User blog comment:CheeseBurgerGuy/Total Drama Finale: A 26 Episode Fan Season/@comment-24784093-20190927124812/@comment-35606925-20190927173241

If this season was based off my favorites in the cast, Al would be making it further. However, Al really had nothing going on, and he was already a finalist and main antagonist previously. We've reached the middle of the pre-merge. Big characters, like Zoey and Alejandro, are fair game at this point, and need to be taken out for plots to progress.