Okayyyy it’s time for me to be a nerd about my favorite series. Adventure Time has been such a staple in so many of our childhoods (mine included). Many grew up with the show, as it progressed through- out 10 seasons from 2010-2018. We watched Finn, a human boy living in a post-apocalyptic earth, where a nuclear war gave way to radioactive zombies, vampires, candy princesses, wizards and all sorts of other whacky characters each experiencing life lessons, silly circumstances, friendships, feuds, and even grief, heartache, and loss. The series finale aired as a 4-part saga in 2018 on Cartoon Network, bringing in 921 million viewers eager to see all of their favorites coming together to battle it out a final time against an ever-present being of evil. However, this emotional close to a wonderful show was not the end of Ad- venture Time as a whole. In July of this year, a brand-new adventure time series was announced starring the gender flipped versions of the titular characters Finn and Jake, as Fiona and Cake. Fiona and Cake are not new to the universe, as they have sparsely appeared throughout the original series in special episodes and have been meshed into the overall lore of the show.

The first two episodes of Fiona and Cake were released August 31st on HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video. Two new episodes were dropped every few weeks until they concluded with 10 episodes on September 28th. The series adds onto the already deep lore of Fiona and Cake and Adventure Time as a whole. The series introduces Fiona Campbell, a version of Fiona living in a magicless world similar to our own. Fiona struggles with a lack of purpose in her life, jumping from job to job, and living in a filthy apartment with her normal cat, cake. The people in Fiona’s world share the same attributes as their magical counterparts in the original Adventure time. There’s Marshall Lee (voiced by Donald Glover) who is the vampire-like couch-surfing punk musician, and Gary, a sweet and nerdy pink haired baker. (The two’s cannon romance arc is a side plot in the show, and draws parallels to the relationship between Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum in Adventure Time.)

It was so exciting to see the return of these characters and the side characters living a life comparable to ours. In contrast to the original Adventure Time series, this show was made for an adult audience, with the fights resulting in injuries and real blood, minor swear words, and our childhood characters now all grown up and casually drinking alcohol. Unlike most other adult animation shows such as Fam- ily Guy or Rick & Morty, these instances of adult content in the show don’t feel overtly forced for shock value, and instead are very naturally placed throughout the episodes. This sheds the children’s show reputation that these characters had, and in turn humanizes them, making them more flawed but at the same time more well-rounded. Fiona makes mistakes, and not unlike Finn, she does not always know what she is doing. It took her experiencing something outside the norm she was used to, to realize that she would rather stay in her normal world, where she has friends and community than to change it all for some fleeting magical excitement in her life.

This show was like a fever dream for me. It was amazing to see this spinoff pickup years after Adventure Time ended and add even more nuance and world building to the already vast and existential show. I think Fiona and Cake could have run a few more episodes because the ending was very rushed, and it left a lot of open questions up to the audience. But other than the lack of episodes I really loved this addition to the adventure time universe. 10/10 (biased)