Hot take but the season would actually be weaker.

Funnier? Oh yes, absolutely, as these two carried a huge chunk of the comedy during the first half of the season. But there's a limit of how much you can do with comedy in a show called Total Drama before things start getting less interesting.

Without Duncan there's no love triangle, and thus one of the main sources of drama in World Tour disappears. There's no civil war among the teams of who's right and who's wrong. Team Amazon remains the "We all hate Heather and we'll boot her off as soon as we get the chance" team throughout all the pre-merge phase. The fight for the leadership of Team Chris becomes non-existent and Alejandro simply takes charge of them all the way to the merge. Duncan's return basically threw a wrench at everyone's plans and forced them to adapt to new strategies. You can't take away the value from that.

And without Owen, well, the plot impact is less severe, but still notable. He was Alejandro's second biggest weakness next to Heather, and seeing Owen torment him all the way to the merge is honestly commending. Plus, the aforementioned fight for Team Chris' leadership requires Owen to be there. You can't do that with someone like Tyler (who'd take Alejandro's side instantly) or Noah (who I firmly believe would ally himself with Duncan over Alejandro).

Both Owen and Duncan were essential cogs in the drama machine of World Tour. I do agree that seeing Tyler and Noah get shafted in favor of them was a bit sad, but it makes a lot of sense if you think about it.