The first season of Code Lyoko Evolution has been broadcast in an American way, that is to say with a break during the distribution of the season. At the beginning, this break was destined to be after episode 13 in France, but finally, the break was delayed. While a lot of fans thought that there would not be a break, actually, the distribution was stopped after episode 18 "Tenacity" on April 27, 2013, although Anthea Hopper had just appeared.
Market laws had wanted that the end of Code Lyoko Evolution was not distributed in priority in France. In fact, Hungary bought the series in its entirety, and distributed the series one episode per day during summer 2013. The distribution of the new episodes. There would be two functions: resume spoilers in its wholeness which we heard about during the break in the season. And, then, it will archive in order to show community fans' mind and knowledge just before the end of the distribution of Code Lyoko Evolution in Hungarian.
During the wait for the arrival of the ending in France (or the search of subtitled episodes on the net), here we can read the summary of several pieces of information which we possess about the last 8 episodes!
The start of the broadcast: a premiere with much fanfare and the first shadows
The broadcast had a promising start. Apart from the festivity of the advance screening on the 5th of December 2012 during which the first two episodes were shown to a small audience of fans, this event was also an opportunity for the people in charge at France 4 to make an announcement: the Evolution series would be broadcast in two blocks. The first one would go until the summer of 2013. The second would come during 2014. So, an American-style airing schedule.
From there, the first episode was made available for streaming online from the 19th of December, on the France 4 website.
The TV launch also had much fanfare. The first episode aired on the 5th of January in a morning timeslot...followed by episodes 02 and 03 in the evening, during prime time, in a timeslot that promised optimal ratings (at about 8PM).
The episodes were then shown regularly on Saturday mornings. Each week, a previously-shown episode would open, to be followed by a brand-new episode. The first concerns quickly came to light. About the timeslot, first of all. A number of episodes were aired late...or worse: sometimes up to 20 minutes before the appointed time. Indeed, many fans missed the start of some episodes.
This was followed by a curious fix. The airing of episodes went back to a single new episode per week, without re-airing the previous episode every morning.
The broadcast continues fairly smoothly...until the spectre of episode 13 (an episode that didn't actually have a spectre in it, haha +_+)! In the fans' minds, it was completely logical that the mid-season hiatus would occur at this point...which was also disconcerting: episode 13 is a distressingly banal episode, but a lot of fans were expecting a promising mid-season episode.
The pause didn't happen and the broadcast continued, to the joy of fans who had been largely convinced that France 4 had changed their mind and aired the series in a single block.
And so came the hiatus...
Episodes 14, 15 and 16 were broadcast, enhancing the fans' global opinion on this new series. However, the TV guides started to announce a return of episode 01 of Evolution, after episode 18 "Tenacity", which would come to our screens on the 27th of April 2013. Fans kept an uncertain eye on the TV guide, which turned out to be true in the end. The hiatus began without warning from Moonscoop or France 4, at a moment when nobody expected it.
The fans were split: on one hand, stopping the series 8 episodes from the end seemed inappropriate. On the other, episode 18 ended with a revelation that made for a better cliffhanger than episode 13: we discovered that Anthea is still alive.
So the hiatus had indeed started...or not?
Don't forget this famous, hilarious anecdote about episode 19... Episode 19 "The Trap": what should have been the first episode of the second block and which hadn't been aired.
French broadcast contracts dictated that the episodes would be exclusively broadcast on France 4, on Saturday morning. Then, on Saturday or Sunday night, the episode would arrive on iTunes. However, when Moonscoop and France 4 decided to stop the broadcast, the order obviously wasn't relayed to the iTunes platform. That's why on the 5th of May 2013, while the episode "The Trap" hadn't been shown on TV, it automatically appeared in the iTunes store.
Evidently, despite it being taken down in the hours that followed, it was too late. The episode was leaked and its content was there for all to see. EPIC FAIL!
From here, let's go to the spoilers!
Spoilers from official teasers
While we have 19 episodes in our possession, a fan's first reflex is to search the different teaser videos for scenes that still haven't been seen on TV. We have found two.
The first isn't very big. It's Aelita, unconscious on the floor in the gym. This scene comes from the Jim casting teaser.
Jim casting video, released 25th of February 2013
The second, however, is very important. In the promotional video on the casting reveals, we see Yumi being restrained by a curious individual, while facing another on the telephone. At the time, nobody saw it as anything more than that. But now, the intrigue is revealed: the man on the telephone, facing the arrested Yumi, is none other than Tyron. From episode 17 onwards, we know that the man is looking to find the heroes. A new revelation, he'll manage to track them down to Kadic!
Shown in the actors casting reveal, 6th of December 2012
Another extract from a more recent trailer... And it's a rather large spoiler! In it, we see Anthea in Tyron's office, entering into contact with Aelita...proving to viewers that there will be direct contact between mother and daughter before the end of the season.
