Reigniting the Flame of Ooo: Adventure Time Returns with a Bang!

We can finally share an adventure! Adventure Time, the land of Ooo, Finn the Human and Jake the Dog, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Princess Bubblegum, and all the weird, wonderful and offbeat misfits were delighting our childhoods for 10 incredible years. It could have stopped after the 10th season (2018), or with the series finale 11th season (2018). It’s not. Thanks to the announcement covered in Variety, you can now read that the adventure is not over at all: there will be an Adventure Time movie and two spin-off series are on their way to bring all the wonderful and unforgettable characters to the big screen as well.

The Return: A Movie and Two Spinoffs Await

And the news of three new Adventure Time installations – one feature film, and two television series – washed over me like returns of dreaded and delightful nostalgia. It’s not easy to make a good movie, never mind a really good one, or even a great one. Somehow, the knowledge that the crew shepherding the movie are names like Rebecca Sugar, Adam Muto and Patrick McHale, the organisers of Adventure Time’s crypt of heart, fill me with optimism that this might be a great one, another masterpiece.

Adventure Time: Side Quests - A Glimpse into the Past

Adventure Time: Side Quests is also a bit of a nostalgia play, a nod to the original series’ early seasons before it became a darker, more cynical show. ‘Adventure Time: Side Quests is one of the more exciting things I’ve worked on,’ Cash writes on the project’s Kickstarter page. ‘It’s going to be a great way to bring new fans into that world, and satisfy old fans with more silliness and charm.’ Nate Cash is well-known to fans of the original series, as he co-directed the series with another legend, Adam Mech.

Adventure Time: Heyo BMO - For the Little Adventurers

And the littlest of kids? Adventure Time: Heyo BMO is the series designed for preschoolers, based on the likewise quirky BMO and pitched as ‘a preschool series that teaches ‘life lessons’ with a unique Adventure Time infusion of excitement’. If that sounds like crass marketing, it’s nonetheless heartening that Muto, the current showrunner on Adventure Time, will be involved in delighting and educating kids of all ages as the series passes on the baton of Adventure Time.

Where to Watch? Streaming on MAX

Details about those sites direct viewers to MAX. As streaming morphs into the standard mode of accessing beloved media, MAX promotes itself as a domain for the newest Adventure Time escapades, and the title implies that fans young and old can access the show with ease.

Rekindling the Magic for All Ages

Perhaps Adventure Time’s best argument for continuation comes from how broadly it feels targeted – unlike The Powerpuff Girls or Sym-Bionic Titan, this new film is intended for the grown-ups, for the kids who’ve grown up and are now missing the deep well of strange childhood nostalgia that animated Cartoon Network’s golden days. (‘Side Quests’ works as a bridge for those kids, too, while ‘Heyo BMO’ introduces the world of Ooo to preschoolers, continuing the legacy in perpetuity for at least two generations of little ones.)

MAX: The Beacon for Animation Aficionados

But MAX becomes a figure at the heart of the redemption narrative that Adventure Time begins to tell after ‘BMO’, when he not only approves these projects but also expands the universe with spin-off series ‘Fionna and Cake’. MAX becomes the space where hand-drawn animation becomes a site for quality storytelling, where diverse and complex stories become the norm.

Exploring MAX: A Hub of Creative Wonders

And while we wait for Ooo to come back online, a closer glance at MAX tells us that, beyond a single show or character’s return, it’s also a stage for more storytelling than ever before – a place with an eclectic line-up that spans from originals to classics. The way it’s poised to help bring Adventure Time’s new chapters to life is emblematic of the ambitions of its future role in storytelling: to be a catalyst for change as much as a trustee of legacy – to help dreams become reality by sharing the stories that’ve shaped countless childhoods.

All in all, Adventure Time’s return is about more than a revival: it’s an ode to storytelling, legacy and experimentation. And while the movie is already confirmed and two spinoffs are in the works with MAX’s backing, it seems that the Land of Ooo has a lot more stories to tell – and people to tell them to. As the details trickle out and the release dates approach, one thing is certain: in Adventure Time, the journey really never stops.