Adventure Time (season 10)

And so Adventure Time comes to a close with a satisfying extended finale and the dangling possibility of spin-offs if ever there’s enough demand. And even though I’d say Adventure Time overstayed its welcome, having felt the premise was wearing thin as early as season 4 and largely losing interest by season 6, it's a little sad to say goodbye to the show after it being part of my life for over a decade. I’ve said it many times giving my thoughts on the various seasons, but Adventure Time strayed a long way from the exuberant, free-wheeling, surreal pilot that made me fall for the world in the first place. And even though audience numbers have dwindled from a peak of 2.5-3.5 million US viewers during seasons 3 through 6 to season 10 never even getting close to one million, interest in the show remains high and Finn and Jake will endure as amongst the most recognisable characters for an entire generation. That’s quite an accomplishment, and absolutely the show’s humour and ambitious scope have shaped what cartoons have been able to do on kids’ networks ever since.

Aside from the finale, the rest of season 10 was no better than the last few seasons have been, and the main set-up lacked the focus of previous sagas like the voyage to find Finn’s mother or the threat of the elementals. One thread that gets worked through the season is the impending threat of Gumbald, which ultimately was totally abortive and would probably have been better left out of the story altogether or resolved ahead of the finale instead of a dumb Minecraft advert serving as the last full episode before it. Then there’s what will become of Fern, a clone of Finn who brings up some interesting existential questions and whose story reaches a brief but ultimately satisfying conclusion.

Otherwise, a lot of episodes give characters a little more resolution. Jake learns some more about his background, Flame Princess deals with her father (in a pretty stupid rap battle episode) and Tree Trunks and Mr Pig work out some kinks in their complicated relationship. Then there are some relatively random episodes, like the Minecraft one and the story of Finn trying to get a joke published in a magazine. The 13 episodes – or 16 if you consider the finale 4 separate ones – were again aired over the course of a full year, making immersion and interest exponentially harder to maintain.

One sad thing about Adventure Time is how it lost its capacity to surprise me. In the beginning there were lots of very random and hilarious things that came as a surprise, especially how episodes ended. Then I was surprised by various revelations about the past in world-building terms, especially with Simon’s background. But it’s been a long while since I’ve found anything about Adventure Time very novel. In this season, well, I’m glad they confirmed a homosexual relationship within canon which they could have just skirted around and left vaguely ambiguous, as they had since it was heavily implied back in season 3. And it blindsided me when they said they were holding Finn’s 17^th birthday party – I know the character has aged but I still saw the little blobby potato guy as about 14, maybe 15. He definitely doesn’t seem like a 17-year-old, even now. But those aren’t the kinds of surprises I was talking about. Things that made me laugh before were things like King Worm coming out of nowhere to hypnotise Finn and Jake, or Jake proudly announcing that he’s 28 in the pilot.

So it was with the finale. There were plenty of things I didn’t expect – the framework hinting at terrible things having happened to the main cast; the way Gumbald and co are basically shrugged off in favour of a bigger, better plot; Lemongrab and Lumpy Space Princess having an amusing end to their character arcs together – but none of it actively surprised me. It’s been a long time since I remember Adventure Time actually making me laugh. And to be honest, while of course one of its strengths was revealing a rich, often very dark backstory, there haven’t been any real revelations on that front for half a decade. We didn’t need to know more about Princess Bubblegum’s dark past. Simon’s story could have been neatly wrapped up at any time and the most delightful thing about it was that he had this backstory at all – which was teased in season 4 and revealed in season 5. This is all a long time ago now. It isn’t really Adventure Time’s style to go out with a real bang, and indeed it didn’t, hinting over and over again about a huge apocalyptic battle but never really having one and having the day saved by singing and the unconvincing soft-of-self-sacrifice of a very underdeveloped minor character, Betty. Perhaps worst of all, it didn't feel like Finn had much of a place in the finale, there was no sense of closure to his character development, and perhaps Penn Ward not being on the show for many years also meant Finn got left behind as a character. 

Even if this wasn’t an ideal finale, though, it was a solid end to a show that ran its course and accomplished a lot. Adventure Time was always a show with uneven quality but it’s probably made me laugh more than any other show in recent years aside from Gumball. And it managed to occasionally be deeply touching, too, with Simon’s backstory providing a show that revels in violence and slapstick with a real heart. I’m not sure I’d want to sit through the entire run again, or even recommend to someone that they need to watch every single episode like I did. But the first few seasons and certain key world-building episodes are true classics of animated television, and I will defend the show to the end against detractors who hate how popular it got. After 11 years, it's a little sad to say goodbye to Adventure Time. But it was also high time the show ended.