Animation
X-Men ‘97
The mutants are back in Disney’s retro iteration of the X-Men—as are the violence and superhuman abilities that typically accompany this franchise.
The Land of Ooo has long been a bit … odd.
It makes Narnia look like Arizona, Oz look like Kansas. Its four elements are fire, ice, slime and candy. It boasts countless princesses but very few accountants (one of which is a penguin). But for Finn and Jake, it’s home. And you know what they say about home: There’s no place like it.
Jake the Dog and Finn the Human have lived in the Land of Ooo for ever so long. They’re the best of pals—brothers, really—and they adventured together for a full 10 seasons on Cartoon Network’s (appropriately named) show Adventure Time, plus a couple of spinoffs.
But for all the many, many, many questions that the Land of Ooo might trigger, the most pressing question comes with a relatively simple (and potentially lucrative) answer. Isn’t it about time for a prequel?
The answer, according to Disney+: Yes. Yes, it is.
Ooo is, technically, a dystopian world filled with the extremely faded residue of a civilization long gone, a civilization that vaporized itself a thousand years earlier in the great “Mushroom War.”
But even though you’re liable to stumble across old skeletons or ruined cars in Ooo, this world has moved on now. It is, quite literally, magical—and very, very silly.
It’s a land loaded with talking cupcakes, dapper insects and emotionally needy wizards—but very, very few humans. Finn is one of them, and he comes with a firm moral core. He spends his time righting wrongs, swinging swords and engaging in the sorts of hijinks any kid might. (If that kid lacked any sort of parental supervision and lived in a land of magic-flinging adversaries, that is.)
His best friend, Jake the Dog, remains very much the same as always. Or, at least, the same relationally, given that he can change shape, size and elasticity at a whim. (“Yeah, I’m mysterious,” he says in this new series.) But Jake’s personality neither grows nor regresses here: He still feels like Finn’s more irresponsible, occasionally wise older brother.
And the show is still populated by its popular cadre of side characters, from Princess Bubblegum (a princess made out of—wait for it … bubblegum) and BMO (a sentient Game Boy-like device from the ancient days) to the lovelorn Ice King and the hip but angsty Marceline the Vampire Queen.
And Side Quests brings back something else that’s important, too: Adventure Time’s relative innocence.
Adventure Time has always been a weird duck, even in the sometimes unhinged world of television animation. The show became a breakout hit in part because of its genre-defying appeal. Its adventure and whimsy attracted kids. Its expectation-busting animation, subversive humor and underlying angst pulled in teens. And make no mistake: As silly as this show can feel, it’s pretty smart, too, which made it the sort of show that even adults could enjoy.
But over the run of Adventure Time and its offshoots, the show grew darker, more complex and more problematic. It stirred controversy when Princess Bubblegum and Marceline—long suspected to be in a same-sex relationship with each other—officially became an item in Adventure Time’s series finale. And that relationship remains canon. They’ll even get their own series (expected to be titled Adventure Time: Bubblegum & Marceline) on HBO Max, likely in 2027.
But Side Quests turns back the clock and embraces Adventure Time’s roots.
Finn was a teen for much of the original series, getting older as the show wore on. But in this prequel, he’s younger—about 12 years old.
When Side Quest’s showrunner, Nate Cash, was asked if he’d be interested in doing an Adventure Time spinoff—a show for which he’d been the storyboard supervisor for several years—he was given carte blanche to make the show what he wanted it to be, according to Animation Magazine.
“The directive was that I didn’t have to include Finn and Jake because there were so many popular characters on that series,” Cash said. “So, I went away and thought about it and realized that I really, really love Finn in the first two seasons. That was something that kind of went away a little bit as the tone of the show changed and he aged. So, I figured it would be great to have the show centered around a 12-year-old Finn.”
With the show harkening back to a preteen Finn, Side Quests embraces Adventure Time’s more innocent era, with an emphasis on nutty hijinks and multi-level humor. Romance is in the air—but it’s not in our faces.
But all that said, the show still comes with plenty of problems, as it always has.
Jake and Finn have their merits, but they’re disappointing role models overall. Violence is often a key to success in the land of Ooo. And both Finn and Jake can be quite, and unapologetically, rude. Actual swear words that we’d recognize as such don’t crop up often (if ever), but Finn and Jake both curse in their own Ooo way: In one 12-minute episode, Finn is called a “crass boy potty mouth.” In another, Finn and Jake must do battle with all the curse words that Jake uttered, bottled up and literally buried.
Oh, then those curse words manifest as “demons” and are called evil—but they’re dismissed by Jake as being just a teensy bit evil and probably not worth bothering about. Just like farts. “All farts are evil,” Jake tells Finn, “even ours.”
Yep, the show comes with diabolical references and a plethora of bathroom jokes, often smooshed together in one theologically confusing, stinky mess. Some might say that the show makes light of a great many things that should not be joking matters (such as Ice King’s habit of kidnapping princesses). But even those who would argue that it’s all in good fun should be wary of ethics from the land of Ooo blending with our own senses of morality.
Adventure Time: Side Quests will be, for many fans of the series, a welcome return to form. But just like the original series’ Lumpy Space Princess, that form can come with its own bulging issues.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Finn and Jake head to the local Tournament of Champions, where Finn hopes to win the house-throw competition. But alas, Finn’s “noodle arms” just aren’t up to the task. So when he sees a mysterious cloaked stranger shooting a crossbow, he decides to enter in the archery contest instead. “We’re not house-throw guys!” he shouts to Jake. “We’re crossbow bros!”
Unfortunately, Finn is also terrible at shooting a crossbow, necessitating some magical, literally on-the-fly help from Jake to keep those crossbow bolts from killing anyone.
