Total Drama Island/Chris Maclean

Chris Maclean
Total Drama Island
Actor	Christian Potenza
First Appearance	1x01 - Not So Happy Campers (1)
Series Billing	Main cast
Episode Count	27 (Total Drama Island) 25 (Total Drama Action) 23 (Total Drama World Tour) 12 (Total Drama: Revenge of the Island) 26 (Total Drama All-Stars/Pahkitew Island) Total: 113

Chris Maclean is a character on Total Drama Island, voiced by Christian Potenza.

Basic Information

Chris Maclean is a notable media personality in the Total Drama universe, currently working as the host of TDI and its subsequent seasons, Total Drama Action, Total Drama World Tour, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island and Total Drama All-Stars/Pahkitew Island. In addition to hosting, he is also the show's head writer, background designer, director and executive producer. Prior to Total Drama, he hosted a figure skating show, and he also works as a hairgel model.

While coming across on-camera as congenial and gregarious, Chris loves torturing the challengers with wacky (and sometimes dangerous) challenges, to which he displays not much sympathy toward the contestants (unless there is the possibility of one or more players getting killed and of the resulting chance of such an event impacting the show negatively, which happened during one horror movie-themed challenge). He has, however, ironically expressed dismay on occasion when a contestant (such as Heather) uses underhanded tactics to either get ahead of an opponent in a challenge (like Heather did to Justin in the first season) or to embarrass or humiliate a rival (as she frequently did to Gwen at the same time).

Chris speaks with a skater accent, and "Awwwe-some!" is his favorite catchphrase. He has at times taken exception when someone describes his sets as cheap and cheesy. One of his favorite things in life is his hair, which he is insanely obbssesed with. He loves reminding the Total Drama players that he is handsome. One of his closest friends is his co-host/sidekick Chef Hatchet. During the first season, he suffered two near-death experiences on the show—choking on a burnt flambé cake (from which he was saved by Owen with the Heimlich maneuver) during a cooking challenge, and getting struck by lightning on the Dock of Shame during a rainstorm (which he miraculously survived with only scorch marks).

Following the championship final in Season One, Chris gets paid back by the campers for putting them through the torturous challenges during the show when Owen, Duncan and Geoff throw him off the dock into Lake Wawanakwa. During the subsequent reunion special, however, Chris gets even by roping everyone into competing for an upgraded prize of $1,000,000 and, in doing so, getting those who finish in a 14-way tie locked in to take part in TDA. With the new season, he becomes more gleefully sadistic with his challenges and his enjoyment of watching the contestants suffer their way through them on their way toward the grand prize.

During the Celebrity Manhunt TDA special, Chris announces that he plans to let all of the previous seasons' contestants go and use an all-new cast (who turn out to be minor, one-joke characters from the previous seasons, with the exception of the newly-arrived Alejandro) for an announced third season of the Total Drama series, which he calls Total Drama Dirtbags. Chris later reveals that Total Drama Dirtbags is a hoax, designed to see if the past contestants were willing to do anything to achieve stardom, before announcing the real third season, Total Drama World Tour, which he is also hosting.

For the fourth season, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island, Chris brings the show back to Camp Wawanakwa, the site of the show's first season. He has become even more sadistic and shows even less regard for the contestants' safety than in previous seasons, and his personality now borders on sociopathic behavior in some episodes. As indicators of his new evil personality, he reveals that he has rented out Camp Wawanakwa for use as a toxic nuclear waste dump during the seasons between TDI and TDRI, which has caused the animals in the area to become mutated from the radioactivity, and in the season finale, he attempts to actually kill his co-host Chef Hatchet and the contestants by attempting to detonate a bomb underneath the boat Chef and the contestants are on, only for the bomb to go off beneath the dock Chris is standing on instead (because Chef had switched the bomb beforehand). When last seen, Chris is arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for endangering the contestants by hosting the show in a hazardous waste site.

Chris returns to host the fifth season, the first half of which is called Total Drama All-Stars, following his release from jail after he serves his time for the events of Season Four. In one of his first acts in the new season when he sets up the competing teams in a "Heroes vs. Villains"-themed season, he deliberately places Gwen and Courtney on the wrong teams in another move to stir things up on the show when he puts Gwen on the Villainous Vultures team (despite Gwen being a hero) and Courtney is placed on the Heroic Hamsters team (despite Courtney being a villain). He later switches Courtney to the villains team where she belongs while sending Duncan to the heroes side when, during a challenge, Duncan sacrifices himself to save Gwen while Courtney selfishly uses then-Heroic Hamsters teammate Sam as a human shield. At the end of TDAS, Chris ends up destroying Camp Wawanakwa and the island it is on, thanks to using a fracking machine to create moats around the island for the championship final's challenge.

Trivia

• Chris is the overall main antagonist of Total Drama Island.
• Chris's name in the show's French-language version, L'île des Défis Extrêmes, is Louis Mercier.
• According to Sierra in the TDWT episode "Broadway, Baby!", Chris was born in 1978, which would make his age between 31 and 32 at the time of that episode.