Adventure Time- Fionna Cake -

(Deducting one point only because the musical numbers can’t quite beat “Everything Stays.”)

The series argues that happy endings are a lie we tell children. For adults, endings are just new beginnings that are often less interesting. When Fionna accidentally breaks her universe, she isn’t unleashing chaos—she’s unleashing potential . Danger is re-introduced to a sterile world, and paradoxically, that danger feels like relief. On the surface, Fionna is a reboot of Finn: spunky, sword-wielding, impulsive. But the show actively dismantles that trope. Fionna is not a good hero. She gets her friends killed (temporarily). She ignores warnings. She throws tantrums when reality doesn’t conform to her expectations.

This is the genius of the show’s first act. By stripping away the candy people, the vampires, and the dimensional rifts, Fionna & Cake asks a brutally honest question:

The villain, the Scarab, is an auditor of reality—a cosmic bureaucrat who wants to prune “unapproved” universes. This is a brilliant meta-commentary on franchise management and toxic fandom. The Scarab represents the fan who yells, “That’s not canon!” He represents the executive who says, “Stick to the formula.” Adventure Time- Fionna Cake

We were gloriously wrong.

What creator Adam Muto and his team delivered is not a children’s cartoon, nor a simple “what-if.” Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake is a raw, existential, and surprisingly adult meditation on purpose, creation, and the terrifying beauty of a world without guarantees. It is the Neon Genesis Evangelion of the Adventure Time universe—a story that deconstructs its own premise before rebuilding it into something achingly human.

Come along with me... to the existential void. (Deducting one point only because the musical numbers

The new series takes a radical step: It makes Fionna and Cake real. But not in a heroic way.

In a landscape crowded with safe, corporate reboots, Fionna & Cake takes a rusty sword, cuts open the concept of nostalgia, and finds something raw and alive inside. It’s messy. It’s heartbreaking. It’s hopeful.

Let’s dive into the multiverse, the mundanity, and the magic. For the uninitiated: Fionna the Human (voiced by Madeleine Martin) and Cake the Cat (voiced by Roz Ryan) were originally characters from Ice King’s fanfiction. In the original series, they were imaginative stand-ins, existing only in the mind of a lonely, deranged wizard. Danger is re-introduced to a sterile world, and

You’ve ever felt like your life lacked magic. You’ve ever read a fanfic better than the original. You’re ready to cry about an old man with a crown.

We find Fionna living in a non-magical, Simon Petrikov-created universe. She works a dead-end job, she’s bored out of her skull, and she desperately longs for the epic adventures she’s read about in Simon’s old fanfic. Cake, meanwhile, is just a normal house cat. The world is grey, mundane, and suffocating.

And that’s exactly why it’s brilliant.