As Slate’s Heidi MacDonald wrote, “Where once young cartoonists overwhelmingly produced gloomy masculine self-absorption and misanthropy in the tradition of Daniel Clowes or Chris Ware, these days many booths feature fantasy epics with colorful characters and invented worlds heavy on the talking animals.” (It also found opportunity when another animated hit that attempted a large tonal change, SpongeBob SquarePants, saw its original audience age out and its quality decline in the wake of showrunner Stephen Hillenburg’s departure). Steven Universe, Regular Show, Summer Camp Island, Over the Garden Wall, OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, Clarence, Cat Agent: Adventure Time was the Velvet Underground of animated TV, only it didn’t stay underground for long.Īdventure Time was such a brazen departure from the status quo that it developed a huge following and shifted how aspiring animators approached the craft. The coterie of ex- Adventure Timers became the core of animation’s new paradigm. But it was never disowned by its longtime fans they just mostly moved on to the next evolution. It succeeded for so long that it not only outlived its cult status, it was also outgrown by that very cult. It became a multi-generational show-strange for an animated series. That’s more episodes than South Park, more seasons than Rugrats. That’s because Adventure Time ran for nearly 300 episodes and more than a decade since its viral pilot hit the Internet. That the cyclical end of the series would cleverly reference this holocaust while embracing its central tenet (that maturity and absurdity are not mutually exclusive) makes perfect sense-and enhances a meta interpretation wherein Adventure Time is the urtext of a movement, even if it’s outlasted by beautiful facsimiles. Even though Finn, Jake and the Candy Kingdom are initially heading towards the Great Gum War when we get to the finale, its unexpected de-escalation, otherworldly re-escalation, and graceful resolution is much weirder and more heartwarming than its promise of some cartoon Ragnarok.įinn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, a thousand years after a nuclear war decimated society. That’s too much like the childhood daydreams the series built itself on (a great hero, a sword, a princess!), then promptly undermined. What kind of finality do we get? What kind of The End comes to the Land of Ooo-and is it as charged as the consequences barreling down on its characters? The groundbreaking animation retires with a legacy-cementing finale, and a well deserved one at that: Its undeniable industry impact and cultural influence pushed cartoon-loving kids and rebellious oddball outsiders alike towards earnest sweetness.Īdventure Time dismantled Dungeons & Dragons, farted on fairy tales, so its ending was never going to be anything as simple as the pseudo-victory of war. And with Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time now at an end, fans are left to mull what-if any-kind of closure there was to be had in the series’ last episode. So much to-do caused by “finality.” Misheard by Finn’s robot arm as “fatality,” it irreversibly changes Finn’s gung-ho attitude towards violence and sends him hurtling towards maturity as no haircut or crush ever could.
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