Come Along With Me

Storyboarded by: Tom Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Somvilay Xayaphone, Seo Kim, Aleks Sennwald, Hanna K. Nystrom, Sam Alden, and Graham Falk

Original Airdate: September 8, 2018

Part 1 Review by: CedricTheOwl

So we arrive at the conclusion.  280 episodes of revolutionary television, culminating in a four part finale.  The pieces are set:  Princess Bubblegum prepares for war against her first Candy people creations, setting Finn to fight his resurrected alternate self/surrogate brother, while Jake has been rescued from a dead planet through Martian magic.  All the while, King Man and Betty are cooking up a plan to finally take back their lost loved ones.  The show has but 45 minutes to wrap up all these plots and deliver a satisfying conclusion to eight years of beloved characters and complex themes.  How hard could it be?

So of course, the episode treats us to a special opening!  A new rendition of the classic AT oner, with a heavily altered Ooo and two new protagonists.  Shermy (voiced by Sean Giambrone of The Goldbergs and Clarence) and Beth (voiced by Willow Smith, singer and daughter of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith) serve as our ersatz Finn and Jake, as they have adventures in the Ooo of the far-flung future.

Come on, grab your brand new friends!

Shermy and Beth’s Ooo contains a lot of familiar elements we’ve seen hinted at in flashes forward throughout the show’s run.  They eat lunch under the enormous tree that used to be Finn and Jake’s treehouse, as seen in the epilogue of “Lemonhope”.  They match wits (and knots) against a Prizeball Guardian, which figures prominently into “Graybles 1000+”.  They live in Marceline’s old house, much like how Finn and Jake lived in one of her abandoned abodes.  These callbacks to Ooo’s uncertain future can’t help but bring to mind the ruined Candy Kingdom also seen in Lemonhope, creating an air of uncertainty and dread about just how the Candy civil war will go down.

Though they failed to defeat or even faze the Prizeball Guardian, Beth discovers something else of interest in its wake.  It’s Finn’s old bionic arm, the one created for him by PB after the events of “Reboot”.  Having no luck deciphering its origins themselves, they seek out the legendary King of Ooo, who lives on Mount Cragdor (the former resting place of the Enchiridion from the episode of the same name).  Thankfully, instead of meeting a sleazy old ball of wax, the pair encounter someone much wiser and much cuter.

They say he’s lived forever

BMO’s house is a treasure trove of references for the eagle-eyed viewer, from AMO’s shell being used as a storage bin to Marceline’s old anti-smoking T-shirt from “I Remember You” to Mr. Fox’s own skull.  Our butterfingered duo quickly earn’s BMO’s wrath and polite but firm invitation to go be anywhere else.  At least until Beth shows BMO their reason for coming.  They remember the arm, even if their recollection of Finn’s name is a bit fuzzy, and BMO agrees to tell Shermy and Beth about the Gum War, and the end of Ooo.

Cut to Ooo’s present, where Finn and Jake spy King Man and Betty chanting a spell, with a still comatose Maja hooked up to some jumper cables.  They report back to Princess Bubblegum, who is as perplexed as them but can’t spare the bandwidth to think about it while she’s marshalling her forces.  She’s assembled her war council consisting of Colonel Candy Corn, Lady Rainicorn, Flame King, Cinnamon Bun, Huntress Wizard, the Duke of Nuts, Lumpy Space Princess, Lemongrab, and Slime Princess to go over their battle plan.  A plan that is being surreptitiously spied upon by a Gumbaldian agent, forcing them to go on the attack immediately.

Finn is still trying to get Bubblegum to look for another way, but this time he’s not alone.  Marceline makes a heartfelt plea to PB to reconsider, citing her own experiences from the Mushroom War and not wanting to see them repeated.  She’s lived long enough to see the cycle, and is once again choosing a different way.  With her two best friends advising against her plan, PB finally relents and agrees to one last parlay with Gumbald.

