Shawn and Sky each get a helper for the finale. Who the helper is is decided by a digital reel that spins at high speed and stops when the finalist presses the button on their controller. If the finalist doesn't want the helper they land on, they get one do-over. None of the rules actually matter, though, because the reel is rigged to assign Jasmine to Shawn and Dave to Sky because Chris can and needs to turn them against the finalists later on.
- Wimp Fight: The middle part of the finale requires one of each finalist-helper duo to take the other on their shoulders and wade through a deep mud pool. Shawn gets on Jasmine's shoulders and Dave on Sky's, and while initially Shawn and Jasmine have the lead, Jasmine gets disorientated. The two teams collide and Shawn and Dave get into a mud splash and slap fight that stops only because Chris sics a bear robot on them.
