Season Review: Adventure Time: Side Quests Season Two
OVERVIEW:
Picking up where the first season left off, Adventure Time: Side Quests continues the early misadventures of Finn and Jake before the events of the original series. Rather than following an overarching story, each episode serves as its own standalone story while including nods to future events.
OUR TAKE:
The new spinoff series follows the storytelling patterns of the first few seasons of Adventure Time. Many later fans of Adventure Time were drawn to its in-depth setting and worldbuilding in future seasons, which many agree began with the introduction of the Lich and later an unsuspecting Christmas episode blowing the lid on the Ice King’s backstory. The second season might then be considered a return to form for the series, though there’s still something here for all manner of fans, old and new alike.
Like the original series, there isn’t a distinctly defining genre for each episode, and varies from episode to episode. Some are adventure episodes where there’s a lot of exploring, while others feature little action or fighting. “The Zipline” and “Sweet Tooth” can even be considered the closest thing this spinoff show has to horror. As a whole, however, each episode has varying touches of comedy and jokes that give the distinct lighthearted feel unique to the show.
Adventure Time: Side Quests has lots of nods to the original show. One of the larger ones is the series ending with a vaguely Christmas-themed, Ice King-centered episode where he starts a Christmas tradition of “fa-la-laing” across houses during the winter. The rest of them are sprinkled throughout the show in small but noticeable ways for even casual enjoyers of the show. It’s hard to not think about Jake’s “Bacon Pancakes” chime when listening to him “makin’ broccoli, shinin’ plates,” or of the Jake suit when watching “Alpha Dogs.” Fans will smile seeing the Phil face mounted on a wall, and freeze in cold blood when they see a snail waving at them. It speaks volumes of the cultural impact even a few episodes of Adventure Time has had on our childhoods.
There’s an interesting number of memes and pop culture references in general sprinkled throughout as well. The most obvious one can be seen in the second half of the season premiere “Death Fiction,” which is a very distinct nod to Lord of the Rings, from a fight in a volcano to protect or destroy an ‘item of cursed evil’ right down to a ring of invisibility. “The Chore Wheel” features a transformation scene right out of a magical girl anime. Princess Bubblegum even has a moment talking to herself in the mirror reminiscent of Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin scene. Memes and modern slang can also be heard, such as Jake coming in with the steel chair in “Toad Wrestlers” or Finn reporting a character “self-pwning” themselves.
Despite its return to form, the show isn’t fully for children, and fans who grew up with the original series can appreciate it beyond just the nostalgia factor for more ‘adult humor.’ This trend in comedy continues from the Fionna and Cake series, the first episode in particular of which stood out as relatable to many young adult viewers. “The Zipline” and “Sweet Tooth” stand out as distinctly darker episodes of the season that younger audiences might shy away from. “The Zipline” is reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode, while “Sweet Tooth” feels like a very distinct reference to the Nightmare on Elm Street horror series. As a whole, the season has more than a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-it jokes that would go over the heads of children but adults might get. “Tiny Negs” and “Freelancers” in particular reference a society run by “obscenely wealthy ghouls” or realizing the enemies of the people wearing crowns before their subjects ‘do a wicker man’ and burn them.
The art and music are fairly simple, not really aiming to stand out or do anything more than capture the atmosphere of the original series. There are a few songs here and there for listeners to enjoy during the episodes, with the ‘fa-la-laing’ from the finale being particularly catchy. Certain art scenes such as Deadtooth from “Alpha Dogs” or the tree from “Wedgie Tree” are disturbingly detailed for its otherwise simple art style, much like certain scenes from The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. A few characters even distinctly die, mostly by cutting away to their skeletons, but one particular scene in “Tiny Negs” shows a very anime-esque death of someone exploding. Still, the show manages to do it in a way that doesn’t risk it getting hit with a PG rating of any type.
The only nitpicks I have about the show are mainly around the minor technicalities of the story. A few examples I’ve seen are the characters knowing who Magic Man is despite not appearing until late into the original series’ first season, Lumpy Space Princess being far past her teenage years, or Finn knowing who and what Princess Bubblegum’s morrow is too early. One of the bigger ones is Finn as a baby being brought to the Baby Kingdom and starting an uprising in “Escape From the Baby Kingdom,” simply for it seeming out of character for Joshua and Margaret to attend such an event. But as a casual viewer during the show’s early seasons who hasn’t delved too deeply into the lore in its later seasons, this wasn’t a dealbreaker for me.
As a whole, viewers shouldn’t expect something groundbreaking or revelatory about the franchise from Adventure Time: Side Quests, unlike Distant Lands or Fionna and Cake. (The only episode that could remotely be considered an exception to this is “The Notorious Pup Game,” but it still explores a relatively small and minor group of characters we’ve only seen a few times over the entire show.) But if you enjoy the setting and the characters, especially as a longtime fan, watching this will surely be a nice treat.
Adventure Time: Side Quests Season 2 is streaming now on Disney+ and Hulu in the United States, and will premier internationally on HBO Max starting October 5.
