Much of BMO’s arc throughout Adventure Time is a lesson in self-discovery and acceptance, and we see BMO acting as the guiding hand that leads young Y5 down the same path BMO walked before. Distant Lands packs all of what makes BMO so special into a neat, self-contained package in the duo’s nearly hour-long adventure.
The first Distant Lands episode focuses on them, aptly named just BMO, and how they meet Y5, an adorable rabbit girl living on another planet. BMO’s arcs feel a bit fragmented in the original, slow to build up, but incredibly touching when there. Things kick off with BMO, the loveable robot that saw steady escalation from forgettable, background comedic relief to my gender fluid icon.
There’s plenty of nonsense you have to trim away to get to those special bits in Adventure Time, but Distant Lands, so far, nails each episode’s beats with conciseness so fulfilling that it puts me more at ease over the series finale. In the original’s early beginnings, the show was more of a series of stumbles, with certain story arcs dragging on too long, and highlighted by brilliant moments of character development not quite as impactful in cartoons prior.
The four-part HBO spinoff is now on its third episode, and it’s a laser-focused series that absolutely nails the charm of its predecessor. Related: The Owl House Is Proof That Disney Should Be More Accepting Of Queer StoriesĪdventure Time certainly walked so Distant Lands could run. Distant Lands brings closure for those of us who miss the Land of Ooo in a satisfying mini-series that remembers what made the original so special. That’s why now, in the wake of Distant Lands, I find solace in television’s most brilliant epilogue. Even after what most seem to agree was a touching series finale, I couldn’t stop thinking about how badly I wanted Adventure Time to go on.
When it ended, I was oddly distraught for a while. Adventure Time was an apology to my childhood, making up for time lost feeling invisible. It kept me company through my late troubled teenage years, comforting me into my early 20s. It was the first I encountered to thoughtfully reflect on troubled parental relationships, the first to show queer love, and the first to highlight mental illness. Adventure Time is an amalgamation of important cartoon firsts for me.