Their face to face quickly face-plants, as PB and Gumbald only hurl ultimatums, insults, and threats at one another.  But Finn wasn’t placing his hopes on a diplomacy check this time, he was relying on a sleight of hand roll.  Once negotiations crumble, Jake produces the sleep potion they obtained from Nightmare Princess in “Orb”, putting all five of them to sleep.  If you’d forgotten about the sleep potion or where it came from, I assure you you’re in good company.  It’s such a small detail, in a breather episode in between two big miniseries specials, it probably could have used an additional explanation of what it was.

Nevertheless, Finn has found a way to neutralize the two armies’ leaders, removing their armies from play and leaving only personal confrontation.  It’s a big step for our boy: a technical betrayal of his series-long dedication to serving Princess Bubblegum, one made according to his conscience that’s he’s developed over the course of the past few seasons, starting with Fern’s creation and crystalized by Fern’s death at his hands.  It’s a classic conundrum of a paladin being forced to choose between being Lawful and being Good, and like any good roleplayer, our boy chooses to be good.  Will his desperate gamble pay off?  That’s for the next part to determine.

Notable Quotes –

• “Let’s take it home so I can learn about it with my brain.”
• “Have fun on the other side of this door.”
• “Get ready to have-a your hair blown back.”

Stray Observations –

• Willow Smith wrote and performed a song called “Marceline” for her 2015 album Ardipithecus.  I’m willing to bet that played at least part of a role in her being cast as Beth.
• I like the guillotine on top of BMO’s house on Mount Cragdor.  King of Ooo don’t take no guff.

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Part 2 Review by: CedricTheOwl

“And so they were dead.”

Not really, of course.  Finn’s last ditch effort to prevent a Candy Kingdom civil war is to instead trap himself, Jake, Fern, PB, and Uncle Gumbald in a death-like sleep.  He’s taken them all to a place where they can’t kill each other, in the hopes that removing the possibility of violence will force them to talk their problems out.  Adventure Time has a track record of imaginative dream sequences, so it’s quite exciting that the finale contains one more dreamscape to let them flex their penchant for surreal imagery.  Let us join the warring parties in the sleep like death, and see what dreams may come.

Once our dreamers come to in a tower shaped like a five-point radially symmetrical creature, Finn brings them up to speed.  If anything is possible in a dream, maybe even preventing this war is possible.  Unfortunately, upon recognizing the infinite potential of the subconscious world, they immediately default to its potential for bludgeoning-related carnage.  PB is just as quick on the trigger, manifesting a heart-shaped bazooka to counter them.  In a perhaps unintentional callback to “Dungeon” (though with this show, you can never be sure), Jake’s summoned weapon of choice is a sandwich.

The dream world isn’t about to let this situation escalate in a normal fashion.  A singing poodle emerges from a pot on a nearby stove to distract everyone long enough to stop hostilities.  Then it dissolves into flowers and birds, leaving only a core of light in its place, making the dreamers understandably suspect they should hide their eyes.  This gives Uncle Gumbald the opening he needs to escape, ditching Fern and climbing the chimney.

Ever since being accidentally mulched by Finn’s bionic arm, Fern has sought to define himself through his service to a monarch, hanging on Gumbald’s every word and defining his worth only through his physical prowess.  This parallels how Finn tried to deal with his breakup with Flame Princess in season 5, by dedicating himself to being PB’s champion to an uncomfortable degree.  Their relationship is a complex web of friendship, one-sided romantic yearning, and hierarchical duty.  By contrast, Uncle Gumbald merely regards Fern as a tool to be discarded once its usefulness has run its course, a simpler but much crueler relationship.  Left on his own, Fern morphs into a batlike monster and takes wing, resolving to throw a destructive tantrum until he feels better or just burns himself out to the point where he can’t feel.  Finn takes the form of his butterfly spirit animal to give pursuit.

