So, if you know me, you'd know that lately I've become rather cynical of the current media landscape and its inability to let anything end. Everything we once loved is usually given some kind of continuation that exists basically for fanservice and to cash in on a recognizable IP rather than to tell some creative, new story. And what's worse is that in some cases, I still see some of these soulless continuations be cheered on. Adventure Time is a franchise that simply refuses to die, even after we get not one but TWO endings that most people would consider more than satisfactory. And yet, here we are with Fionna and Cake. I should be upset, but somehow, the people involved with this series always manage to find a way to keep my interest. The most interesting thing this show does comes right at the start. Adventure Time is most well known, especially in hindsight, for how it genuinely made the effort to grow up with its audience. It never lost the childlike charm that gave it its identity to begin with, but the way it told its story and how it explored its characters undeniably became more complex, allowing for more interesting emotions to be explored with its older audience. So I think it's more than coincidence that this show picks up with protagonist Fionna Campbell as someone who longs for a world with the magic of Adventure Time, but living in the reality of a depressed 20-something in a mundane world who still doesn't have her life together yet. Just as a kid who doesn't really understand the world yet will identify with Finn, I imagine it isn't too difficult for many of us who are terrifyingly aware of our modern reality to see a bit of themselves in Fionna. But of course, the world we live in will never be the fantastical world of Adventure Time, something the show is very much aware of. That being said, there is still a value to the escapism these stories once provided. I myself never really saw more than a handful of episodes of Adventure Time until two years ago. But how do you do new things with a universe whose best stories are already behind it? Even with this show's multiversal premise, you're inherently just giving us variations of characters and concepts we already know. Anything and everything you do will just come across as fanfiction. So rather than shy away from fanfiction, this show has leaned into it in a way that is quite effective. Adventure Time has always had a closer relationship to fanfiction than a lot of other shows do. What were the original Fionna and Cake but a lazy gender swap AU for the Ice King to insert himself into? But I'm gonna be honest, I don't care much for fanfiction. The Fionna and Cake episodes of the original show were serviceable and forgettable to me. When this show got announced, pretty much the only thing that raised an eyebrow for me was continuing the story of Simon, the one loose thread remaining from the original show. And while that story is done well, and I think it does more interesting things than a lesser show only interested in fanservice would have gone for, all of it is really a vehicle for Fionna and Cake's story. So here we pick up. After Simon was cured of the ice crown's curse, the Fionna and Cake universe that was inside his head (which we now learn was actually created by the ultimate fanfic author, Prismo) lost its magic, too. What we get, then, is not just the gender swap universe that Fionna and Cake already was, but what I've heard referred to as a "coffee shop" AU (forgive me, I'm not an expert on fanfic lingo) where all of the fantastical and/or supernatural elements have been removed, leaving only the characters we know filtered through the lens of our own, much more boring reality. Whenever I see art of these types of stories online for whatever TV show I'm into, I'm usually left kind of bored. Why would I want a version of the story I like with all of the weird and interesting stuff removed? So I think the writers made a clever choice by making the fact that this mundane reality is not the Fionna and Cake universe's "original" state part of the narrative. Like Fionna, during the early episodes, we're inherently meant to see something "wrong", or at least, unusual with this world compared to the more fantastical universe we know, which only feeds into her early storyline of wanting more out of her life than she has. It's genuinely a really good pilot, somehow setting the stage for everything the show is trying to do several episodes before it even introduces the actual premise you started watching the show for. But eventually, Fionna does find herself wrapped up in a magical, multiversal adventure. It takes 4 episodes to get here, though, and with the last two episodes basically serving as a finale, we spend surprisingly little time doing the actual pitch of the show. But what few alternate universes we see, much like with Fionna's own universe, are also fanfiction to their own extent. You've got a sequel to the Farmworld universe from the original show, a roleswap universe, there's a zombie (or I guess, vampire) apocalypse one, and you've even got this weird heartbreaking reality that shows what would happen if a certain character succeeded with a wish they tried to make in Prismo's Time Room in the original show. I doubt any of these resemble an exact fanfiction someone made, but they all *feel* like something you could find if you looked it up on AO3 or whatever. I think the difference between these stories and what would happen if someone on AO3 actually wrote them is, and I mean this with no shade to fanfic writers, these are all being written by professionals. The choices the story makes with these universes really try to explore the full ramifications and consequences of their "what if?" scenarios. Because of this, even though you're only seeing them in 20-minute vertical slices, they feel like places with history extending back to long before the episode started, and places that will continue to develop long after the story we see within them is finished. So while the show is certainly not *afraid* of its fanfiction roots, it is doing things that I find more interesting than what I think would happen if you literally got a teenager to write a story with these concepts. Moral of the story is that if the executives at Cartoon Network or Warner Bros or whoever is making this call refuse to let Adventure Time die, then I say, why not? As long as the same effortless creativity we've continued to see since it started well over a decade ago stays alive, I really can't bring myself to be bothered the way I usually am with this kind of phenomenon. I don't know if this show will get a second season. While I do wish it had more episodes (since, again, we spend less than half the show doing the thing the trailers and promotional material actually promised this show would be) I think it also ends pretty conclusively. I don't see a Season 2 working. But no doubt, this hasn't been the last we'll see of Adventure Time, so hopefully whatever comes next will continue to impress. Favorite episode: Fionna Campbell