Review: Adventure Time “Reboot”

Adventure Time: Civil War, guest starring Tom Holland as Jake!

Spoilers Below

Continuing from previous episode, Finn rides the eel up to the surface, warbling loudly while Jake tries to net them from a distance…with less than stellar results. As Finn struggles for air, Susan charges in…instantly getting shocked, but is able to subdue the eel. Jake gets a call from Princess Bubblegum asking about the explosion and sending help. Finn rushes over to check Susan but sees her implant is short-circuiting. Finn tries touching it, which seems to activate something within her. Now calling herself “Seeker X-J-7-7 Strong”, she gets Finn and throws Jake into the forest. The grass sword within Finn attempts to fight back, but Finn restrains it. A Bubblegum, Nurse Poundcake, and a squad of Banana Guards arrive to help, but Susan flees with Finn in literal tow. The guards manage to cut her off (with a royal yelling from Nurse Poundcake), but Susan unsurprisingly plows through them. Luckily, P-Bubs manages to escape with Finn. Susan follows all the way to the Candy Kingdom’s doorstep, provoking the involvement of the Gumball Guardians, who blast her with laser eye blasts. Unfortunately, all this does is blind everyone and give Susan energy to absorb to make her stronger. Now in a larger and more muscular appearance, Susan attempts to squash Bubblegum, but is stopped by the arrival of Rattleballs, the rogue Gumball warrior! Lots of guest appearances this week!

This surprise help doesn’t last, though, as Susan crushes him instantly and grabs Finn before jumping off, Hulk-style. She arrives at the beach, waiting for some sort of pick up. Jake finally reappears to save the day, but Finn slows him down enough to not kill her. Seems it was futile, as the implant sends out a beacon to somewhere remote. He eventually manages to neutralize her while using the Jake Suit (basically, he wears Jake as armor to fight bad guys), only to have her rise out of the ocean with an anchor as her weapon, saying the primary objective must be completed. Pinned by the anchor, Jake can no longer help Finn, who realizes that he might have to kill Susan in order to stop her from hurting any more people. He gets close enough to smash her implant with his broken Finn Sword, which snaps her back to reality, but aggravates Finn’s grass sword to the point that it starts trying to crush Susan. Finn wrenches back control, and luckily Susan is only asleep, but the grass sword starts controlling the other sword and breaks off of Finn’s arm to become a new being!

Uh…kay? This didn’t resolve nearly any as much as I thought it would, raising a ton more questions than answers. I guess Tiffany and Gross really are gone for good, but the mystery of Susan’s true purpose remains, along with a ton of new developments, including the (supposed) death of a minor character and what is basically the creation of a new one. There’s unfortunately not a whole lot to analyze when so much was happening. It seems very much like the continuing storyline that isn’t finished, and so there’s not much to come to a conclusion on without the actual conclusion. Kind of cheap to wait so long just to bring us back on this and then wait some more, but I’m not exactly going to bail on Adventure Time now that we’re so close to the end, and I’m eager to see where this takes us. Still, though, as two episodes on their own, these definitely left me feeling blue-balled, and the continuity porn didn’t help (though it was appreciated). Onto the final two seasons!