Brothers face off as their most primal selves

Meanwhile, PB and Gumbald brawl it out over the warped dreamscape of the Candy Kingdom, entering the maw of a terrifyingly warped Gumball Guardian to duel with toothbrushes.  Their battle eventually leads them to Gumbald’s lakeside shack, where the climactic confrontation from “Bonibell Bubblegum” is taking place.  However, there’s a twist: this time, an adult Bubblegum is menacing a childlike Gumbald with the dum-dum formula, their faces glitching back and forth between the dream scenario and the true memory.  This time, Child!Gumbald douses the adult PB in self-defense, turning her into a wrapped taffy Candy Person, while Gumbald assumes the role of princess.  He builds his own Candy Kingdom in montage, as PB can only watch and marvel at its beauty.  When disaster strikes, she can only cavort like a jester while Gumbald tries to singlehandedly keep the kingdom together.

This scene is why I wanted this segment of the finale for myself.  It turned me around on Uncle Gumbald as a villain while also providing condemnation and critical epiphany for Princess Bubblegum.  I’ve noted in previous reviews and comments that Uncle Gumbald is very unlike previous Adventure Time villains.  He’s a mustache twirling schemer from a syndicated cartoon, in contrast to The Lich’s subdued but potent menace or the tragic anti-villainy of the Ice King or the Vampire King.  This sequence shows us that crucial missing piece of his character:  he was conscious of everything even after being dumbed down, desperate to help when crisis after crisis befell the kingdom that was his ambition and painfully aware of his inadequacy to do anything to help.  Through this scene, where we witness PB experience the hundreds of years of silent torment Gumbald has endured in his dummified form, he becomes the kind of tragic monster that the show so excels at.

“I can help you, Princess”

At the same time, PB realizes exactly the kind of living purgatory she condemned her relatives/creations to by just leaving them juiced.  Her tearful happy dance is Gumbald’s existential torment, and Gumbald’s laughter fit into weeping breakdown is PB’s lonely vigil over the Candy Kingdom over the centuries.  She’s a woman who values her intelligence, and to have it stripped away from her forces her to understand her enemies’ perspective in a way she can no longer deny.   Finn’s impossible gamble on finding a peaceful resolution to this war might just pull through after all.

One evil doppelganger still remains.  I speak of course of the Tops Blooby Bear, the original tragic villain who tries to take Finn’s place due to a dissatisfaction with itself.  Or rather, Fern transformed into an approximation of Tops Blooby, with Finn similarly transformed.  Their battle is cut short by the rank odor of their collective vault of repressed memories (and Jake’s nightmare farts).  Assailed by Finn’s words as well as the contents of the vault, Fern has no choice but to snap out of his tantrum mindset and acknowledge how he and Finn are alike.  They join forces and face down the deepest, darkest memory within the vault:  Fern’s creation through the imprisonment of Sword!Finn’s consciousness.

In the edges of the unreal, the Grass Curse finally has a tangible form, something the boys can confront.  The Grass Curse counters that it’s the only reason Fern has a physical body, and that he’ll die without him.  Fern, or Sword!Finn if you prefer, doesn’t even hesitate; one good chair shot to the brainbag destroys the curse for good.  As the boys recuperate on a deserted island, soon to be joined by a humbled PB and Gumbald, the Grass Curse unfortunately proves true to his word.  Without the curse to sustain him, Fern is withering.

Or maybe it’s all the salt water your stems are soaking up.  Just a thought, dude.

The prognosis is no better when the party returns to the waking world.  Fern is still fading.  On the other hand, PB’s time in the dream world has softened her gummy heart, and she’s more than willing to deescalate with Gumbald.  Gumbald feigns the same, but is quickly revealed to have rejected his epiphany.  Aunt Lolly gets her revenge for dummying her and Cousin Chicle by exposing his attempt to dose PB, returning him to his dancing punchbowl form.  Lolly (in an admittedly quick character turnaround) proves to be much more practical than Gumbald, and PB declares an end to hostilities and a new status quo:  two Candy Kingdoms, both alike in dignity.

Of course, we’re only halfway through this finale, so it isn’t just gonna end there.  A burning King Man emerges from a portal over the dispersing armies, admitting that he and Betty may have screwed up big time.  The portal widens, and an impossibly huge figure emerges from it as the scene cuts to black.  GOLB has arrived on Ooo.

