The Return

The Return is a 2-part Toonami Total Immersion Event (T.I.E.) that aired from March 19-26, 2022. The Return, the ninth canonical Toonami T.I.E., and the eleventh overall, was announced on March 12, 2022 through a promo during the Toonami broadcast. The premiere of The Return will roughly coincide with the 25th anniversary of Toonami's first broadcast on Cartoon Network (March 17, 1997). The T.I.E. was animated by production studio Hinge.

Episode 1
Air Date: March 19, 2022

TOM and SARA are sitting within the control room of the Forge, when TOM begins to reflect on the fact that many TOMs exist in the universe. Then, an alarm goes off, revealing that a ship is heading in the direction of the station. As the ship docks, TOM and SARA realize that the ship seems to be a modified version of the GPS Absolution Mk. I, that is transmitting a signal of a TOM 2 era Toonami broadcast. The episode concludes with the doors of the ship opening up, with TOM in shock of what’s inside.

Episode 2
Air Date: March 26, 2022

TOM and SARA enter the bridge of the Absolution in disbelief, unable to believe that the Absolution is at the Forge, despite the ship being destroyed 19 years earlier. SARA decides to enter the ship’s matrix to confirm its identify. Suddenly, a glitched version of SARA v1 appears on screen, with SARA v4 confirming that its an onboard echo of SARA’s old A.I. matrix core and has been looping old data. She also explains that the A.I. matrix core also appears to be damaged, so it will take time to decode her message.

SARA then confirms that the ship is indeed the GPS Absolution Mk. I; however, it is an upgraded version of the ship from 250 years in the future. Suddenly, the ship takes off and departs from the Forge with TOM and SARA onboard. The ship changes its name to GPS Absolution Mk. XIV and, since the ship is a functioning intergalactic broadcasting vessel, TOM and SARA decide to leave the Forge behind and continue broadcasting Toonami onboard the ship.

Voice Cast

 * TOM 6 - Steve Blum
 * SARA v4 - Dana Swanson
 * Narrator/Voice-over - Howard Parker