Slice of Cake (and Fionna)

A few months back, I wrote about the animated series Adventure Time. Over the course of 10 seasons and nearly 300 episodes, the show presented the endlessly entertaining exploits of Jake the Dog and Finn the Human through the fantasy world of Ooo, picking up surprising pathos and stakes along the journey.

A hallmark of Adventure Time was the truly weird subplots it would indulge and allow to become the main plot for entire episodes. One of these goofy larks involved the characters of Fionna and Cake, gender-swapped facsimiles of the main characters who appeared in literal fan fiction written by one of the other characters in the show.

I hope that brief description is enough to give you sense of how strange it was to hear that a brand-new Adventure Time spin-off series debuted in 2023, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. There had been a few episodes of the original Adventure Time that were, beginning to end, the Ice King's fan fiction about these characters. So I supposed this new series would be just that all the time. Fair enough, I thought. Adventure Time was always clever and enjoyable, including those "alternate universe" episodes, so sure -- sign me up for more Adventure Time!

But the Fionna and Cake series is so not that, it's hard to wrap your head around. It's different in almost every conceivable way. The format is half-hour episodes, rather than the 15-minute eps of the original series. It's an explicitly dramatic show telling a serious story; OG Adventure Time certainly had its serious themes at times, but was fundamentally a light and comedic show. Strangest of all, Fionna and Cake is not a fiction-within-a-fiction, but somehow pulls off being an actual sequel to the events of the flagship series. (How this happens is best left to discover for yourself when you watch it.)

Most of the Adventure Time cast returns to voice their characters in Fionna and Cake. (Or versions of their characters.) The small handful of actors who don't return have their roles handed off to performers definitely trying to impersonate the originals. And it's important to attempt this sort of seamless continuity with the original series... because the show is otherwise asking a lot of its audience.

If the original Adventure Time was a show originally intended for a young audience, and slowly grew into a more "young adult" show as its audience grew up along with it? Then Fionna and Cake is a show made for those now-adults. It's a single serialized story told over 10 episodes. (In fact, it's so serialized and feels so complete that I'm not sure where they'll go in the announced season 2.) It's the tragedy mask to Adventure Time's comedy mask, though every episode still has the potential to leave you with the "what did I just watch?" feeling that often concluded an episode of the original.

Having watched the whole season, I struggle to say how much I actually liked the spin-off. I mean, it was good television. I didn't enjoy it as much as the original, for sure. But also, comparing the two is to compare the proverbial apples and oranges. You can respect the creative choice to come at a spin-off this way, to say "ok, but we're not going to give the audience what they'll expect in a spin-off."

Call season 1 a B overall? What I can say for sure is a) that anyone who finishes the original Adventure Time probably owes it to themselves to check out this radical departure; and b) this sequel probably doesn't resonate if you haven't seen the original. (Which I know sucks for them trying to grow a new audience, but hey... there it is.)