Review: Adventure Time – Distant Lands “Wizard City”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Peppermint Butler’s reincarnation begins life at school in Wizard City with Abracadaniel’s niece Abracadebra, but soon finds himself wrapped up in a strange magic conspiracy.

OUR TAKE

Three years ago on this day, Adventure Time aired its final episode, “Come Along With Me”, bringing an end to a series that one could argue kicked off the era of western animation we live in today. Now, with this last special, Distant Lands has now also concluded and…it’s kind of a weird place to end things. As mentioned, this wasn’t exactly how things were supposed to end, with the initial order actually having this episode being planned to release before “Together Again”, the Finn and Jake focused special that felt a hell of a lot more like a proper send off of the show, considering it was about the main characters dealing with death and reincarnation while bringing back an old conflict for them to resolve. It’s also kinda weird because Peppermint Butler, while certainly an important character at times, was nowhere near as central as Finn and Jake, Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, or even BMO, who had the first special, which makes this even more strange as conclusion. It’s by no means a bad episode, and it actually works perfectly fine on its own, but I think the placement of it is unfortunately its most glaring issue. Maybe if it were planned to do a couple more of these specials I wouldn’t feel so weird about it.

Still, taken on its own merits, Wizard City feels like Adventure Time writing at pretty adequate levels. Like the previous three, it expands the lore by re-introducing old and probably long forgotten characters and brings in new ones with new settings to make use of its story. In BMO, it was off in space, in Obsidian it was in Glass Kingdom, in Together Again, it was in the afterlife, and in Wizard City it’s…well, Wizard City. Peppermint (who is apparently Peppermint Butler but in a new form who he will one day take over?) joins a wizard school where naturally there are houses and ranks, with some classes taught by a character from one of my favorites of the older Adventure Time episodes. The message of it seems to be about accepting one’s future as not being dictated by the past, which is certainly the kind of wholesome you’d expect from the show, but not really blowing anyone’s minds here. Again, it’s not a bad story by any stretch, but the fact that it’s not only the end of these specials but also probably the end of this version of the universe in animated form is REALLY distracting. Thankfully it won’t be the end of Adventure Time as a whole since we’re getting Fiona and Cake apparently, but it’s still a bit of a bummer.