Notable Quotes –

• “Put down your weapons, or I’ll bazooka you!”
• “Everybody gets an evil doppelganger but me…”  “I’ll be your evil doppenganger!”
• “Your farts aren’t funny, dad.”
• “Oh, so you meant the end of the war, not the end of the world.”  “No no no.  That happened next”

Stray Observations –

• The shared dreamscape is a chaotic mashup of all the characters’ subconsciouses, which can’t help but remind me of the composite mindscapes from the Psychonauts games.
• Seen in the background: Jake as a brick in the fireplace, a mug fused to the wall reading “World’s Worst Uncle”, and a poorly spelled note by Cousin Chicle that reads “I’m happyer this way”
• Jake’s dream journey didn’t get much focus in my review, but his dream about Lady Rainicorn cooking the pups suggests lingering anxiety about his own parenting, comparing him to Warren Ampersand’s plot to consume his own children to extend his life.

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Part 3 Review By: LibraryLass

Finn, of course, has no idea what he’s looking at. And neither does Jake, who suggests that the emerging figure of GOLB is a big baby here to reward them with presents for preventing the Candy Wars from escalating. No such luck. Nobody else is quite clear on just what the hell is happening or what to do about it either, from Fern and Flame Princess to Bonnie and Marcy… with one exception. LSP knows that as in all things, it’s time for a selfie. What, you thought I meant Simon? Nope. Locked away in Simon’s memories of Betty is the memory of learning about GOLB from the Enchiridion while he and Betty enjoyed chocolate sundaes, but as usual the Ice King is basically unable to draw any conclusions about his own past. This section is pretty much all nonstop action scene so I’ll spare you the bulk of the recap. Just know that it is of course, GOLB, accompanied by Betty and Maja, emerging from the portal. As the characters anyone cares about (including a surprising last-minute face turn from Fern) fight a desperate losing battle against the abominations GOLB warps Gumbald’s former troops into, Finn rouses the unconscious King Man, who informs Ice King that he is the only one who can stop Betty’s summoning ritual and snap her out of it.

Ice King flies off with his usual gung-ho aplomb to try his usual brand of extremely awkward flirting with his former lady-type, but King Man encourages him to get more personal with it. Ice King relates the situation to his fanfics (to King Man’s great dismay) and begins reciting “Oh, Fionna”, which is almost enough to get through to Betty before Ice King Ice Kings it up. Betty’s frustration is enough to cause a feedback loop that rouses Maja from her coma… just before it makes her explode and launch the mad wizard couple right into GOLB’s waiting jaws. The battle is turning more and more against the heroes, as these things are wont to do, as the beast tosses Fern aside and stomps a horrible paw onto Bonnie.

Marceline, presently engaged with the mutated Gumball Guardian, witnesses this and flips her shit. She unleashes her equivalent to the Vampire King’s beast form, an antlered smoke monster with her face that mashes the thing to a pulp as we see that Bubblegum brought up a force field just in time to save herself. Marcy, though, is all rage and destruction until her opponent stops moving. Only then does she shrink back into her usual shape and hurry to the concussed PB’s side. Then it happens. The thing. The moment we’d all been waiting for since season 2. The reason Adventure Time holds up the best out of this entire era of animation. I’m just gonna let it speak for itself here.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

When we conducted signups for this final season I knew only one thing mattered to me, which was getting to write about this moment. Shipping Bonnibel and Marceline has been one of the core, central experiences of my entire life. I was there when Natasha Allegri first drew them cuddled up against each other, I was there when What Was Missing confirmed there was a history there, I was there when the chuds at /co/ decided this was getting a little too overtly queer for their male gazes, I was there when Bonnie took a big ol’ whiff of Marceline’s old shirt. Even in the late seasons when I took some time away from the show because it was getting a little angstier than I wanted from it in those times (fool that I was), any time I knew it was gonna be a Marceline or PB-focused episode I tuned in to watch them navigate their complicated history. I watched them fall in love again while I fell in love myself. I watched as other shows ran with the momentum that Bubbline started, as Korra and Asami walked off into the sunset together, as Ruby and Sapphire and Peridot and Lapis and Pearl and Rose Quartz avoided any ambiguity (try as hard as Deedee Magno Hall might to pretend that there was any hetero explanation), I watched as the cast of My Little Pony danced around the issue until its second-to-last episode, as She-Ra and Arcane and Amphibia and the Owl House and Voltron all began to blossom and turn what had been subtext into beautiful text. Weeks before, a video game had come out that it never occurred to me to care about, but that within a year would introduce me to a couple that would ultimately become just as important to me, though I didn’t know it at the time.

