IDFB 1 – 10 Years Later
Today is September 1st, 2026, which is a decade after the release of IDFB 1: Welcome Back! The first — and so far only — episode of the third season of Battle for Dream Island.
This was the first BFDI episode in over 3 years by that point, as BFDIA entered a hiatus since Cary and Michael had to focus on school, which was then prolonged when they lost their Google AdSense account for no apparent reason. When it was reinstated they announced the show would return, and everybody assumed it would be BFDIA 6 (which was originally supposed to release on September 1st, 2013 but fell victim to the hiatus), but it was actually something completely different that nobody really saw coming. I definitely didn't see it coming either, but I ended up loving this episode and it remains one of my favourites ever!
The episode ended up being all of the characters living in Yoyle City and having some shenanigans in the city. From the looks of it BFDIA 6 maybe happened, but no team was put up for elimination, so it was just assumed that there was no BFDIA 7, and that after BFDIA 6 the show was "cancelled" and IDFB was just a slice of life show of the contestants. The episode was great, and it's actually one of my favourites of all time!
IDFB sadly ended up falling victim to another hiatus, twice, and so this is the only episode as of now. When they revived BFDIA on September 1st, 2023, I fully expected it to be IDFB 2, mostly since they explicitly said in the past that BFDIA was over but they might continue IDFB, but it seems they changed their minds on that.
I really like the BFDIA revival, some of their episodes are actually amongst my favourite episodes ever (especially 18), however I do kinda miss the mythos around IDFB and BFDIA 6 specifically, of not knowing all the details of what happened in them. Before the revival it was assumed that the BFDIA 6 Deleted Scenes were bits of the canon BFDIA 6, but now they're pretty much treated as an alternate universe — literally. Since they continued the whole season they've had to correct a lot of things that implied that the rest of BFDIA didn't happen, and I do think they did a good job, but — like I said — it makes me miss a lot of the mystery around BFDIA as there isn't any more of that really.
It's pretty much confirmed that IDFB 2 will happen, possibly on October 1st, 2026, to continue the pattern of BFDIA 6 releasing a decade after it would have. As much as I like the mythos around IDFB 1, and am a bit scared of it going away too, I am very excited for the season to return, especially as it'll give us more BFDI! But while we're still waiting, I'll make sure to enjoy these last bits of mystery and theorizing :)
