Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake Helps Heal Multiverse Burnout

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake is the perfect antidote to “multiverse fatigue.” When the Max series was announced, a lot of fans were curious what this trip back to the land of Ooo would be like. What those viewers got was a portrait of a young woman in chaos. She decides to invest in her present and improve her world despite the temptation to mold it exactly how it “should be.” Community, compassion, and reflection are the way forward for Fionna and her talking feline companion. 

Well, the crew announced that Fionna and Cake‘s adventures would involve the duo traveling the multiverse, a groan went up online. After all, there’s been a lot of movies, shows, and conversation around the concept of parallel worlds in pop culture over the last few years. However, Fionna and Cake stands alongside some of the strongest narratives about the multiverse and what the concept tells us about ourselves. From a well-traveled concept comes the distinct feeling of relief.

In just the last 3 years alone, fans have seen Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, The Flash, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, LOKI, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Rick and Morty, Amphibia, The Owl House, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and countless other properties take on “the multiverse” in one way or the other. Fionna and Cake does something that a lot of multiverse stories could stand to do, let the characters see the possibilities and let go. In fact, looking into infinite possibilities leads our heroines into appreciating where they are.

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake Refutes Misconceptions About The Multiverse

One of the common critiques about multiverse stories is that the stakes get vacuumed out of the proceedings with frightening speed. In opposition to this, Fionna and Cake looks right into the eye of this black hole and finds that despair is not the way. Our protagonist is fed up with her life and can’t shake the feeling that life is supposed to be more magical. In the early chapter of Fionna and Cake, the human girl is confronted with all the wonder that an unlimited multiverse can provide.

At first, Fionna treats all the beings she comes into contact with like video game non-player characters. Over times, as the reality of being erased from existence sets in, Fionna starts to have a bit more grace with these strange variants from across space and time. Cake wants to be her magical self, but the human comes to realize that there are beautiful parts of their rather domestic existence. In a more juvenile version of this narrative, Fionna would just choose to make herself or Cake happy. But, in the end, the protagonist decides to push through and love where she is rather than wishing for her previous life.

Will This Multiverse Trend End?

For a while now, it feels like the multiverse is just everywhere in pop culture. Some observers feel like fatigue with the concept has already set in among certain audiences. While this writer isn’t exactly done with the concept, there are stories like this one that can inspire hope among there being so many different shows and movies with these plot points. With an infinite number of universes, there are so many approaches to the multiverse that haven’t been explored yet. Hopefully some of the takes coming up soon can take some cues from the successful versions of these stories.

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake presents a path forward. The multiverse is not just a toy chest to bang action figures together. It feels like the Max series really understood that. While everyone wanted to see Ooo, Golb, The Lich, and other primetime elements of Adventure Time, the real joy came from understated examinations of the series overall. In that final episode, some of the callbacks to the series’ earliest moments were done with such restraint that it’s hard not to applaud the entire effort. Now, just like Fionna and Cake, an entire generation of aging fans are going to have to learn to get along in a world that might not be as magical, but still is absolutely worth living in.

Are you done with the multiverse? Let us know down in the comments!