Review: Final Space “Chapter Eight”

When there’s trouble, you know who to call: Bolo the Titan.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Gary rallies the troops on the ride to the breach, but it’s clear by a video log that he’s close to pissing his pants, and HUE’s not helping. Luckily, Nightfall chimes in (and weirdly has her armor on just so she can take it off again) with a suggestion: flying directly into a nearby sun. Understandably, there is some pushback on this, but she has her reasons. In her timeline, when things looked there darkest and Nightfall was ready for the sweet embrace of death, a voice called out to her. Bolo, a Titan from Final Space who sealed it off from the rest of the universe (and voiced by Keith “Goliath from Gargoyles” David), told her how to create her time machine and helped her on her path to now.

The ride into the sun is loud, bright, and Kubrick-y, but the crew manages to pull up right at Bolo’s doorstep…and warped again through his mind. Once there, they are greeted by the Gatekeeper, YET ANOTHER SHOUTY COMIC RELIEF CHARACTER (because the show doesn’t have nearly enough of those) voiced by famous Conan TV sidekick Andy Richter, who tells Gary to enter a giant beam of light. Inside, he sees many different versions of himself from alternate timelines he will never see, including the Amazing Mustache Gary. The existential crisis of never knowing the feeling of facial follicles envelops him in a black despair goop, though Bolo theorizes it’s more about his perceived failure of living up to his father’s example.

So, since we’re the Dagobah Swamp Cave run-through, we might as well throw in some parental revelations as well, and Gary is sent back in time to see his father’s last moments trying to close the first breach. John Goodspeed (once again given sultry smooth vocal talent by Ron Perlman) is pretty easily convinced by Gary’s case about being from the future, though what’s somehow even more surprising is his co-pilot, Jack, who is the spitting image of the Lord Commander. Though apparently, a 29-year long partnership is nothing compared to your supposed future son’s word, and thus father and son bond over beating up a guy who, for all we know, hadn’t done anything wrong by that point.

When all that cools down, John informs Gary of the plan. They were hoping to send an anti-matter bomb into the breach, but were about to be hit by a wave of energy when Gary showed up. Now that time is frozen, that gives them a shot to deliver the bomb manually and prevent this whole situation from going wrong in the first place, but John goes on ahead to finish things himself, much to Gary’s horror. And so, the explosion goes off, John Goodspeed still dies a hero, Jack is blasted with Final Space Energy and goes on to do not great things with it, and the center of the explosion creates the creature that we will come to know as Mooncake.

Gary returns to the present, comforted by his friends who saw everything as it happened, and Nightfall realizes she’s no longer useful in this part of the plot and heads off. The Galaxy One crew sets course for Earth to find another Anti-Matter Bomb so they can finish this threat once and for all.

OUR TAKE

MY EYES BLEED FROM THE AWESOME. The visuals for this episode was completely off the chain as the kids say, always giving me something cool and interesting to feast my retinas on. The weird, ultra cosmic super dimensional craziness makes total and the absolute best use of why animation is such a great medium for this kind of story. It’s not too far off from some of the better Futurama or Rick and Morty visuals, and I really have to hand it to the art direction team for making this chapter such a trip.

The world building with the lore about the Titans was certainly interesting, even if Bolo himself didn’t add up to much more than a character development and plot device for moving Gary ahead on his Hero’s Journey, and I’ve yet to dislike Keith David in anything, so I look forward to how these things are explored in later parts of the series.

Now, putting that aside, the comedy and the seemingly intended tension meant for these later episodes seem to be at odds with themselves in a few key spots. Specifically, the reunion between Gary and John. While it’s been sufficiently established how much Gary misses his dad and how said dad might’ve been connected to the conspiracy centered around Final Space, meeting the Lord Commander there as John’s co-pilot seemed kinda swept under the rug in terms of what it could imply. It’s a neat revelation, to be sure, but we have no idea who he was as a person at that time aside from apparently working with Gary’s dad for close to 30 years. It apparently was not a great partnership if John was so quick to just beat him senselessly on the word of a version of his son he barely knew, but it does raise some questions. For one, was “Jack” always some schemer with universe-conquering ambitions, or was it just this mission that drove him to that? Has he known Gary has been John’s son all this time, and if so, how does he see Gary? And did Gary inadvertently create his own worst enemy by beating him up before he became the Lord Commander?

All of these questions, and probably more, as we enter the final act of the first season.