The Book of Rannells: Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake: Season 1, Episode 10 – “Cheers” (2023)

*Episode premise spoilers, which include spoilers for episode 9.*

Okay, so as I’ve said, I haven’t watched Adventure Time. I’m not at this point the target audience for this show, and there’s a ton that I still don’t know about the franchise. It took me until, like, episode 4 to really understand the basics of what was going on! But this season finale, man—it got me right in the feels.

The Scarab has broken into Fionna and Cake’s world and is determined to destroy it as an unsanctioned universe. Our heroes and their friends do everything they can to fight back, even though Cake is still the only being with magic in this world. On the outside, Betty (a.k.a. the embodiment of Chaos) has prevented Simon from putting on the Ice King crown. Instead, he’s been placed in another body in a different universe, where he desperately searches for answers to its crown’s whereabouts in a Choose Your Own Adventure-style book.

Look, this episode has plenty of action and humor—Cake turns herself into a kaiju! The whole series has plenty of action and humor. But it has a lot of sadness too. I mean, the show kicks off with the main characters feeling depressed and directionless, searching for meaning in a place where they just can’t seem to find it. So it’s only fitting that the season 1 finale digs into some of the other feelings behind that.

For Fionna, she longed for magic in her own world, but while she was thrilled to be transported into a wild, weird multiverse, she’s continually feared that she can’t become the hero she desperately wants to be. The Scarab specifically picks at those fears, telling her, “Your little trip must have shown you the truth: it would be better for everyone if you were just gone.” As Fionna fights for the drab little world she’d been so eager to get away from, she’s not sure if she’ll be enough to save it.

In the universe Simon’s been shunted into, the only book he can study for information about the crown is a Choose Your Own Adventure book in which two characters named Casper and Nova are on their own search for the magical artifact. As the story goes on and Simon is increasingly frantic to “win” the book, we start to see the parallels between Simon’s own past with Betty, along with the regrets and loneliness that have been weighing him down. At one point, agitated by an impossible choice in the book, he laments, “There should be more options!” His companion softly points out, “Maybe there would be if you didn’t pick Casper’s options every single time.”

This is an episode filled with all kinds of feels: fear and regret, but joy and triumph as well. It’s an episode that’s brimming with life, and that’s ultimately what it leaves you with.

I suppose it’s not surprising that Andrew Rannells’s most prominent storylines were in episodes where Fionna and Cake weren’t in their universe. As with last week, Gary is present throughout the finale and does his best to pitch in, but he kind of gets lost in the shuffle. His best moment comes from his swoony reaction to Marshall’s attempt to fight the Scarab with “a new heartfelt song inspired by our love!”

Fionna & Cake has been renewed for a second season, but for now, here are my parting thoughts.

Recommend?

In General – I think so. Even with my woeful lack of knowledge from the main show, I came down on the side of really liking it. I imagine that it hits even harder for fans of Adventure Time!

Andrew Rannells – Maybe. Rannells is solid throughout, he just doesn’t have much to do. He doesn’t really get any opportunities to stand out here.

Warnings

Violence, sensuality, language, drinking, gross-out humor, and strong thematic elements.

The Book of Rannells: Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake: Season 1, Episode 9 – “Casper & Nova” (2023)

*The only real way I can talk about this episode at all is by including a major spoiler for the end of episode 8. Consider yourself warned.*

It’s the penultimate episode of the season! The middle of the season, while exciting and entertaining, has fallen into a routine of “travel to new world, search for the crown, get entangled in an adventure, repeat.” Here, though, the different threads start coming together in a big way before we head into the finale.

At the end of episode 8 (which I didn’t review,) Fionna and Cake just barely managed to escape the Scarab. They’re now back in their own world in Simon’s mind, but although they finally found a version of the Ice King crown they could use, the world isn’t yet magical. As Fionna meets up with Gary and Marshall, catching them up on her adventures, she starts to wonder whether their world should change.

When Fionna and Cake first get back to their world, they have a shared dream that its magic has been restored but that it’s gone horribly wrong. This greatly informs Fionna’s doubts, along with her growing understanding of what wearing the cursed crown will do to Simon. But Cake, who’s retained her voice and abilities from the Land of Ooo, is all in on bringing the magic back.