Shown in the teaser "Aelita searching for her mother", 4th of June 2013
Hungarian and Romanian spoilers
With the arrival of Code Lyoko Evolution in Hungary and Romania came advertisements for the series. One thing's for sure: the watchers at the TV channel Megamax weren't very scrupulous when it came to TV audiences, because they used video extracts from the very end of the season to promote it. Here's what we discovered.
First spoiler from the 4th of July, showing us the return of a monster that fans have veeeery eagerly awaited: the Scyphozoa! As icing on the cake, it seems to be going after William, who was already under XANA's control for a whole season! So, is it his time for revenge? Or for a repeat of the same thing?
Shown in the Megamax advertisement, 4th July 2013
Last but not least, this spoiler comes from an ad for a related product of the series (a bicycle). In this ad are scenes from the series. One of them will click with the most observant of you: the heroes shutting down the Supercomputer. Initially, you may think that it's just the startup scene in reverse...but we quickly realise that it isn't! William is there, and the scene isn't exactly the same. The heroes will come to shut their machine down again at the end of the season...but why...?
Shown in a Megamax ad, 24th of July 2013
Dude Dudu's teasers
Those were the teasers anyone could have seen. Now, the special teasers CodeLyoko.fr found throughout the net in various videos by the talented Dude Dudu.
The first brand-new scene is from a behind-the-scenes video of Code Lyoko Evolution. In it, we see a Yumi spectre shouting a "digital scream". This scene confirms a spoiler that had been revealed by Mélanie Tran, Yumi's actress: there will indeed be a spectre of the Japanese girl before the end of the season.
Shown in the finding of the 23rd of June 2013
The second extract found by Etienne came from exactly the same place: a new behind-the-scenes video of the series. Seomwhere among the numerous scenes, we find this extract of an Ulrich spectre disintegrating before it can reach the heroes. An interesting extract because Quentin Merabet already played a spectre in episode 03 "Spectromania"
Shown in the finding of the 7th of July 2013
We also owe Dude Dudu for this extract from a video of Code Lyoko Evolution's filming. In it, we see Mélanie Tran (Yumi) filming a short (unaired) scene, being directed by Luccio Di Rosa. In this scene, something seems to surprise her because she drops her mobile phone!
Shown for the anniversary of the site on the 28th of July 2013
And finally, this final, enormous spoiler shows us the disintegration of the Cortex in the final episode of CLE. Found and subsequently posed by Dudu.
Shown Tuesday the 30th of July 2013
The final episodes... Between the Hungarian sun and the French night
After this period of spoilers, the new episodes made their world debut in Hungary, on the channel Megamax. Episodes 19 to 26 were aired between the 26th of July and the 2nd of August 2013. Some fans turned to spoilers, especially a serious team of expert fansubbers: "CodeRaclette", whose logo closely resembles CodeLyoko.fr's, buckled down into subtitling the Hungarian episodes, in high quality. On their end, CodeLyoko.fr released the French titles of the remaining episodes of the series and added spoilers for the episodes to the Episode Guide.
On the French side, some fans waited. The airing of new episodes of Code Lyoko Evolution was announced for autumn 2013 by some misinformed fansites...but it turned out not to be true. After episode 18, the channel went back to episode 01 again.
Exasperated, French fans who were hostile to the fansub started to turn their eyes elsewhere... Notably towards Belgium, or towards Canal J. For the first time, it seemed that the Belgians would have the brand-new episodes in French first, as Canal J announced that it would air Evolution starting in November. With one episode showing per week, the delay on France 4 wasn't set to be filled.
That's when the "Canal J Surprise" occurred. The TV guides were once again our best source of information, rather than professional contacts. Canal J's broadcast would start on Saturday the 30th of November, with episode 01 aired on Saturday evening and episode 02 on Sunday at the same time. So two new episodes per weekend.
But that wasn't all there was to the surprise. At the same time as this broadcast, a parallel broadcast of episodes took place every weekday, during the night...at 3:45AM... More surprising still, it started on Monday the 2nd of December 2013 with episode...09!
So, with a daily airing schedule and by skipping over the first 8 episodes, that led us to the airing of episodes 19 to 26 between Thursday the 12th and Wednesday the 18th of December. A pertinent timeslot for the first French broadcast of the end of the series, don't you think?
Far from complicating the issue, and not even understanding the air schedule set out by the channels, fans were content to wait and see if the TV guides spoke the truth. And indeed they did. The end of Code Lyoko Evolution was aired on the sly.
Thus the flagship series Code Lyoko Evolution, like its older brother Code Lyoko, ran into a few setbacks with airing. In France, it was extremely chaotic, punctuated by misinformation and surprises, some ok some not. In the USA, the broadcast was blocked by the dispute between Cartoon Network and Moonscoop, which had been ongoing since the end of season 4. Finally and paradoxically, it was neither in France (its country of origin) nor in the USA (its primary market) that the series did best; it was in other countries around the world that the series had the most easy journey.
