Review: Adventure Time – Distant Lands “BMO; Obsidian”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In the past, BMO helps out a space colony. In the future, Princess Bubblegum and Marceline save the Glass Kingdom.

OUR TAKE

Adventure Time, you may have heard of it, wrapped up its original run after 8 long years on Cartoon Network, being the first in a group of shows that would reignite broader appeal to the channel along with Regular Show, Steven Universe, Gumball, and several others. But even with the main series concluded and just about everything wrapped up neatly, there was still an interest in new stories. Enter “Distant Lands”, a short series of 45 minute episodes that were announced a year later and began airing on HBO Max last year in 2020. Of the two that have released thus far, they seem to be jumping around in the timeline of events. The first episode, “BMO”, starring the titular walking GameBoy Color who assisted Finn and Jake on their adventures, tooling around space until he gets wrapped up in the dealings of a space colony trying to figure out what to do with its resources, and is later revealed to take place just before he meets Finn and Jake as babies. This episode, while received positively, wasn’t a huge splash and went pretty much under the radar for everyone who wasn’t specifically looking forward to it.

The second short, “Obsidian”, released last November and got MUCH more attention. This was mainly due to it focusing on the complicated but heartfelt romance between Princess Bubblegum and Marceline the Vampire Queen, two characters who had often been shown to have a lot of tension between them, but with the restrictions of basic cable at the time, the fans were forced to fill in the blanks themselves. Thankfully this was confirmed by the end of the series finale, where the two were finally able to share a kiss and cement things once and for all. Unfortunately, while it was nice to have the “will they won’t they” settled, it was a bit of a cheat to wait 8 seasons to pull it off, especially for a series finale, much like the mixed reception over the “Korrasami” reveal with The Legend of Korra, which had a similar couple confirmation with little time to properly build on it. “Obsidian” makes use of both its time and its likely more mature audience to both develop Bubblegum and Marceline’s chemistry while also building on their respective character arcs from the series, making a much bigger wave even among lapsed fans of the series. There are two more episodes on the way, one of them premiering later this week, although the order seems to have changed. But we’ll get into those next time.