Presently, Adventure Time has shifted its storytelling once again with the newest anthology-like series of specials. This is a landmark moment within the series because of the pattern of producing serialized episodes surrounding centralized characters perseveres until the final season on Cartoon Network.
“Stakes,” by the nature of its story - Marceline ( Olivia Olson) recounts how she becomes a vampire while getting rid of her vampirism with the help of Princess Bubblegum ( Hynden Walch) - exhibits the masterful aspects of Adventure Time by anchoring the narrative into a specific story for several episodes and technically lengthening the runtime from fifteen-minute episodes to hour-long. RELATED: 'Adventure Time: Distant Lands - BMO' Review: Come Along on a Far-Out New StoryĬonsecutive seasons follow the precedent of season four, but this shifts a bit in the seventh season where the first special deploys the world-building, serialization, and darker themes of the series. The penultimate episode to the fourth season, “I Remember You,” marks the show's adherence to connecting its mysteries to the tragedy of the Mushroom War. Persisting through the following season, Adventure Time unveils many of the secrets of the show through this new model of storytelling for the series. The fourth season places past seasons in context while guiding newer seasons with stories that are reactions to established story beats. Along with the darker inclusions to the narrative, the story structure began to shift towards a more serialized approach. Season three of the series offered many more hints towards the history of the Land of Ooo episodes like “What Was Missing” and “Holly Jolly Secrets” heavily augur the coming reveal of the Mushroom War (an armageddon war from the past that destroyed most of the world and killed almost all of the humans).
Image via HBO Max, Cartoon Network Studios The series took on a very light tone with specks of darkness included in almost every episode: the title sequence foreshadowed a great deal of world-building not unnoticed by many fans at the time. The bulk of the first episodes of the series involved stories saving any manner of strange princesses from the Ice King, correcting wrongdoing by newly invented monsters of the week, or just hanging out with characters from the massive cast that was present even at the beginning of the show. Unorthodox in practice, the series told episodic stories that were resolved with lighthearted endings. Instead of another cartoon involving a superhero adolescent boy, Adventure Time parodied the genre by creating situations with a bend towards comedy. Cartoon Network premiered Adventure Time on April 5, 2010, at a time when the network was changing up in its line-up of cartoons.
The next home for adventurers Finn ( Jeremy Shada) and Jake, newly named but the same characters nonetheless, turned out to be a long-lived one. Moreover, the short solidified the premise of what the show would become. A story that’s been told a multitude of ways, but Adventure Time told with comedy and enough creative energy that it felt new. During its humble beginnings as a short film, Adventure Time, a fun tale about Pen ( Zack Shada) and his magical talking dog Jake ( John Dimaggio) who fight the evil which comes in the form of the Ice King ( John Kassir), mostly dealt with a simple damsel in distress tale. No one, even Adventure Time’s creator Pendleton Ward, could have envisioned a segment on Nicktoon Network’s Random Cartoons would become an ever-growing franchise.