Overview:
The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball, the follow-up to The Amazing World of Gumball, has recently dropped its second season on Hulu. Much like the previous season, fans get twenty more episodes showcasing the further misadventures of the citizens of Elmore.
Our Take:
Things start off with “The Summoning,” which sees Darwin join a witch coven made up of other girls from his school, including Masami, Teri, and Clare. The world of Elmore is already pretty unusual, but the show’s episodes dealing with the supernatural have always been fun to watch, since they really show off how far things can go. In fact, when the girls are surprised that Darwin has figured out they’re witches, he reminds them he’s dating a ghost. It’s kind of fun to see the season start with a throwback to the show’s “magic” episodes right out of the gate.
Together, they decide to use their dark, eldritch powers to take over the yearbook club in what slowly turns into a parody of The Craft, with a few shout-outs to Hocus Pocus and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina thrown in. Fortunately, because this is Gumball, friendship and good photography save the day after Masami turns into the story’s Nancy Downs. Before anyone asks, Darwin is the Sarah of the story, complete with Robin Tunney’s famous wig.
The episode is fun, but the timing is a little unusual. It’s strange to see the season opener not give focus to Gumball, though it does leave the final joke, of him taking Darwin’s place in the coven after he gets recruited by vampires, a bit funny. It also might have been better to release this episode with the previous batch, in time for Halloween instead of Christmas week. After all, last season’s U.K. premiere was in late October. It’s also strange that the show’s resident witch, Mrs. Jötunheim, doesn’t even get a mention.
The second episode, “The Unfollow,” gives attention to fandom’s very own Elmore avatar, Sarah, who was previously promoted to the show’s intro. Realizing they haven’t seen much of her lately, and that she’s unfollowed them on social media, Gumball and Darwin try to get her back to stalking them. Sarah hasn’t abandoned her old ways; however, she’s just moved on to obsessing over an AI-generated fox.
The answer is simple: classic “jump the shark” tactics, starting with Gumball and Darwin redesigning themselves to look straight out of a Disney cartoon. The traditionally animated kind. The scene, complete with a squash-and-stretch joke, is alone worth the episode. Even if the season’s budget was used up for the scene, it would be worth it. Unfortunately, some fans might be upset seeing Gumball and Darwin eventually resorting to a Skibidi Toilet joke.
A few AU multiverse jokes later, it turns out that everything was part of Sarah’s evil scheme to get our heroes to help her write up their fan wiki. With the show’s trademark use of meta humor, this arguably could’ve been the season’s opener, if only for the return of Chi Chi. That said, the season still has plenty of meta humor to go around. The next episode literally starts with Gumball and Darwin as shojo love interests.
Because the season is given out all at once, viewers are treated to a bunch of holiday episodes. It might not be the opener, but “The Cheapmas” gives fans a Christmas episode, which sees the residents of Elmore too busy with work to celebrate the holidays, all so they could afford to. Even Santa’s been moonlighting this year. “The Fools” also serves as a rare April Fool’s Day story. Assuming “The Summoning” wasn’t the Halloween story, “The Necroprancer,” which sees Gumball, Darwin, and Carrie take a trip to the Underworld, comes close. A proper Halloween story might have been nice, but it’s hard to top “The Ghouls,” if only because it featured Mr. Small as Sailor Moon.
Viewers also get the standard episodes fans have come to expect from this series. The show is famous for episodes where everything takes a break to take a look at all the background characters. Gumball even points this out in case viewers didn’t notice. This season’s answer to that is “The Sonder.” While stuck on a bus, Gumball has an out-of-body experience where he gets to look into the backstories of all the passerbys. In one impressive sequence, their dwarven bus driver is shown to have had his heart broken by a princess straight out of Sleeping Beauty.
After all these years, with the show rising from cancellation no less, it risks getting tiresome for Gumball to relearn that there are other people in the world. Fortunately, this time, the show has the sense to poke fun at itself. It turns out that Gumball and Darwin were just making everything up and even got told off for doing so. Honestly, the idea that not everyone has a sympathetic backstory needs to be shared more often. It’s an overused device.
One of the season’s highlights is “The Labels.” Reminiscent of the show’s original finale, a new guidance counselor goes around giving students and teachers alike literal labels that seem to have a transformative effect on them. The message, the best way to make someone into something is to treat them like it, and even positive labels can be problematic, isn’t that subtle. However, it’s all worth it to see Gumball embrace his “bad” label. And, by bad, we mean a social media influencer. Think K-pop idol without the music.
There’s another reason the season probably wants viewers to remember the show’s earlier finale. Its final episode, “The Rewrite,” finally continues the story. Rob finally makes his return to the show. In one big twist, he turns out to be working for the Awesome Store’s owner.
The Awesome Store has been a recurring element in the show over the years and it’s great to finally see the mysterious owner get the spotlight. Granted, most would have settled on giving the character a name.
Once again, Gumball and Darwin are on the verge of realizing that they’re in a supernatural show. Rob and his new boss are keeping them from realizing this is apparently what’s saving Elmore from falling into the void, although each new season order probably helps.
Rob might have once been a self-proclaimed villain, but he might soon have to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the show from a literal plot hole. However, even when he’s trying to keep the story going, a few characters might just find a happy ending.
Overall, fans can expect some of the usual story beats from previous seasons. Given the time of the release, it might be more fun to watch “The Cheapmas” first, but this will be less of an issue at any other time of the year. That said, “The Summoning” is still a fun watch, and Christmas is still a time for “scary ghost stories,” as the song goes.
Over the years, the show’s self-aware humor could occasionally be a bit much, but this season also proves it can even poke fun at itself just as much as classic tropes.
While it can be hard for a long-running show to still make an impression, this season also shows that it can give fans all sorts of things to expect. This latest return to Elmore was well-worth the trip.