My kids warned me about this HBO Max release. They had stated on several occasions that it tugs at the heartstrings a bit but also ties up some loose ends. It certainly does both. Sometimes it is hard to say goodbye to characters we have grown up with in life and sometimes one last dance with them helps to ease the pain of loss. You know what they say, “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
*LE SIGH*
Let’s dig right into this.
DISCLAIMER: There are full spoilers.
How it started
Adventure Time: Distant Lands dives into four separate stories, each one reassuring that all will be well, even when it isn’t. The first story focuses on BMO and a space adventure that certainly seems out of place. The story has BMO transported to an alien facility in which BMO finds that the facility is being ruled by an evil dictator that is systematically destroying it from the inside out. Along the way, BMO meets a young scientist named Y5, who reluctantly helps BMO save the space station through various methods. With the help of Y5, BMO manages to help save the day and avoid apocalyptic destruction of the facility and the death of all its people. It’s a simple story that allows us more time with one of the more charming characters in the Adventure Time universe.
Most of the episode just seems fun and purposeless, until you get to the end. For a good chunk of the episode, we get to see BMO’s no-nonsense drive for peace and justice, something that oozes positivity and good vibes. While the story doesn’t take too many complicated twists or turns, and the ending is tense, yet predictable, the story does find purpose at the end with its big reveal. Towards the end, we run into another, more complicated version of BMO that gives some backstory about why BMO is the way they are and gives hints that there are more BMOs out in the universe. It’s a fascinating set of tidbits established in a relatively short amount of dialogue. I walked away from this episode wanting to know more about BMO and even hoping that we get to see some more context, but the chance of that is remote. Anyway, the episode ends on a fascinating note, where BMO leaves the facility and ends up on Earth where they find a very young Finn and Jake word fighting near their treehouse.
How’s that for an ending? So, we saw a prequel BMO story? Cool. A good way to start.
How it’s going
The second episode of Adventure Time: Distant Lands focuses on Princess Bubblegum and Marceline’s relationship. This episode starts with the Glass Kingdom accidentally letting out a giant dragon-beast that has been trapped in a cave that Marceline and Bubblegum helped trap it in. Marceline originally trapped the beast through the power of her angry music The episode explores how Marceline’s ability to get angry and write angry songs has been tamed thanks to her healthy relationship with Bubblegum. When Marceline is contacted by the Glass Kingdom to come help play angry music to trap the beast back in the cave, she runs into a roadblock where she simply cannot get angry.
Frustrated, Marceline leaves Bubblegum to pick up the slack securing the beast, while she goes and revisits what made her angry after all those years of isolation. We soon find that her anger stemmed from the death of her mother. In this episode, we get some great backstory on Marceline and get to relive the final moments of her mom’s life, which ends up having the opposite effect on Marceline. Instead of being angry, she realizes that she doesn’t want to be alone. If you have ever been in the shoes of Marceline, then you understand eventually anger that you carry subsides and leaves you with a new form. This episode is so endearing and seems to hit all the right notes when it needs to play its heartfelt music. The episode ends with Marceline and Bubblegum helping to vanquish the beast together, but this time not trapping it, rather releasing it to a new form. What a way to echo a sentiment.
This episode dragged a bit at the beginning and didn’t really get its legs going until Marceline’s past was revealed. It seemed to float around a bit lost, but once it found its path, everything really clicked. Evolving from anger to simply wanting to be loved is a tough transition. Sometimes releasing all that anger means you’re a stronger person. As Marceline finally released all that anger and turned it into love, so did the beast, which created a meaningful end for the episode, the beast, and Marceline and Bubblegum.
Here’s salt in both your eyes
This episode exhausted me emotionally. Out of all the episodes on this Blu-ray release, this one gave me some anxiety with a heavy dose of melancholy. A very heavy dose of the latter. This episode starts with the death of Finn. After spending a large amount of time mourning the death of Jake, Finn finally finds himself dead of old age and in the afterlife. He finds quite a few different and familiar faces waiting for him, including the fox that he tried to get with the duck, and his old enemy Tiffany. The one person he doesn’t find on the other side? Jake.
Confused and angry, Finn forces a meeting with Death, who is less than helpful. Eventually, Finn finds out that Jake is on the 50th Deathworld and not the one Finn is assigned to for all of eternity. The majority of the episode has Jake angrily and emotionally trying to find his brother with no regard to Death’s rules or regulations. After squabbles with Fox and Tiffany, who are serving Death, Finn does finally locate Jake…who doesn’t remember him.
It’s like the creators of this show were saving every ounce of heartfelt emotion for this one episode.
Of course, that eventually gets resolved, but the real problem of the story rears its ugly head immediately after when it’s revealed that Death wants to eliminate all the other Deathworlds and keep the worst intact for everyone to reside in forever. This includes destroying Finn and Jake’s parent’s Deathworld, which is a futuristic pleasant landscape. It also means destroying the most Zen Deathworld, where Jake resided. By destroying the other Deathworlds, Death will have seized control of all the afterlife and will also have destroyed any chance for reincarnation. Death’s mom, who sends people back out to the world once they die, if they so choose to go again, is affected by this and works with Finn and Jake on one last adventure to stop Death. She gives them a stick with a snake on it, which they will have to use to kill Death (so weird typing that). While a big fight does ensue, Fox, not Finn or Jake, ends up killing Death and taking over the reins as the afterlife leader. And Fox restores all worlds back to the way they were.
How does the episode end? Gosh, in the best and worst of ways. It’s the best of ways because our favorite leads end up reincarnating together. It’s the worst because we have no idea how or where or when we’re going to see them again. If you don’t walk away from this episode with tears at some point, you’re a robot.
Last but not least
It’s good. Enjoy it. Sometimes, you just must watch things on your own.
Conclusion
Adventure Time: Distant Lands is a wonderful send-off for most of the main characters. It fills in some blanks, it shows us how attached we are to the Adventure Time universe, and it also shows how attached we are to these deeply written, very flawed, but also very beautiful beings in the Adventure Time world. If you’re a fan of the show, don’t skip this release.