And don’t they look just a little like Byleth and Edelgard in this moment?

But on that September evening, eight years and a week ago now and counting, I watched the two mothers of them all come together and all suck face like the eternal teenagers they are, like something out of the smutty fanfics and shippy fanart I had devoured and fantasized about and privately written for almost a decade, and as a queer woman I felt as vindicated and safe and free as I have in my entire life.

Bubbline is my queer liberation. Bubbline was canon, is canon, will always be canon. Bubbline is so canon that every Adventure Time project comes back around to telling stories about it sooner or later. Side Quests hasn’t yet, to my knowledge, and its status as an interquel with the earliest seasons presents a challenge to it ever doing so, but I have no doubt it will find a way to. And after that we’ll see an entire show about them, or at least that was the plan earlier this year. Who knows what weird shit the merger with Paramount might wreak, whether it succeeds or fails. But the dance of an undead heart of flesh and an unliving heart of candy is as central to this universe as the laid-back hero partnership of a dog and his boy, and don’t you dunderheads ever forget it.

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Part 4 Review By: Katie

When I said last episode that Adventure Time didn’t have any series-long story arcs to pay off in a series finale, I was being slightly untruthful. There is one: the fate of Simon Petrikov, aka The Ice King. A going concern since season 3 (when the concept of “going concerns” first debuted in Adventure Time), we’ve been teased time and again with whether or not it’s possible to save the chronodisplaced researcher from the wishing crown’s curse. We see the real him back when his magic gets negated, which also brings Betty into this time and nearly kills Simon. We see there’s an image or soul or something of Simon trapped in the crown, alongside its other victims throughout history. We see Betty driven into magical sad-madness trying desperately to find a way to cheat fate, to undo wish magic, the most powerful form of magic there is.

It’s fitting that, even though she does finally find a way, it comes at such a severe cost. The only force known to be stronger than wish magic is GOLB, the eldritch being that comes to end a universe, the primordial embodiment of entropy. Betty has given up so much of herself in her pursuit of Simon; abandoning a career studying glyphs, leaving her own time altogether, trading her sanity for magical powers that may or may not even be enough. And so of course, when her goal is finally achievable, the cost must be herself.

Outside of GOLB, the situation continues to be dire. The mutated kaiju, having overwhelmed our heroes, march onwards, destroying the treehouse. Our home base for 10 seasons, by far the most frequent location in the entire series*. Jake, one of the most powerful beings in the universe, can’t measure up to GOLB’s spawn. With everything seeming hopeless, our beautiful angel BMO offers what she can, soothing Jake with a song.

*(I have not fact checked this in the slightest, but there’s no way it isn’t true)

“Time Adventure” is another gift from Rebecca Sugar. She was pretty deep into Steven Universe by the time Adventure Time’s finale was being produced, almost certainly working far more hours than a person should. But they still made time for this, and I’m so glad they did. Later in the episode, the Music Hole will say that songs are good at capturing emotions where words alone fail, and goddamn if that isn’t true.

Time is an illusion that helps things make sense

So we are always living in the present tense

It seems unforgiving when a good thing ends

But you and I will always be back then

First, this song is obviously metatextually about Adventure Time itself. (I mean, it’s called “Time Adventure”, Rebecca Sugar has always been willing to be blunt when necessary) It was even performed at San Diego Comic-Con, about one month before this episode aired. During this performance, Rebecca dedicated the song to Adam Muto, her former storyboarding partner and the current showrunner of Adventure Time itself.

