1. Plot

2. Production
    Background  Development  Music 

3. Reception

4. References

5. External links

• Sean Giambrone as Shermy
• Willow Smith as Beth

"Come Along with Me" is an American animated television special based on the animated television series Adventure Time. The special is comprising four episodes and serves as both the tenth season finale and the series finale of Adventure Time. The special first aired on September 3, 2018 on Cartoon Network.

The series follows the adventures of Finn the Human (voiced by Jeremy Shada) and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake the Dog (voiced by John DiMaggio), who has magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. In the special, the duo must help their friend Princess Bubblegum battle Gumbald, her vengeful creation. When the antagonists realize that violent conflict is unnecessary, they team up to keep the malevolent deity GOLB from destroying the Land of Ooo.

Plot

A thousand years in the future, a cat-like being named Shermy and his friend Beth—a descendant of Jake and Lady Rainicorn—discover Finn's robotic arm in the ground. Wanting to know its origin, they seek out the "King of Ooo", who is actually BMO. BMO recognizes the arm and proceeds to relate to Shermy and Beth the story of the "Great Gum War".

In the series' present, Finn, Jake, and Bubblegum are preparing to go to war with Gumbald. Finn asks to parley with Gumbald, and they go to meet him and Fern. Jake activates a vial of "Nightmare Juice", incapacitating the five, who awaken in a nightmare world. Bubblegum and Gumbald are forced to experience each other's misery, with Bubblegum as a regular Candy Person and Gumbald as the Candy Kingdom's unhappy ruler. Finn helps Fern kill the Grass Demon in his psyche, freeing Fern from its negative influence but causing him to disintegrate. When they awaken, Bubblegum offers peace to Gumbald, but Aunt Lolly reveals his concealed "dum-dum juice", reverting him to a Candy Person. Lolly agrees to peace in Gumbald's stead, and Bubblegum declares "two Candy Kingdoms".

Everyone is about to leave when GOLB appears. Ice King recognizes the deity, having studied it as Simon Petrikov. King Man sends Ice King to talk to Betty, who is communicating with GOLB, but Betty shouts at Ice King that she is trying to save him. GOLB consumes her and Ice King along with Finn when he tries to intervene. Using some of Gumbald's soldiers, GOLB attacks by raising a horrendous creature. Bubblegum and her allies fight the creature, but it is too powerful, destroying Finn and Jake's treehouse and nearly crushing Bubblegum. Marceline sees this and smashes the creature in a rage, but Bubblegum recovers and the two embrace and kiss. Jake is despondent at the loss of his home, but BMO sings to him in order to calm him. The harmony of BMO's song weakens GOLB, whose power is derived from chaos; Bubblegum encourages everyone to sing along, further weakening GOLB.

In GOLB's stomach—which takes the form of a small room that slowly is getting smaller—Ice King is digested to his prior form as Simon, and Betty is returned to her normal state. She confesses that she summoned GOLB to save him from the ice crown. Meanwhile, Finn resigns himself to death as the walls close in, but BMO's song opens a hole leading outside, through which he and Simon escape. Betty stays behind and uses the crown to merge with GOLB into a singular entity, thereby saving Simon. As the merged being departs from Ooo, the crown falls onto Gunter, who wishes to be like Ice King and becomes a duplicate of him. Before Fern dies, he asks Finn and Jake to plant him at the treehouse, leaving them a seed resembling a hilt. Finn and Jake do so, sprouting a tree with a sword embedded in the highest branch.

Shermy and Beth ask what happened afterward, and BMO replies that everyone "kept on living their lives". After leaving, Shermy and Beth decide to find the tree that Fern sprouted, which is now gigantic. Shermy pulls the sword out and holds it high with Beth at his feet, assuming a pose similar to Finn and Jake in the series' title sequence.

Production

Background

During the last seasons of Adventure Time, there was talk at Cartoon Network about concluding the series. Olivia Olson, who provided the voice of Marceline, said that since this discussion wore on for awhile "the ending of the show was getting stretched and stretched and stretched".^[1] Chief content officer Rob Sorcher told the Los Angeles Times of the network's decision to end the series, saying:

Adventure Time was playing less and less on Cartoon Network, yet we were moving towards a large volume of episodes. And I really began thinking "[The end] can't come quickly as a sudden company decision, it needs to be a conversation over a period of time." And it did also strike me that if we don't wind this up soon, we're going to have a generation of fans graduate through the [television] demo[graphic that Cartoon Network targets] and we won't have completed a thought for them.^[1]

Consequently, on September 29, 2016, Cartoon Network confirmed that the series would conclude after its tenth season.^[3]

Development

The special was written and storyboarded by Tom Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Hanna K. Nyström, Aleks Sennwald, and Sam Alden, and Graham Falk. The story was developed by Herpich, Wolfhard, Ashly Burch, showrunner Adam Muto, head writer Kent Osborne, Jack Pendarvis, Julia Pott, and series creator Pendleton Ward. Former head background designer Ghostshrimp returned after having officially left the series during the fourth season.^[5]