From inside Simon’s head, though, there’s not much they can do about it. Whether or not their world becomes magical, it depends on his choice with the crown. But while he’s eager to do his part, he very much has his own thing going on right now. It involves the physical embodiment of Chaos, which is also the lost lover he’s been mourning throughout the series—I’m still a bit sketchy on these details, and I assume there’s a lot more backstory between Simon and Betty in the original series. Standing before this immense being, Simon softly asks, “Betty, are you in there, even a little?”

Even though this episode features a fair amount of both Gary and Marshall, neither Andrew Rannells nor Donald Glover have that much to really do. They’re mainly just there to react to what Fionna and Cake are telling them, trying to wrap their heads around it. “So you’re not a robot; you’re a magic cat?” Gary asks Cake. And as things inevitably go sideways, they pitch in to help, more or less as a unit.

Fionna and Cake’s opening shared dream gives us a look at alternate versions of Gary and Marshall, but this doesn’t give the actors much to do either, since it leans more on the animation than the dialogue. Rannells only has a few lines as the alternate Gary.

The Book of Rannells: Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake: Season 1, Episode 7 – “The Star” (2023)

*A few character spoilers.*

This is a good episode. We get another interesting world for Fionna, Cake, and Simon to explore, and neat things are happening with Gary and Marshall back in Fionna’s world.

Fionna, Cake, and Simon jump to a world where the crown has been seized by the Vampire King, who uses its ice powers to block out the sun. It’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland overrun by vampires, and our heroes team up with a hard-bitten, cynical Bonnie (Princess Bubblegum in the Land of Ooo) to defeat the Vampire King and his ward the Star (Marceline in the Land of Ooo.) Back in Fionna’s world, Gary and Marshall attend a fancy charity event thrown by Marshall’s mother.

One of the few things I know about Adventure Time from cultural osmosis is that its most popular ship is Princess Bubblegum and Marceline. From what I understand, as a kid-friendly animated series from the 2010s, the chemistry between them is implied but unspoken through most of the show’s run, not overtly shown onscreen until the series finale. But in the specials and spinoffs that have appeared since the main show ended, they’ve been specifically portrayed as a couple.

As such, it’s easy to see the dramatic potential in a world where Princess Bubblegum is a jaded vampire hunter and Marceline terrorizes the living at the right hand of the Vampire King. Because I haven’t watched the main series, I can’t feel the full weight of their interactions in this episode, but I imagine that for fans, it’s probably similar to “The Wish” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Fionna is in a hard spot here. She’s reeling from mistakes she made with the Winter King in the previous episode and doubting her abilities. “I wanna make things better, not worse,” she tells Cake. And she’s still eager to be a heroic figure, butting heads with Bonnie’s mercenary focus on the mission at hand, arguing that they can stop the vampires while helping people along the way. But she doesn’t fully know what she’s doing—at times, she rushes in too recklessly, and at others, her overcaution gets in the way of important things.

In the last episode, I was a little surprised at first by the interactions between Gary and Marshall, but in retrospect, it makes sense. During the infodump in episode 4, it’s revealed that, when Fionna and Cake’s world was still magical, Gary was a Bubblegum person and Marshall was a vampire, which pointed to them being gender-swapped versions of Princess Bubblegum and Marceline. Here, we see them paired up by the plot again.

Even though their world doesn’t have magic anymore, there are still vampire nods all over the place in their plot. The charity ball is being held at Marshall’s mother’s gothic mansion—it’s a fancy gala for a blood drive, and the whole event is brimming with blood-themed slogans, posters, and novelty hors d'oeuvres. The storyline is focused around Marshall, who’s been distancing himself from his mom and is clearly uncomfortable to be back in her world. “Is that what you’re wearing?” she says the instant he arrives, plucking at his jacket with disgust before breezily telling him there’s a pressed suit in his old room.

But while the plot is driven by Marshall’s inner conflicts, we see them mostly through Gary’s eyes. At first, he’s thrilled to be at a fancy event full of good food and potential investors with deep pockets. He’s enjoying himself and talking up his idea for a bakery with a whole series of character-based pastries. But as he sees the interplay between Marshall and his mom, he realizes how much his good time is being had at Marshall’s expense. Although I wouldn’t say there’s anything too revolutionary for Andrew Rannells here, he does a nice job with the material, alternately excited/flattered by the attention and opportunities but with growing concern for Marshall’s well-being.