When is it time to give up?

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Jake is still missing, and Finn is still hopeful that his BRB is NBD; or maybe he’s just repressing. But after Jermaine saw Jake in a dream, stranded on a far-off planet and slowly starving, he shows up to let Finn know that they need to act, and reminds him that he can always ask Jermaine for help. That’s kind of Jermaine’s role in this episode, the responsible adult who’s got very little patience and makes sarcastic remarks about how weird things are. He even refers to Finn and Jake’s treehouse as their “playhouse”, emphasizing how he sees his brothers’ whole “hero” lifestyle as silly. Still, he’s definitely mellowed out since we met him, and for all his snark he’s also kind. Finn realizes they should get help from Magic Man – or Normal Man, or whatever it is we’re calling him these days, I can’t keep up. So they go to Mars.

When they get to Mars they meet Betty! Last time we saw her, she arrived on the planet after her last attempt at saving Simon from the Ice King went sideways. Finn is angry at her for betraying them back then, but NormalMagicKingMan shows up and reminds Finn about “empathy!”. He’s got Betty filling a huge hole, one grain of sand at a time, which is apparently supposed to help end her obsession with Simon and “the magical suffering inflicted on her”. Finn points out to MM that he inflicted that suffering on her, and so shouldn’t he be filling the hole? MM points out to Finn that “empathy…”

I can believe MM thinks this is going to help Betty, but even if he does it’s extremely callous and shallow – is monotonous labor supposed to solve mental health problems? And it’s not like he’s teaching Betty the lesson he learned, because… well, did he actually learn anything? He mainly just needed to take the hat off, why doesn’t he just convince her to do that? And if he was making conscious choices as Ooo’s tormentor, his failing was the opposite of Betty’s. Betty cares too much (maybe); MM cared too little, becoming nihilistic after losing Margles, and seeing other people as nothing more than toys for his amusement.

It actually seems like MM hasn’t really changed as much as we thought. He’s still got a thing for weird “educational” trials, he’s still mean and annoying for no reason, he’s still got a megalomaniacal streak (what with having his subjects build giant statues of his lost love). He might not be a monster any more, but he’s still a jerk; or maybe he was just always like this. And it seems to me that he doesn’t want to put in the effort to actually give Betty the help she needs, if he wants to help her at all; he just wants to feel wise and powerful.

The jerk leads them to a mysterious cavern and tells Finn and Jermaine that they can find Jake by retrieving a Martian space telemetry capsule “at the end of a three-part mind maze”, and suggests that Betty go with them. As Jermaine points out, the trials inside also don’t seem to have much to do with anything. The first trial is a path with frogs with crown-shaped heads on either side – and one that looks a bit like Fern… When Finn looks at it, it gets enraged and lunges for him, saying “remember” before disappearing in the darkness. Betty can’t help but look at all the others, so Finn has to pick up the other two and run to safety while the frogs attack. The second problem is a huge equation on a chalk-board, with a weird creature sitting above it. Betty notices mistakes on the board, and assumes if she fixes the equation they can proceed. But Finn notices the creature recreating the mistakes, and when he tries to stop it he falls through the board, which leads them all to a white void. The third trial reveals itself through a hole in the void – it’s a younger Betty, about to join a six-month trip studying petroglyphs in the outback. Betty is deflated at how happy she was back then – the next day she met Simon, fell in love with him, and devoted herself to helping him find the Enchiridion. Jermaine suggests that maybe she should focus more on herself, and Betty says that after so much time focusing on Simon, she’s not sure if there’s any her left. past!Betty tempts her with them working together to save Simon, but Finn angrily says that at least past!Betty still has a chance. Betty agrees, and changes past!Betty’s plane tickets from next week to today.

The vision disappears, and suddenly Jake is next to them, and so is a door leading back to Magic Man; turns out the entire maze was the telemetry capsule. In another patented Magic Man Life Lesson, Finn and Jermaine were meant to “learn important lessons” while directing the capsule towards Jake with their thoughts, while Betty learned to let go of what she’s lost.

Now I know I griped earlier about MM’s little lessons making no sense, but thinking about it more, it actually does kind of fit what he’s trying to teach Betty. The frogs were about getting hyperfocused on something damaging, and being able to pull yourself away from it. The math problem was about trying to fix something that just can’t be fixed and accepting that you need to stop. And of course we already know what past!Betty was about cause the characters just said it out loud. In general, all three are about listening to other people’s advice, not getting tunnel vision, and learning to let go.

So then, MM’s lessons helped Betty learn t- psych, no they didn’t. Because weird metaphors aren’t a good substitute for therapy, or for taking the damn hat off. Instead, Betty learned that she needs to try even harder – and she’s thought of a way to save Simon. And Margles.

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So, when is it time to give up?

Well that depends, doesn’t it? On what you want, how important it is, and how much you’ve already tried.

Should Finn and Jermaine give up? Well they want to save Jake’s life, and they’ve only just started trying, so obviously they should keep at it right?

Should Betty give up? She’s been at this for a long time, she’s fraying, she’s been driven to betray her friends and do some pretty dangerous stuff. And she’s trying to save Simon, yes, but not his life – he could keep living as the Ice King. But is that living? When he got temporarily free, back when we met Betty, he seemed to consider it a fate worse than death. But Betty’s tried everything, and nothing’s worked, and she deserves her own life. So yeah, at this point she should accept that there’s some things she can’t change.

Should Magic Man give up? Well in his case he already gave up, a long time ago; but not before going way too far, the same as Betty has. And while he hasn’t always been the most… well-adjusted person, overall he seems to have gotten to a healthier place. So, yeah.

