Review: Adventure Time “Seventeen”

Those Green Knights just keep coming back.

Overview:

It’s Finn’s 17th birthday, but his birthday celebration is interrupted by a mysterious immortal green knight, who challenges him to a competition.

Our Take:

This time, it’s a parody of Gawain and the Green Knight, with Finn as Gawain and Fern as the Green Knight. Instead of New Years, the holiday is Finn’s birthday, and he’s excited to finally celebrate turning seventeen. Finn’s sin is less hubris as in the original, and more ignorance; he sees the green knight and instantly thinks it’s Jake because the knight possesses shapeshifting abilities. The story follows the original quite closely, until Finn gets out of a beheading by suggesting that they compete through games instead.

The reveal that the Green Knight is Fern comes as a bit of a surprise. We know that Fern survived his last encounter with Finn, but his abilities seem to have undergone a rapid metamorphosis. He has new grass-themed powers, as seen most obviously by his rapid transformations and his ability to create smaller selves that have enough strength to manipulate large objects. Perhaps this is because of his joining hands with Gumball and Gumball’s superior technology, or perhaps he’s simply gotten more malicious over time. Either way, he has nursed his grudge against Finn and has become more monstrous. He barely resembles Finn at all and instead is closer to a laughing villain. Instead of wanting to become Finn, Fern has seemed to settle for destroying him and humiliating him instead.

The introduction of Bubblegum’s relatives, Gumball specifically, raises some questions. We do know a Gumball– the Gumball from Fionna and Cake. However, we’re still not sure whether Fionna and Cake’s adventures are really made up stories, or if they are actually something from the past. With such similar names, it really raises some questions. Regardless, there can’t be anything good that comes out of that team up, and Finn’s birthday is ruined.