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In the very first episode of Adventure Time, “Slumber Party Panic,” Jake the Dog (John DiMaggio) and Finn the Human (Jeremy Shada) defend the Candy Kingdom from a zombie-candy outbreak — a plot easily resolved in about 10 minutes. Jump ahead 8 years and, in the show’s 44-minute series finale, an eldritch chaos god threatens to destroy the entire world as multiple characters sacrifice their lives to avert total catastrophe.
A lot happened in the 278 episodes in between as Adventure Time evolved from a whimsical kids’ show about a boy and his magic dog into… something else. Over 10 seasons, the fantastical land of Ooo was revealed to be the post-apocalyptic husk of Earth in the distant aftermath of nuclear war, while various, once-cartoonish characters received complex, tragic backstories.
As a diehard Adventure Time fan, some of my favorite episodes are the ones that explore the darker corners of the show’s mythology — the heart-breaking origins of the Ice King, the multiversal horror of the Lich King, the reality-breaking fanfiction of Fiona and Cake. Still, there’s something comforting about those early few seasons, back when the scariest thing in Ooo was an iceberg of frozen business men. That’s why I was so delighted by Adventure Time: Side Quests, a new spinoff series premiering June 29 on Hulu and Disney Plus.
Created by Nate Cash, who joined the original series as a storyboard artist in season 2 and eventually served as creative director before leaving after season 5 to work on Over the Garden Wall with fellow Adventure Time alumni Patrick McHale, Side Quests takes place in “the cracks of seasons 1 and 2” of Adventure Time, Cash tells Polygon. It’s a chance to reset the lore and get back to that original, more lighthearted tone of episodes like “Slumber Party Panic.”
“I love where the series went,” Cash says. “It was really fun to see the characters progress. But having a quick, 11-minute comedy like season 1 was my goal.”
Each episode of Side Quests is simple and self-contained. In one, Finn competes in a crossbow tournament despite being terrible with a crossbow. In another, he agrees to represent a high-society bug in a duel, which means mastering the art of acting like a gentleman. There’s no overarching plot or dramatic reveals, though some episodes do get at more complex emotions like shame, while others focus on supporting characters like Princess Bubblegum and the Ice King (more on him later).
As part of that throwback, Side Quests recasts Finn with 17-year-old Sasha Knight, while DiMaggio returns as the voice of Jake. Finding a younger actor was crucial for Cash, who says his goal was to “reset Finn to being 12 years old where he has a kid voice and he has that naive, optimistic brash where he’s just full of gumption. “
“I keep calling him a righteous barbarian,” Cash adds.
For DiMaggio, whose character managed to remain mostly optimistic and joyful throughout the many ups and downs of Adventure Time, Side Quests almost feels like a necessary reboot after venturing down so many twisted, shadowy paths.
“The Land of Ooo has so many directions you can go in,” he says. “Those dark episodes in the first version were brilliant, but they were scary and they were pretty heavy duty. This skews a little bit younger. It’s lighter. It’s funnier. It’s goofier.”
Side Quests is also a visual reset. The show’s art director, Nick Cross, used all the original character designs and the same intricate backgrounds created for Adventure Time by graphic artist Ghostshrimp. Original series creator Pendleton Ward even returned to contribute a storyboard for the episode “Rescue Princess.” But Cross infused all of that with a storybook-style animation that features flatter character designs and brighter colors.
“We made them more painterly,” Cross says. “So it kind of feels like a different show, but also the same show. We didn’t want to completely recontextualize everything. Why mess with something that worked really well?”
While most of the 10 episodes provided to the press shared a similar animation style, Side Quests does feature the occasional visual experiment, just like Adventure Time sometimes did.
“There’s a lot of variety that we play around with throughout the season,” says co-animation director Victor Courtright. “We painted on cels recently.”
Perhaps the toughest part of making an Adventure Time spinoff set earlier in the show’s timeline was tip-toeing around some of the more complex plot elements that show up later. Over 10 seasons, the series traveled the multiverse and the cosmos, and visited some pretty dark places along the way — most of which had something to do with a disturbing humanoid embodiment of nuclear apocalypse known as the Lich.
“Obviously we weren’t gonna do any Lich King references,” Cash says.
Another interesting challenge was Peppermint Butler, a devoted servant to Princess Bubblegum who’s eventually revealed to have his own demonic pursuits and goals.
“We know Peppermint Butler has some dark arts backgrounds,” Cash says. “We reference that very lightly, but Finn and Jake don’t become aware of it. All the lore still exists, but we kept Finn and Jake naive to it. Only the audience can see that aspect.”
And then there’s the Ice King. Voiced by Tom Kenny in both the original series and Side Quests, the Ice King starts out as a comically two-dimensional villain whose only goal is to kidnap and date princesses, often at the same time. Over the years, and specifically in several heartbreaking flashback episodes, Adventure Time‘s creators revealed that the character was actually Simon Petrikov, a kind and caring human from before the apocalypse who finds a magic crown that grants him incredible powers (including immortality) but robs him of his sanity.
None of this matters much in Side Quests, where the Ice King has reverted back to his old, princess-stealing ways. Cash and his writers actually had so much fun coming up with classic Ice King stories that Adult Swim had to step in at one point.
“We were asked to pump the brakes on Ice King episodes,” Cash says. “But they’re so fun! He’s just a weird dude who kidnaps princesses and needs to get punched to be told not to do that. The simplicity of it is pretty fun.”
The Ice King is just such a dork.
DiMaggio agrees.
“The Ice King is just such a dork,” he says. “When it comes down to it, he’s just a big, nervous dork, and I love him. He’s just so silly. He’s back to doing the old shtick, you know, dating princesses and stuff. It’s great. And Tom Kenny can do no wrong..”
Given what we know about Ice King, however, is it possible to view him as a goofy villain or is he still the deeply tragic Simon? For Cash, the answer goes back to something Pendleton Ward told him many years ago.
“Penn always said that, in the beginning, he always thought he was most like Finn, and as the seasons went on, he was like, ‘I’m more like Ice King than I ever thought I was,'” Cash recalls. “The key to Ice King is, as awful and twisted as he is, he just wants to find companionship and love.”
“But he can’t kidnap princesses. You gotta get punched for that.”
Adventure Time: Side Quests premieres June 29 on Disney Plus and Hulu.
