Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, decided to make his own YouTuber rewind for 2020, after Youtube decided not to do one. 

Youtube rewind, a series that first started in 2010, was dedicated to recapping the year in a short Youtube video. Rewinds from 2010 to 2017 were met with positivity, but people noticed that the quality slowly went down. The 2018 Youtube Rewind was the Rewind where viewers became bored and upset at what was being produced , receiving  the most amount of dislikes out of any video on YouTuber. Viewers quickly pointed out that in the following  Rewind,  Youtube seemed to not even try. In light of the pandemic , Youtube decided not to make a Rewind, stating on their twitter that “2020 has been different. And it doesn’t feel right to carry on as if it weren’t. So, we’re taking a break from Rewind this year”. 

Following this statement, Mr. Beast decided to create his own Rewind, bringing together an abundance of  different creators and asking for their opinions, something that many believed Youtube was lacking. It is worth mentioning that the majority of the Rewind focuses on more Internet focused events rather than real life events, which is to be expected considering the pandemic. Here is a breakdown of the Rewind. 

Mr. Beast starts out the video talking about Youtube’s decision to not make a Rewind, and announces his own Rewind, saying that, “a lot of good things still did come out of this year. And let’s be honest, it just wouldn’t be Youtube if we didn’t have a Rewind to make fun of.” 

After a snap of his fingers, he goes into a series of images starting with the CoronaVirus pandemic and many YouTubers’ responses to it, with famous YouTuber Pewdiepie being the first one shown. The next few images offer a preview of what is to be shown in the Rewind, with examples being the emergence of AmongUs and Fallguys, Minecraft Youtuber Dream’s rise to popularity, and the Presidential Debate, ending with the title card “Mr. Beast Rewind!”

Mr. Beast then moves on to explaining his question to ask hundreds of YouTubers, saying that a problem Youtube Rewinds had was the lack of contribution from the community. He flips through a couple different YouTubers (notable YouTubers include Pokimane, Logan Paul, Matpat, James Charles, and Wilbur Soot, who provides the voiceover). 

The first topic to be featured in Mr. Beasts’ Rewind is Minecraft. Youtubers such as Quackity, Tommyinnit, James Charles, Technoblade express their feeling that Minecraft should be in YouTuber rewind, followed by Markiplier reminiscing about the deletion of one of his channels, Roomie (a famous music YouTuber) talking about the Coffin Dance Meme, Valkyrae (YouTuber gamer) and her emergence in YouTuber, and Pokimane’s delight over the many new games that came out this year. 

Then, Minecraft Youtuber Dream gets a personal spotlight in the Rewind, with other YouTubers such as James Charles, GeorgeNotFound, and Sapnap talking about Dream while clips of Dream’s popular manhunts play. Afterwards, Lazerbeam talks about losing to Ninja in Rock, Paper, Scissors in Mr. Beast’s Championship. 

Next game in the Rewind is Among Us, a mobile game that gained massive popularity following the pandemic, due to its entertaining nature despite the Virus, with streamer Corpse Husband being cited as the most popular in Among Us. The footage then cuts to Corpse Husband talking about the charity efforts of many YouTubers throughout the year, most notably The Game Theorist’s (and Film Theorists) Matpat raising over 3 million dollars for Saint Jude’s Hospital on December 1st. Many other YouTubers talked about how the community banded together in these trying times, with many others also giving money to Charity. 

Another topic YouTubers said should be in the rewind was BLM, the Black Lives Matter Protest, saying that “we have to spread the message, we have to be responsible and use our voices”. The footage cuts to (in)famous YouTuber Logan Paul protesting out with everyone else, before Mr. Beast congratulates Logan Paul through FaceTime on not having a major controversy in 2020. Logan then reminisces about how he couldn’t say the same for his brother, Jake Paul, before Jake Paul comes on, explaining that he doesn’t want to say “the thing”, with Mr. Beast encouraging him on. The “thing” turns out to be Kpop, with even a scene from the 2018 rewind coming up. In Kpop, Blackpink takes the spotlight. Then, GeorgeNotFound comes up again to express his shock at Mark Rober teaching squirrels how to parkour, with Mark Rober explaining “I made friends with a bunch of squirrels.” 

One of the more emotional parts of this Rewind is remembering those that we lost. Famous basketball player Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash on January 26th. In the video, he says how he thinks “the definition of greatness is to inspire the people next to you”. Jeopardy host Alex Trebek died of cancer on November 8th. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died of cancer on September 18th. Famous Actor Chadwick Boseman, who played Black Panther, amongst other things, died of cancer on August 28th. He is remembered by his character’s war cry “Wakanda Forever.” 

The next topic to be mentioned on the Rewind is the CoronaVirus, which many YouTubers talked about. Fittingly, their screens were put in a Zoom Call, which became insanely useful due to the Virus and subsequent closing of schools worldwide. 

Finally, a slew of other smaller topics come up from various YouTubers. Things like Mr. Beast and his various achievements and charity fundraisers, the sudden importance of toilet paper, Chloe Ting, who uploaded fitness videos, Pewdiepie, the various face changes that people made due to the pandemic, the boxing match between Nate Robinson and Jake Paul, the rise of female voices on YouTuber, gaming moments such as speedruns, and the emergence of TikTok and TikTokers becoming YouTubers were all other topics covered in the Rewind. 

The camera then runs through a bunch of different YouTubers, showing only their faces before the camera fans out to show hundreds of different YouTubers in little boxes. 

The final kicker to the rewind was the face reveal of famous YouTuber Dream. Despite being one of the most famous gaming YouTubers, Dream never showed his face on camera or on his social media. After Mark Rober talks about how he “wanted to see what Dream really looks like”, Dream is shown (as a real man) with his signature smiley-face over his face, and with the suspense building and Dream clenching his fists, he lowers his hand to reveal a second mask on top of it. 

Mr. Beast then lists all of the different YouTubers that hit 10 million subscribers in 2020. He then shows every single channel that hit 1 million subscribers in 2020. The amount was so large that his editor didn’t want to edit them into the video, leading Mr. Beast to show a video of him scrolling through the Excel sheet he made. 

He wraps things up with a fishbowl of a bunch of different small channels, and says that whichever ones he chooses will be receiving a shoutout. The channels that he picks are “Amelia and Birdie,” “Soyan Osman,” and “Nalterdeeds.” He then credits Pewdiepie for inspiration for the Rewind, as his rewind was heavily inspired by Pewdiepie’s, and he even used the same editors as Pewdiepie. 

Finally, he ends things off with a callback to the 2018 Rewind, with Mr. Beast wearing the same clothes and saying the same things that Will Smith did, 2 years ago. Even he couldn’t help laughing at the absurdity of a hot air balloon titled “Covid-19” slamming into a mountain named 2020.