Review: Gravity Falls Season Two

Season two of Gravity Falls took us on a wonderful, freaky ride. There were zombies. There were ghosts. There was time travel. Heck, there was even a snarky unicorn. Amid all that, there was family.

In season one, we knew that Stan loved his family deeply but we never knew why. These twenty episodes showed us why he loves his family so much and why he is always afraid that people will leave him. Stan, as a character, had so much more growth than most cartoon characters. It was amazing to see him go from a grumpy old great-uncle to a man who would give his life to protect his niece and nephew.

But he wasn’t the only character that had growth. Both Dipper and Mabel grew from silly children into responsible young adults. Sure, they may still do silly things from time to time but now they will always be the ones to stand up when something threatens their loved ones. It’s something they learned from Stan. If not them, then who?

Adding to all of this character growth is a whole new character – Stan’s twin brother, Ford. We learned that he wrote all of the journals that documented the weird things going on in Gravity Falls. He was always the “smart twin,” while Stan was the “sly twin.” A lot of the stories this season were Ford’s stories. How to get him back from the other dimension. How to bring him back into the family after being away for so long. Dipper relating to him on a personal level after feeling like the odd duck of the family. While some people expected Stan to have a twin brother, I don’t think they expected him to act quite like he did.

Gravity Falls was a series like no other. Unlike most cartoons, the writers treated the audience like intelligent human beings. They didn’t spoon feed us simple information. They assumed that we knew simple things and built upon those assumptions. Personally, I am sorry that the series has ended. I hope that Alex Hirsch will either do some sort of spin-off series or do another series that is just as fun and intelligent. We, the people, need his beautiful mind on our television screens. We aren’t ready to let him go yet.