Review: Adventure Time – Fionna and Cake “The Bear and the Rose”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Huntress Wizard makes a last ditch effort to save Finn’s life, but needs Fionna’s help. Which may be hard, because Fionna is currently dealing with the fallout of all her awful actions back on her world.

OUR TAKE

We come to the end of another season of Fionna and Cake, and hopefully not for the last time. Every plot is wrapped up, just like the last season’s finale, though this time with some set up for future plots in a potential third season, should we be lucky enough to get that. Huntress, our deuteragonist for the season, finally fully taps into the utmost potential of her green magic abilities to save Finn, but it’s not enough, as his mind does not fully return even when his body is restored and healed. And remember whose show this is, so Fionna has to be involved, even with her connection to Finn mainly being through their encounters in the dream world. As cool as it would be for them to meet in person properly, giving them this unique bond and having them help each other learn and grow is actually pretty neat. Cake is also involved, though mainly as a way of messaging Fionna about Huntress needing her, and so she can have an excuse to break it off with M-Cron. Kinda makes you wonder why they made her leaving seem like a big deal last episode if they were going to make her come back in the very next one, but whatever, it still worked out I guess.

As for Fionna dealing with cleaning up her multiple messes she caused after the venue, she does her best, or at least enough to let the people she cares about know that this was just a lapse of judgement, that she’s sorry, and willing to immediately work to improve herself and things with them, which is all I suppose you can ask for in an apology. And back in Ooo, despite not getting a resolution with everyone, we do get hints at the future we saw in Distant Lands with PB retired from ruling, and thankfully Finn is not dead yet, but has gotten some significant character development without hogging the spotlight. While this episode doesn’t fully make up for the strange pacing in most of this season, it does manage to make things end with a considerable flourish, especially that ending scene as Fionna discovers that her city is basically just one square on a mostly unpopulated but vast planet. And then there’s the post-credit scene with Marceline’s demon dad Hudson meeting Marshall Lee and offering him a job, which…could mean a lot of things, but we’re only going to know what if we get a Season 3, which I certainly hope we do! But now is time to reflect on everything else that’s come so far, and look back on the season we got. And seriously, fingers crossed we get that third season because I really need at least a trilogy of this show.