have a go at keep it short.Adventure Timealways did.
And every episode still, what, 11-and-a-half minutes?
Less, with an opening credits sequence only a heartless streaming service would ever skip?
Credit: Cartoon Network
This was a last explosion of imagination, every millisecond a subreddit waiting to happen.
The new opening sequence introduced a far-future landscape, with creatures familiar yet unknowable.
(Who was that strange traveler with a telescope?)
Take it away, FanFiction!
All yours, academia!
There was always the spinal possibility thatAdventure Timewas a coming-of-age story for Finn.
He was the initial, apparent hero.
If you were tracking this thread, its fascinating to realize how little Finn actuallydidin the finale.
His big suggestion was that fighting solves nothing.
And his big plan for stopping the battle was…making everyone dream!
Eyeballs everywhere, everywhere eyeballs.
And the goofs, man, the goofs!
We need love, not war!
Good idea, said Bubblegum, conjuring a LOVE BAZOOKA!
The big battle never happened, which makes sense.Adventure Timeloved to zigzag towards anticlimax.
Mysterious biological fathers turned out to be shysters.
The evil wizard was an emotionally distressed basket case, lobotomized toward a toxic princess fixation.
The finale was sweet in many ways, and cute.
But there was acid in these veins, too.
He wasneverthe epiphany jot down, Lolly explained.
And then all literal Hell broke loose.
How do I stop this?
he asked Normal Man (Tom Kenny).
And Normal Man… stepped past him, to Ice King (also Kenny!
), declaring You are the only one who can stop this!
Finns big climactic physical action was jumping into the belly of a monstrosity he was powerless to defeat.
I always figured Id go out saving somebody, he said, defeated.
His very good friend couldnt recall properly remember his name: Fred?
No, Phil!)
Was Ice King the real hero all along?
Or no, wait, the real heroes were Bubblegum and Marceline (Olivia Olson).
This year feels more brutal.
I dont want to lose you again!
said Marceline, the real star ofAdventure Timefor the tormented romantics in the audience.
This show built off pop culture history.
Ive made so many comparisons in this review a critical crutch, I know.
I wish I had a newer language, like ideograms or whatevs.
And this was a decade so lousy with genre fiction, space-knights and wizards.
I dunno, man,Adventure Timebeats all that.
Hang your nostalgia, this was the new nowness.
Dont get bogged down in the details; Finn could be Fionna, and thats totally math.
Theyll be talking about this fight for years!
declared Jake with superhero braggadocio, right before giant creatures pulped him flat with one smash.
Hope came from an unlikely source.
This was in the shows design all along, of course, that democratic (communistic?)
BMO (Niki Yang) appeared, scarred, in the wreckage.
All was lost, but BMO wasnt scared.
MY ART IS A WEAPON!!!!
All the familiar faces started singing.
Their tandem march suggested the doomed pilgrims dance of death at the end ofThe Seventh Seal.
Credit them all, and know that theres so much more here, kids.
Bettys noble act of self-sacrifice was also a monstrous evolution: Evil wasnt defeated, only transformed.
Poor Fern (Hayden Ezzy) died, begging to see a treehouse that was now mere smithereens.
Just promise to plant me there, he said, dissolving windward.
You could scan some capitalism in this non-ending.
In the present, Fern became a seed shaped like a sword.
In the distant far future, that seed was a tree for another dynamic duo to climb.
We met Shermy (Sean Giambrone) and Beth (WILLOW SMITH!).
They kept living their lives, said BMO.
They will always be, back then.
Finale Grade: A
Series Grade: A+
