Wake Up | Boarded by: Cole Sanchez and Andy Ristaino | Aired: April 21, 2014 | Reviewed by CedricTheOwl

Welcome to season 6 of Adventure Time, everyone!  We’ve gone through 156 episodes of zany comedy, high adventure, and crushing emotional depths together, and it’s been an incredible ride so far.  Before we get into the episode proper, I want to share a bit of context for the show’s cultural impact back when the season started.

It may be difficult to fathom in 2025, but Adventure Time in 2014 was a genuine cultural phenomenon.  The series was at the forefront of a crop of shows that saved Cartoon Network from live-action format conversion doom.  A clip of Finn and Princess Bubblegum briefly appeared in an otherwise live-action ad for Hyundai that year.  Deadpool wears an Adventure Time watch in his first and second movies.  There were video games and comic spinoffs, a lot of them of shockingly good quality.  The wacky show about a boy and his magical dog and their adventures in a land of candy had grown into a sprawling multimedia empire.

What time is it?  Gratuitous dick joke time!

So how did the show respond to this success?  How did a bunch of indie artists and people barely out of college react to having their work reach such a wide audience?  How did people used to being outsiders adapt to being an integral part of a corporate money machine?  At the risk of spoiling the rest of the season, they responded by getting WEIRD.  Season 6 of Adventure Time contains some of the show’s strangest, most challenging, and most high concept episodes of its entire run, and I’m thrilled to start talking about them with you all.

“Wake Up” opens with Jake partying down at Prismo’s place in the company of Peppermint Butler, Death, the Cosmic Owl, Party God, and a host of other beings of unimaginable power from past Adventure Time episodes.  Finn has spent a lot of time alone in recent episodes, trying to recenter himself in the wake of failing to rekindle a relationship with Flame Princess and acquiring the cursed Grass Sword.  Revealing that Jake has spent that time living it up with beings of phenomenal cosmic power is a fun and very in-character explanation for his absence.

Of course, there’s a party crasher, even in the timeless realm of the Prismo the Wishmaster.  The Lich has remained there since the season 5 opener, locked in a state of torpor by the simple fact that there’s no one around he can kill.  It’d be like if Jason Voorhees was in your house one day, but he was just standing in a corner, not doing anything.  Now, I’m no wishmaster or anything, but I would probably want a little more reassurance that an ancient being of depthless malevolence was in fact neutralized before I would go on with life as normal.  Even Peppermint Butler and the literal personification of death are unnerved.

These sparkly cloud peeps, on the other hand, have never felt fear in their lives

Jake returns from his latest cosmic rager to find Finn even more introspective than ever, fresh off the post-mortem revelation from Billy that Finn’s human father is alive.  It’s true Finn has never felt the need to find his human parents; when confronted with the knowledge that his father is alive, he immediately balked at the notion that Joshua was still alive.  But without his adoptive father, and now without a mentor to offer guidance, Finn feels the need to reach out to anyone he can to help guide him through the most difficult emotional challenges he’s faced in his short life.  Jake, being the ultimate bro, offers to hook him up with Prismo to help him get into the Citadel, where his father is located.

However, Prismo has some bad news for the boys.  The Citadel is a galactic superprison built to hold the worst criminals in the universe.  Wizards who can behead people en masse.  Cosmic beings that can slice apart planets in seconds.  Tax evaders!  In short, if you’re in the Citadel, you’re not a good person.  Finn remains undaunted, theorizing that his father must be the warden there, keeping all these evil beings in check.  His powers of denial are one of his most enduring character traits, and in this episode they’re on full display.

After a failed attempt to wish their way to the Citadel courtesy of Shelby the Worm, Prismo informs Finn and Jake that the only way they can reach the Citadel is to commit a cosmic crime.  A fairly straightforward plan, but one that’s dangerous enough for the Cosmic Owl to bounce out on them.  Prismo instead asks them to venture out into the debris surrounding the Time Room and retrieve a sleeping old man.  He gives them magic flashlights, and reassures them they only have to return the old man to him without waking him up.

Prismo is clearly withholding information from the boys, but they’re too distracted by a quest and new toys to press him on it.  After a short trek into the debris field, Finn and Jake find the old man and start to bring him back.  Unfortunately for them, the reason for the new flashlights becomes clear:  the sleeping man emits hostile spirits from his mouth while he sleeps.  Spirits shaped like Prismo.  Clearly something is off, but our heroes are too busy fighting for their lives to think it through.

After a thrilling and well-animated chase, the boys return to the Time Room with the old man, whom Prismo reveals to be none other than himself.  Prismo is the dream projection of the old man, and when he awakes, Prismo will cease to be.  Killing a wishmaster is a cosmic crime, which will net our heroes a ticket to the Citadel.  The influence of Link’s Awakening on this revelation likely can’t be overstated, from the idea of entire sentient beings as the figments of a sleeping entity’s imagination to the idea of enemies actually being subconscious projections attempting to stop the hero from awakening it.  Either way, Prismo is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to help Finn reunite with his dad.

Or at least temporarily make the ultimate sacrifice.  Prismo, in true deathless immortal fashion reveals that his corporeal body will fall asleep again in another 1000 years, at which point Prismo will return, good as new.  His friendship with Jake will be over, but he will ultimately be fine.  Except he’s made one fatal miscalculation.  Bringing a mortal body into the Time Room means that someone can die.  And if someone can die, The Lich can kill.  He has purpose.