According to Osborne, Cartoon Network provided the writers with "an opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about the finale" before production ended.^[3] In an interview with TV Guide, Muto explained that the show's writers used many of the episodes preceding the finale to conclude minor character story arcs "so we wouldn't have to cram too much in at the very end here."^[7] This allowed the finale itself to be "less dense" by simply "hitting the big [beats] and then finding vignettes for all the characters ... so we could get snapshots of where they could end up."^[7]

Princess Bubblegum and Marceline kiss in one scene and are shown developing a romantic relationship in the special's epilogue.^[9][10][11] Muto said that the relationship was "an ongoing conversation... It certainly wasn’t in the show’s original pitch. It was a relationship that evolved over time." The outline of the episode merely called for the two characters to "have a moment"; Nyström, being responsible for the scene, was given creative control as to the nature of the "moment". Muto noted, "When Hanna boarded that, there was a little note in the margin that said 'Come on!' with a big exclamation point. That was the only note. I can’t argue with that."^[12]

According to Pendarvis, storyline writing for the series ended in mid-November 2016,^[13] with the last storyline meeting being held on November 21.^[14] A tweet by Osborne revealed that the series' final script was pitched to storyboarders, with Alden and Nyström in attendance, on November 28.^[15][16][17] This episode was then pitched to the show's producers during the third week of December 2016.^[18][19] Voice recording for the episode ended on January 31, 2017 as confirmed by a number of cast members, including Maria Bamford and Andy Milonakis.

Like miniseries Stakes, Islands, and Elements,^[20][21][21] "Come Along with Me" features a unique title sequence. The sequence was animated specifically for the episode by Masaaki Yuasa's company Science SARU^[7] and storyboarded by Wolfhard.^[24]

Music

Former storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar returned to compose the song "Time Adventure", which BMO sings to Jake in order to calm him.^[25] Sugar said of the song:

I wanted to write about how even if something ends, it continues to exist in the past, nothing ever really goes away, you only feel like it does because our mind has to process information one moment at a time in order for us to function as humans. I'm so nostalgic for the time that I spent working on Adventure Time and I find it comforting to think that I still exist in that office with Adam [Muto], working on those stories. I would be so happy to come to work and brainstorm with him and sit down and draw on paper and pitch these stories with Post-its tacked up to the wall, just like they did in the 1930s with the stick and the song and the dance, the most traditional way of doing cartoons.^[26]

When Sugar debuted the song at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con, she joked that she wrote it "Because she can't stay away [from Adventure Time]."^[27] DiMaggio said that "The last day we recorded we had to do the final song that Rebecca Sugar wrote. I was a wreck when I first had to sing [... it was] like, 'Thank you, Rebecca Sugar, for your beautiful music.'"^[26]

Willow Smith guest stars in the special, providing the voice of Beth. She also recorded a cover version of the show's opening theme for the episode.^[29] Smith, a fan of the series, previously wrote the song "Marceline" based on the character for her 2015 debut album, Ardipithecus.

Reception

In its initial airing, "Come Along with Me" was viewed by 0.92 million viewers and scored a 0.25 Nielsen rating in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. The special was the twenty-fifth most-watched cable program on the day of its airing.^[30]

Oliver Sava of The A.V. Club gave the special an "A" letter rating, saying that it was "a celebration of what makes [the series] so special".^[10] Eric Thurm of Polygon wrote, "By focusing on this payoff—years of communicating that what's important isn't the adventure itself, but the people you're with and the feeling it gives you—Adventure Time put itself in a position to open up the future of Ooo to all of those other moods, other tones, other perspectives..."^[32] Daniel Schindel of IGN gave the episode a 10 out of 10, saying "[it] easily ranks with the best of Adventure Time{{’}}s episodes, but more importantly, it acts as a perfect capper for the series. It’s a thrilling exclamation point, an intriguing question mark, and a poignant, quiet period all at once."^[33] Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly gave the episode an A rating and the series overall an A+, titling his review "One of the greatest TV shows ever had a soulful, mind-expanding conclusion".^[34]

Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave "Come Along with Me" a B+ rating, calling it "a 45-minute assemblage of showdowns and confrontations designed to bring together every facet of its fantastical universe [that] salutes the best and worst of the Adventure Time journey".^[11] Kohn praised Bubblegum and Marceline's relationship, writing: "It's unfortunate that Adventure Time has to play catch-up with these characters so late in the game, but it nevertheless illustrates the extent to which the show has pushed beyond the conservative boundaries of mainstream entertainment".^[11]

Dylan Hysen of Overly Animated called the episode "one of the best series finales in television history" and "beyond what I could have imagined for its conclusion", because it managed to "conclude so many aspects of an entire series ... in such a satisfying way".^[37] Hysen wrote of the ending that "[T]he vision of the entire ending depicted is just poetic and I think thematically resonant for the entire series".^[37]

Dave Trumbore of Collider.com wrote that the finale "is the kind of finale you always hope for with animated series" and was "perfectly handled... both in keeping with the style the show has become known for while also delivering a satisfying conclusion to the mythology that's been a driving force behind the fandom".^[39] Trumbore applauded the open-ended nature of the ending and its emotional value, concluding: "'Come Along with Me' is expertly crafted and worth watching again and again in years to come, which is just what you’d expect from Adventure Time".^[39]

References

External links

• {{official website}}
• {{IMDb episode|8164820}}
• {{Tv.com episode|3522264}}

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