Errant bolts threaten a number of folks. A couple fly through the head of a willing minotaur—in one ear, past the minotaur’s small brain and out the other. Another opens an outhouse door: “Someone’s in here!” the occupant says. But those crossbow bolts also keep a stone tower from falling and killing its occupants.
Jake helps Finn cheat to compete. Finn’s opponent is kind of a bully who pokes Finn in the eye. We see a competition involving sitting in boiling water. (The leader seems, indeed, quite uncomfortable.) Finn talks about defecating. Male contestants (including Finn) sometimes go shirtless, and one wears a loincloth.
We hear one use of the word “jeez,” along with Ooo-style curses such as “blippin’,” “oh my glob” and “square roots.”
Finn and Jake run into (and almost step on) Bellany Bartholemew Bug, a proud but lovelorn insect aristocrat who must compete for the hand of a fair lady bug. (The bug is a lady, not an actual ladybug.) But the aristocratic rules of their society don’t allow bugs to compete for the hands of fair maidens themselves. “I am a dandy gent!” Bellany exclaims. No, they must find champions to fight for them. As such, Finn and Jake get a quick education on what fighting in this very dandified society looks like.
The male bugs of this society proudly call themselves “dandies” and “fancy,” and certainly, modern society would see it as rather effeminate. (Bellany’s opponent, for instance, wears makeup and a powdered wig, just as gentlemen might’ve done in Europe in the 18th century.) Jake and Finn compete in stylized swordplay, etiquette and tea decanting. A bug embarrassingly molts in front of everyone—but in so doing, he seems to shed his need to follow these strict societal rules and tells his love-bug his true feelings.
Jake is a world-class spitter, breaking plates and causing injuries with his spittle. An irate bug seems to defecate pink-like eggs. Jake is lured into the competition by “free root beer and tummy rubs.” A character complains that someone “besmirched my assets,” an allusion to a strong swear word. Finn says “heck” and “cram,” (the latter repeatedly) and as such is called a “crass boy potty mouth.”
In the midst of a battle with a cyclops and a surprisingly durable butterfly, Jake stubs his toe and lets loose a bunch of “swear words,” including “thunder,” “calcium buildup” and “catatonic bipedal.” That batch of curses turns into a demon that attacks a city and sets it on fire. Finn and Jake conquer the dastardly language, but it opens up a bigger issue: Ever since Jake ate too many “demon’s blood jellybeans,” his foul language can take on a sentient, demonic form. Jake’s solution is simple: “I just bottle them up, dig a little grave and toss ‘em in.”
“Our backyard is actually a cemetery for evil demon curses?” Finn asks.
“It’s not like serious evil,” Jake reassures him. “It’s just like little bitty whoopsy evil. It ain’t hurting nobody.” But Finn isn’t buying it: “This place is evil and we’re righteous heroes!” he says. And so they begin unburying the curses to kill them and send them back from whence they came.
Jake and Finn kill a bevy of these ghost-like curses, but they soon discover a stairway down to a curse-word-filled lair—accessed by a hole in the “butt” of a sentient cemetery tree. They discover some demons hanging out by a blood-filled water cooler, gossiping about the boss. (“Are you gonna do evil, or are you just gonna talk about it from your skull throne?” one gripes.) A massive demon keeps trying to convince Finn to pull his finger. When Finn finally does, the demon passes gas. Jake tells Finn that “we’re all made up of all kinds of stuff, man. Good, bad, guts and gas. … these guys are just some of my little evil. And sometimes ya just gotta let it out. Like a fart.” And once Finn accepts that he doesn’t have to slay all these demonic curses, the demons float into the sky and turn into stars.
Jake stabs the cyclops’ gigantic eye with a sword, leading to what looks like a pool of blood within the sight globe. We’re told the fight started when butterflies stole a pineapple from a grandma with “jet-powered underpants.” A “snake wizard” features in the story, too. Jake makes references to a time when he “stole all those babies from the great fire eagle.” (“You gotta understand!” Jake tells Finn. “I didn’t know it was wrong!”) He insinuates all those babies met a bad end.
We hear a few more not-so-cursey curse words uttered.
While harvesting soup, Finn and Jake hear a call for help. Turns out, it’s just the Ice King, who’s trying to attract the attention of his latest love interest, Rescue Princess. He believes the two of them are madly in love. In reality, the Spanish-speaking Rescue Princess just saves people in need and nurses them back to health; the Ice King soon tries to injure himself in order to gain access to Rescue Princess’ makeshift hospital.
Ice King does suffer a pretty bad break: We see his leg bent awkwardly in several places. He causes a catastrophic avalanche and chews a bunch of gold coins. He takes crutches from an injured bear. He causes injury to a sentient shard of ice when he asks the shard to punch him in the face. A frozen cloud lands on several bits of sentient food, necessitating action from the Rescue Princess.
We hear that the Princess’ native land, the Rescue Kingdom, is located in a shark volcano. Finn and Jake get frozen in a giant ice cube. Someone gets slapped in the face. Rescue Princess magically causes helpful plants to grow (and then she mashes up said plants to make medicine). Someone’s eyeballs get stuck on a frozen surface.
Someone is called a clumsy idiot and a “chicken turkey.” Finn tells Ice King that he’s “rescuing your sad badonk.” Someone passes gas.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
The mutants are back in Disney’s retro iteration of the X-Men—as are the violence and superhuman abilities that typically accompany this franchise.
If the idea of a Game of Thrones prequel had you groaning preemptively, you were right in doing so.
In PBS’ Patience, a young woman with autism helps solve murder cases for the City of York Police.
Avatar: The Last Airbender, Netflix’s live-action remake of the Nickelodeon cartoon, has some good lessons and some troubling elements.