Adventure Time Adventure: "What Was Missing"

I’ve been watching the animated series Adventure Time lately. It’s about Finn, a human boy, and Jake, a talking, shapeshifting dog. They go on adventures together in the land of Ooo, a strange place of magic, candy and shenanigans. Finn loves Princess Bubblegum, the mostly-benevolent ruler of the Candy Kingdom, but she’s too old for him. He’s also friends with Marceline the Vampire Queen, who is only sometimes-benevolent but also an amazing bass player.

Most of Adventure Time is pretty goofy. Sometimes it’s serious. In one episode, Finn and Jake encounter a giant floating wolf head called “Party God.” In another, they travel to the land of the dead in order to bring a flower back to life. The series gleefully references Dungeons & Dragons, Shaw Brothers films and classic cartoons without ever breaking a sweat. There’s even some Dying Earth science fantasy in there if you look closely.

None of this, though, explains why Adventure Time is one of the defining animated works of my lifetime. To do that, we need to talk about the episode that changed everything for me.

“What Was Missing” starts with a typically silly premise. A creature called the Door Lord steals the cast’s most precious possessions, including Jake’s baby blanket and a lock of Princess Bubblegum’s hair that Finn hides in his treehouse. Finn and Jake track the Door Lord with Princess Bubblegum and Marceline to a great door in the desert studded with human faces. On its arch is written, “this door shall yield to no command save for a song from a genuine bande.” Rocking out is the only way.

Here Adventure Time pulls one of its signature tricks, changing tracks from one kind of story to another. What you initially thought was an episode about chasing the bad guy through spacetime doors was in fact a band episode. Marceline plays the bass! Princess Bubblegum jams on a synthesizer! Jake pretends to be a jerk with a mohawk so that he can quit the band! (He returns not for the people, but for the music.)

This would be entertaining enough on its own. But then Adventure Time changes tracks again, and this time goes off the rails. When Princess Bubblegum complains about Marceline’s “distasteful” lyrics (“I’m gonna drink the blood from your pretty face,”) Marceline snaps, “Oh, do you not like that?” Smash cut to close up. “Or do you just not like me?” She launches into a solo:

“Sorry I'm not made of sugar,
Am I not sweet enough for you?
Is that why you always avoid me?
That must be such an inconvenience to you,
Well... I'm just your problem...
It's like I'm not even a person, am I?”

Adventure Time to this point has been about a boy and his dog goofing around. Finn’s worries are a child’s worries. Does this older girl like me? Can I beat Jake at video games? Now “What Was Missing” blasts us in the face with real adolescent angst. Marceline loves Princess Bubblegum. She hates Princess Bubblegum. She steals the spotlight for over a minute. There is no sarcasm or artifice here. It’s pure, unadulterated feelings, delivered at maximum volume.

And it isn’t enough to open the door, because Marceline chickens out. She’s too much of a teenager to be vulnerable. Finn is a kid, though, so he’s still able to overcome shame. He opens the door by confessing to Princess Marceline that the treasure the Door Lord stole from him was a lock of her hair. His own emotions spill out:

“What am I to you?
Am I a joke, your knight, or your brother?
What am I to you?
Do you look down on me 'cause I'm younger?
Do you think that I don't understand?
I just wanted us together and to play as a band…
Oh, you are my best friends in the world.”

Finn looks genuinely pained as he sings. His worries may be a child's worries, but his expression is drawn raw and realistic in a way that we, the audience, have not yet seen from him. And the other characters honor that. Marceline sings a duet with Finn. Princess Bubblegum plays along on her synthesizer. Even Jake gives up his rude rocker bit to harmonize with his friend. The door shines brightly behind Finn like a hundred spotlights.

“What Was Missing” was storyboarded by Adam Muto and Rebecca Sugar. Sugar began work on Adventure Time with the expectation that (per the Los Angeles Times) “I’d be doing independent comics that were personal and have a day job where I worked in animation.” This episode, though, was personal. Marceline’s song “I’m Just Your Problem” references Sugar’s painful experience with a former roommate; Finn’s song, “My Best Friend in the World,” is Sugar’s ode to the show’s staff. “Everything I wanted to do with independent comics,” they realized, “I needed to do for the show.”

Sugar went on to create Steven Universe, Adventure Time’s most ambitious successor. “What Was Missing” could be reimagined as a Steven Universe episode with a few tweaks. Finn is Steven, a young boy in over his head. Princess Bubblegum could be Pearl, an obsessive perfectionist. Marceline might be Amethyst, who lives to be messy. And while Steven doesn’t have an older brother figure like Jake, he does have his father Greg, who has a similar goofy vibe.

What makes “What Was Missing” special though is that it wasn’t a Steven Universe episode. It was an Adventure Time episode. This was a series that held all kinds of things within it: not just Sugar’s raw, confessional sincerity, but also the cruelty of “Tree Trunks,” the family drama powering “Her Parents,” stylistic experiments like “Food Chain,” and even episodes like “Thank You” that barely featured the main cast at all. The stylistic variety of Adventure Time made every artist's voice stand out that much more.

Watching Sugar’s contributions in this context frankly made me reassess their whole body of work. Their pop culture legacy, or at least what the artists who came after them copied, was “cloying sincerity.” But Sugar’s style prioritizes honesty as much as empathy. They pull real, complex, sometimes ugly emotions to the surface so that the characters (and the viewer) can’t miss them, re-contextualizing everything that came before and after. Capturing the full magnetism of an explosive, cathartic moment.

As animation in the United States has withered on the vine, Adventure Time itself has changed. The series continues today not as full seasons of television, but as prestige miniseries uploaded to streaming channels. I can understand why the Adventure Time crew (now led by the other storyboarder from "What Was Missing," Adam Muto) have chosen to prioritize reliable older fans over the next generation of kids. Still, fewer episodes means fewer surprises, because experimentation only happens when there's room.

I should reiterate: I missed the chance to follow Adventure Time in its prime. Watching the show now is like picking through the bones of a dinosaur skeleton. An impossible creature that was here and gone in a blink. The concerns of the past from this great distance are so much bone dust. Yet from that long forgotten past, the roar of “What Was Missing” blew me back. “This is what was missing,” Finn says. “The truth!”

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