… But I can’t accept that. I know that learning to let go is an important lesson for anyone to learn, but this is where I feel like fiction can’t quite teach me something about real life. Because everything is different with magic. And that’s one of the things I love most about fantasy and sci-fi – being able to do what can’t be done, either in real life or in the story, and further yet. We do the impossible.

And things are different when you can do the impossible. When my grandmother had dementia, yes, we needed to accept that it was irreversible, that she’d keep getting worse and that we’d lose her more and more. But if there was some magical way I could make her better, would I do it? Probably. And if something similar happened to my partner, and there were some magical way to make her better, I would try, and keep trying, and possibly not stop until it worked. Cause when you know the impossible is possible, why would you decide that it’s impossible? Why would you give up?

And yeah, even in a magical setting, there are sometimes things you just can’t do. But I can’t fault Betty for wanting to try again. Her fault was being willing to do anything, even if it harmed or endangered others – but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try at all.

Stray observations:

• I’m always a sucker for minor characters getting some kind of focus near the end of a story, and Jermaine going on an adventure with Finn is no exception. In general, Finn, Jermaine and Betty was a much more fun team-up than I might have thought.
• I focused on the heavy stuff as I tend to do, but this was a really fun and funny episode too! “Cowardly dog”, “guys, I think I figure out the frog puzzle”, Magic Man bugging Jermaine, “I haven’t seen a boat in years”, “what is that, a little Pegasus?”, “I’m boy man”, “and I’m… Jer man”, lice, boiled eggs…

• “You’re… Jer man?”

“Yeah, cause when my bros need me, I always say, ‘I’m jer man’!”

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What does it mean to end a show like Adventure Time?

This is a question we’ll be getting into next time, in our 4-part review of series finale “Come Along With Me”. But it’s one that’s hung over this entire season, and especially this, our penultimate installment. I’ve talked before about how truly unique AT is among its peers. It’s a show that ran for a long time, almost but not quite a decade, and it was constantly growing and changing. Your experience watching later episodes was enriched and rewarded by watching what came before. But despite all this, the show would only go fully serialized for a handful of arcs, starting only in season 7. It’s easy, in a way, to end a serialized show. Presumably, you’ve been telling one big story the entire time, or at least have had a specific destination in mind. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Steven Universe, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, The Owl House, Gravity Falls. So many of AT’s peers have finales that, for lack of a better phrase, make sense. You see them coming well in advance. That’s not to say none of them have surprises, or do unexpected things, simply that, if you’re going to end these shows in a way that’s even remotely satisfying, you have a big bad to defeat. You have a status quo to change, a wrong to make right.

But what could possibly be Adventure Time’s equivalent? We have no big bad. There are recurring villains, yes, The Lich especially serving as the closest thing the series has to an Emperor Belos or Fire Lord Ozai. But The Lich shows up a handful of times over the course of almost 300 episodes, never for more than 2 or 3 episodes at a time. He most recently got owned by a 6-year-old. And even still, what would defeating The Lich for good even mean? He’s just one eldritch being in a universe full of them.

Or consider the Ice King. The show’s very first antagonist, from all the way back when this was a pilot for Nickelodeon. [A “what-if” on the level of Atari turning down Nintendo’s offer to distribute the Famicom internationally] And yet, when was the last time he was even cleanly that? He most recently showed up having a perfectly amicable adventure with Finn writing an issue of a defunct comedy magazine. The man himself says in this very episode that he doesn’t think he belongs in an AT Legion of Doom.

This tension is, basically, the premise of the episode. We’re gearing up for a massive, series-finale worthy war, except our boy Finn can’t help but feel like this isn’t the right way to go about things. Surely there’s a better way to resolve things than a war against this bozo?

Finn’s reluctance, though, is also the cap to one of the closest things this show has to a series-long arc: Finn Mertens growing up. He starts as an impulsive 12-year-old boy, who swings his sword first and forgets to ask questions later. By now he is a wizened man of 17. He’s lived a lot of life over these past 5 years/10 seasons (we get a sneaky good reminder in his anecdote to Aunt Lolly and Uncle Gumbald. The Finn who was so desperate to win Flame Princess’s approval, and yet too stubborn to admit to Jake that he was wrong, is a Finn who simultaneously too grown-up for season 1 and too immature for season 10. He’s been places!) And he’s felt the consequences of violence. He knows what it means to take a life, and he knows war isn’t fun and games.

This episode’s also a sneaky-good arc summary for Princess Bubblegum. The PB of the early years wouldn’t have the stones to go to war. The PB of the middle seasons would have nuked Gumbald’s kingdom and salted the earth the second she saw BMO with that silver cup. But here, we see our Princess after 10 seasons of fleshing out and growing. She’s not exactly on board with Finn’s offer of diplomacy (she likely has too much experience with Gumbald to believe it’s possible) but she isn’t mad that he went and tried, and she’s legitimately excited at the possibility that this ugly situation can be avoided without bloodshed.

But it’s not to be. Gumbald’s offer of peace was just an attempted assassination scheme. There’s no avoiding bloodshed. Sometimes, outcomes you know will bring pain and suffering are unavoidable. Sometimes, you have to do the thing you don’t want to do. Sometimes, you have to end the show that’s been your life for a decade.

Stray Observations:

• That Legion of Candy Kingdom Haters is an impressive collection of deep cuts. If this is your first time watching AT, you have definitely forgotten half these jokers. Hell, I’ve seen every episode 3 times at this point and I still can’t remember what the fuck a “Pete Sassafras” is.
• This is our final ever episode to have the show’s traditional opening. In some ways, this is the final episode of Adventure Time.