The first of two songs this episode that always make me cry. It may be the end; the treehouse is gone, Betty is gone, Adventure Time itself is gone. Despite somewhat frequent post-finale installments, we will never again have Adventure Time as a fixture of television. We had already exited the golden era of a new episode every single week. But, the end is never really the end. We still have our memories. We’ll always have what the show meant to us back then. Adventure Time is so long that, even for people like me who binged it years after the fact, enough time will have passed by the end that you can look back on the beginning with fondness, with recognition of just how far we’ve come. Adventure Time is not a plot-driven show, but it is absolutely not static. It’s been on a nearly decade-long journey.

And as we return to the text, we see the exact shape of said journey made literal. Adventure Time has always been meandering, has never been a focused show. From day one, original showrunner and creator Pendleton Ward gave his storyboarders broad freedom to explore whatever caught their interest in the land of Ooo. These boarders would embrace their freedom, and develop some very distinct voices. But, despite it all, the result wasn’t chaos. Everyone had their own muses, but everyone also had love and respect for each other. They had a connection to the world and the characters, even when they were inspired by very different aspects. Everyone, singing with their own voice, came together in an unlikely but impossibly beautiful harmony. And it’s that harmony that keeps GOLB at bay. It’s that connection that is the antithesis of decay.

I also love how LSP and Lemongrab just start yelling here. They don’t know the words, they’re prickly and don’t play well with others, but it’s all fine, everything still melds together to make the stew.

Back in the future, the King of Ooo (BMO, not the wax charlatan) finishes his story, to the confusion of Shermy and Beth. “I thought this story was about the end of Ooo”, Shermy even says, to which BMO replies “Pretty much”. This is, I think, a line mainly for our benefit. We start this tale with implied apocalyptic stakes, but in the end life went on. We don’t know why the world of Shermy and Beth is more jacked up than our Ooo, why the Candy Kingdom lies in metropolitan ruins as Prizeball Guardians hold all the candy people in stasis. Despite getting the occasional glimpse in post-finale installments, we never really do learn all that much about this era, which I’ve always appreciated. Adventure Time isn’t a single story, and so it can’t have a single ending. Why was this incident, the Gum War that wasn’t and the appearance of GOLB, considered the end of Ooo? For the same reason it’s the end of Adventure Time. The story had to end somewhere, even though life goes on. The treehouse is destroyed, but Fern will grow in its place. Betty is gone, beyond even the help of Prismo (as we see in the ending montage), but Simon is finally saved, and Marceline has her de facto father back after 1,000 years. Finn and Jake are long dead, but Shermy and Beth are not-so-subtly their reincarnations, just as Finn and Jake themselves were once Shoko and her tiger. Peppermint Butler is studying dark magic, and presumably will one day regain what was lost to the dum-dum solution. Death, change, entropy, all are inevitable. One day GOLB will be back, for real, and nothing can be done about it. GOLB comes for us all, in the end. But it’s not the end yet. So long as you’re still alive, so long as you still remember, you will always be back then.

Stray Observations:

• We see Princess Cookie during the final montage, in the audience at one of Phoebe’s shows. I’m happy to see her finally free
• Poor Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant. He showed up for the war just as it ended
• In addition to the check-ins you’d expect, I love how the final montage had some complete left-field deep cuts. The Jiggler is back, and in a business suit??? This dude was from the 6th episode ever, and was never seen again, not even in cameo. But Ooo is too big to capture even in the nearly 300 episodes we got. Life is always more complex and beautiful than any one being can comprehend.
• Song being what keeps GOLB at bay, and allows Finn and Simon to escape, feels like a callback to Season 3’s “What Was Missing”. That episode is the first perfect episode of Adventure Time. It’s the first time we ever got to see Princess Bubblegum as a character instead of a trope. And so it’s the perfect episode to call back to here, at the end, as we celebrate all this wonderfully sprawling show was.
• (also the girls finally kissed, I know Rachel must have talked all about it in her segment above but I just wanted to mention it again. I’m so happy for them)