I may have mentioned this before, but I mostly overlooked Adventure Time when I first saw it on TV. I remember thinking it was good, reminding me a lot of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, but I couldn’t see myself getting into it. It wasn’t until I went to Fan Expo that year and after seeing almost everyone cosplaying as Finn and Jake that I thought, “Well, if nerd culture is really into this, I guess I should give it a look.”

Adventure Time stuck with me for a long time, becoming one of the most meaningful pieces of media I had ever experienced. It was fun, funny, lighthearted, but not afraid to get dark at times.  In a lot of ways, I think the show changed me for the better, and when it ended, I was heartbroken but grateful for everything it had given me—creatively and spiritually.

Naturally, I would always want more Adventure Time content, so I was excited when HBO Max announced Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. Based on the initial trailers, I thought this was going to be a fun, multiversal romp with everyone’s favourite gender-bent heroes. However, what I got was something I could have never imagined, leaving me with familiar feelings of melancholy and fascination.

I’ve always felt that Adventure Time was a show that was smart enough to grow with its audience, and Fionna and Cake feels like the ultimate culmination of that—for better or worse. Living in her normal world, Fionna Cambel dreams of a more magical life; deep down, she knows she always had one. However, in the familiar land of Ooo, the former Ice King, Simon Petrikov, is having a hard time adjusting to his life—still tormented by his longing for his fiancée Betty after she sacrificed herself to save him and everyone at the end of the Gum War.

“I’ve always felt that Adventure Time was a show that was smart enough to grow with its audience.”

After trying to open a portal to reach Betty, Simon accidentally brings Fionna and Cake into his reality, which begins a whirlwind Adventure across the multiverse as the three try to return Fionna and Cake to their reality and possibly restore their lost magic.

While it’s called Fionna and Cake, that title is symbolic only. In truth, this is Simon’s story since much is revealed about the true nature of what initially appeared as a minor gag in the original Adventure Time series. As it turns out, Fionna and Cake’s reality wasn’t just fanfiction created by Simon in his maddened state as the Ice King and was instead created by Prismo the Wishmaster. But since creating realities isn’t something he was supposed to do, he hid the reality within Ice King’s cursed mind rather than attaching it to the greater multiverse.

So when Simon returned to his true self, all the magic and wonder that would have been reminiscent of the Land of Ooo disappeared, leaving Fionna with only faint memories of her past life. This propels their quest across the multiverse to find a working Crown to save Fionna’s world—as Simon also realizes that her reality will disappear when he dies, which wasn’t a problem while the Ice Magic kept him alive.

The story is a constant struggle for Simon, who is wrestling with the pain of losing Betty, the desire to do what’s right for Fionna and Cake, and the thought of losing his mind once again—though it seems a better alternative to his mundane life as a man out of time.

“Even visually, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake takes a more adult approach that I’m not sure I ever wanted.”

Any fans of Adventure Time will know that the fundamentals of magic are based within madness and sadness, and that really does feel like the underlying theme of the whole show. Simon is constantly pulled into crazy situations he is ill-suited for and with every universe they jump to, he sees the damaging result of the Crown’s influence and the seemingly hopeless endeavour to retrieve it.

This theme extends even to our plucky Finn and Jake stand-ins. Fionna has no real memory of being a hero and causes more trouble than she fixes within each universe, leading her to her own crisis of self-doubt. Cake as well has spent all the time she can remember as an actual cat, so getting to be a stretchy cartoon version of herself is not only liberating but dangerous as she rushes headlong into every battle, imbued with more power than she knows how to use. This culminates in a genuine moral crisis as Fionna realizes that maybe her normal life wasn’t as bad as she thought, but Cake doesn’t want to give up her newly returned autonomy.

Despite being genuinely captivating, it’s a brutal story that left me feeling a bit more down than I had anticipated. Adventure Time had always toed the line pretty delicately between its lighthearted optimism with its darker, more adult themes. But the darkness is right at this show’s core and I gotta say it’s a bit of a bummer to see.

Even when familiar characters show up, they’re grim versions of their former selves. Early on, an adult Finn tries to take Simon on an adventure in the hopes of lifting his spirits, but his goal is just to keep him busy so he doesn’t think about his issues. You can tell this is Finn’s own mentality of constantly adventuring so he doesn’t have to deal with Jake’s death—which is informed more by the Distant Lands: Together Again mini-film.

Even many of the worlds Simon, Fionna and Cake visit are dour and destitute. From the Farm World which was conjured by Finn’s wish to destroy the Lich, which is still a Mad Maxian hellscape, to a world where Simon projects the Crown’s madness onto Princess Bubblegum so their roles are reversed, to a vampire-ruled world where Marceline is a bloodthirsty villain, this isn’t a fun adventure underpinned with adult themes. It’s straight-up harsh.

“Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake was a bittersweet experience, which I think is pretty true for the original series, at least towards the end.”

Even visually, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake takes a more adult approach that I’m not sure I ever wanted. While the show’s iconic style remains intact, seeing Finn impale a monster as streams of red blood spray out or hearing characters drop minor swears feels like a bit of a betrayal of the show’s heart.

Something I always loved about Adventure Time was how it was able to circumvent those adult trappings, while still having them—the way characters would use “math” as a stand-in for swear words, or its tasteful approach to gore. This isn’t like Samurai Jack using blood for the first time as a poignant rebuke of CN’s past standards against violence, as well as challenging Jack’s own moral code. This just seems out of place.

However, that being said Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake remains as visually stunning as ever, utilizing several unique styles across episodes ranging from scenes that look like watercolour, to pencil crayons, to old-school 3D. Its imagined universes are ethereal and enchanting, delivering an incredible amount of story from environmental details alone. The sheer amount of little aspects and connection to the original show is staggering. I found myself pausing the show so many times to notice characters, locations, or just little things that told me more about the world. True to Adventure Time, the show does A LOT with the short amount of time it’s granted.

Audibly as well, the show is fantastic. The returning voice cast is as great as always. Despite not totally loving it, it was interesting to see these characters delivering more adult-oriented dialogue—though I don’t know if I’ll ever feel comfortable hearing Finn swear, even mildly. The music of each episode ranges wildly from whimsical to intense, and almost every episode features a song by Rebecca Sugar and Patrick McHale—Sugar who composed almost all of the original’s best songs.

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake was a bittersweet experience, which I think is pretty true for the original series, at least towards the end. It may not be as fun as the original, but it was a truly gripping watch from start to finish. It has as much heart as the original and reminded me a lot of shows like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power or Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. I think fans of the show who are now adults will definitely appreciate everything it does, even if they are a bit jarred at first. Hopefully, this show leaves the door open for much more Adventure Time.