Never sleep again

The Lich springs into action, knocking our heroes aside and waking Prismo’s corporeal form.  He then murders him in gruesome fashion with his corrosive breath, summoning a Citadel guardian to take him to the Citadel as their prisoner.  Enraged but helpless to reach the Lich while in the custody of the Guardians, Finn and Jake pursue the crystalline prison, ending the episode.

As the first half of a two-parter, “Wake Up” does its job well.  It updates the characters with information others have learned in the previous season finale, sets up the conflict for the second episode to resolve, and ends on a shocking cliffhanger to open the season with some momentum.  There’s quite a few dense lore dumps about the nature of the Citadel as well as Prismo himself, but the majority of the episode is setup for what is to follow.

Stray Observations –

• Miguel Ferrer once again returns as Death, and in between “Death in Bloom” and this episode I was reminded of just how good he was as Vandal Savage in Young Justice
• By a stunning coincidence, this article was published exactly 11 years to the day after this episode aired.  Enjoy this fleeting moment of synchronicity.
• While rewatching this episode, I had a thought about what Prismo’s true intentions were here.

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Escape from the Citadel | Aired: April 21, 2014 | Reviewed by Grumproro

Maybe it’s best if I just start this review by being real and saying that yes, I have an absent father like Martin who I haven’t heard from in 16 years (don’t worry, I’m okay!) and there’s just no way for me to separate that fact from my viewing of this episode. I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s relevant to this review because in trying to understand the confusing grief I’ve felt because of this estrangement I learned about something called “ambiguous loss”. When it was first explained to me, I was given a comparison to the phenomenon of a “phantom limb”. I didn’t know about this when I first watched this episode. I just knew it spoke to me on a level I couldn’t properly express. And now, when I rewatch this episode, it’s all I can think about. Well, not all. Because there is a lot in this episode. My review won’t be able to cover everything, not even close, so I hope you’ll pick up my slack in the comments and forgive me for zeroing in on my own preoccupation. 

How I feel whenever I see Martin’s face.

In just a few hours Finn’s entire life is changed. He learns his father is still alive, he tracks him down, and then he has to suffer the realization that his father is a major disappointment. Also, he’s a callous, selfish jerk. A “weird old kid baby”, you might say. Whatever Finn was hoping he would gain from meeting Martin, he doesn’t. Instead, he will experience intense loss. Loss of a limb. Loss of a father. Loss of a possibility for what it could have meant to have a father. Loss of a dream. It’s like his past, present, and future have all been torn from him in one violent motion. And it is so hard to watch. Maybe that’s just because of my own personal stuff, but I like to think that you don’t need to have experienced it to feel what Finn is feeling here. Because I think this episode is brilliant and beautiful, even while it is devastating. 

I don’t know how they managed to get through so much heavy storytelling so quickly without feeling rushed or surface-level, but I think they did. They make every little moment count. They often emphasize facial expressions, lingering on them long enough for them to communicate a whole world of emotion, they include short lines of dialogue to pack a punch, and they know how to use sound (or the lack of sound!) to help carry you through whatever the characters are experiencing. Lines like Finn’s childish and almost comical “Daddyyy” and his “uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh” panic when Martin is injured remind you that he’s just a kid, looking for a parent, desperate and filled with longing. He doesn’t have to literally say all of that, we hear it in his voice. When I look at the storyboards, I find so many moments like this that tell you everything with an expression. 

And I could make a million gifs like this where there’s no dialogue, no need to say a word.

In particular, the collection of expressions and deafening quiet that is used in the moments following Finn’s loss are so carefully put together. I feel my heart breaking just from looking at the images.

“Jake carefully kneels down, moves aside Finn’s hair. Finn’s catatonic. Jake props him up.” 💖

The lesson that Finn learns in this episode is incredibly painful (even without his arm being pulled off). Jake tries to reason with him, to protect him from the pain he’s about to endure, but he can’t. 

If only it was that easy.

But the betrayal and loss Finn experiences in this episode isn’t the only thing worth noting. In his encounter with The Lich, Finn hears what feels like a reflection of his own fears. He has just met his father. And now he’s losing him without any time to process any of this. Not only that, but he has been disappointed by what he found. His father isn’t what he imagined him to be, and he’s abandoned Finn once again. Now Finn must face The Lich, the world, life, alone. 

But is Finn alone? Really? No, of course not! JAKE IS RIGHT THERE! He’s been there the whole time. He’s been in this episode, carrying Finn (literally, at times), standing up for him, glaring at Martin for him, getting angry on his behalf, supporting him. And he’ll be there afterwards too. Finn just can’t see it in that moment, his eyes are shut (gone, really, perhaps a reference to Jake’s worry earlier in the episode about his eyes getting fried off) as The Lich forces him to fall before him. I always get so mad when The Lich says that to Finn. But Finn is stronger than The Lich realizes. He’s so much stronger than he seems. He somehow manages to fight back, even in the middle of experiencing all of this emotional distress. He couldn’t let go of his father, I can’t blame him, I understand that impulse. But I’m at least comforted by the fact that I know he has Jake (and Shelby!) to mourn along with him. He’s going to need all the support and love he can get. 

I’ll conclude by noting that I really appreciate the final joke of the episode. It has always stood out as a very funny, kind of dark, but just over-the-top enough to work moment to me. We all know what Tree Trunks is about to say before the doorbell interrupts her. And as I laugh through my tears I’m reminded this is a show full of heart and silly humor and Finn will be okay. Eventually. Even if there is a sense of ambiguous loss, an invisible but very real pain, and the feeling that “something is missing”, Finn isn’t alone. And he is strong. Stronger than The Lich, in all the ways that really count.