Adventure Time is one of those shows that feels like a proper heir in the honored lineage of excellent Cartoon Network shows. '90s kids like me all brag about how our cartoons were best and everything today is trash -- don't get me wrong, some of it is -- but Pendleton Ward's bizarre and wonderful fantasy world of Ooo has drawn in viewers young and old with its mixed tones of whimsy and maturity. One episode might be a lighthearted slice-of-life of our heroes, and the next might be a serious battle against cosmic forces or a deep dive on the psyche of one of many enigmatic characters. And if you ask me, no other character embodies the dichotomies of Adventure Time better than Marceline the Vampire Queen. She's a thousand-year-old vampire who's lived through the Mushroom War and seen all of the repeating patterns that dominate Ooo's history. Yet, she comes off as a rebellious teen punk, with her "whatever" attitude and affinity for mischief. She got substantial story focus in a recent mini-series in Season 7 called Stakes. I wanted to take some time to unpack her short arc and analyze how it developed Marceline as a character.
The miniseries begins with Marceline asking Princess Bubblegum to cure her vampirism. Apparently, she feels trapped in her troubled adolescence. Even though she's lived over a thousand years, she seems to have stopped aging in her teens. In previous episodes though, we've seen Marceline as a child, so it's not like she's been that way forever. Why did she grow up only so much and no farther? According to her...
"When I became a vampire, I was just a messed-up kid. Now it's a thousand years later and I'm still messed up! I don't want to spend eternity like this. With this... emptiness. I want to grow up."
Notice how her scrapes and scratches heal up just as she says "I want to grow up." She's resolved to move past her pain and become whole again, and that's reflected in the visuals.
So PB sits her down in a big Iron Lung looking machine. She warns Marcy that doing this will make her mortal. Marcy seems cavalier about the prospect of death. "I guess that'll be my last adventure." Does she mean she plans to adventure until it kills her, or that death itself will be her last adventure? Either way, we soon see that her own eventual end isn't the only consequence of de-vamping herself that she's disregarding. Her first dream after curing herself foreshadows those consequences.
Common dream interpretation dictates that losing your teeth in a dream reflects a fear of powerlessness. That fear would probably be amplified in a girl whose identity and self-image is tied up in being a vampire. Of course she would fall apart. She is, after all, the self-proclaimed Vampire Queen, even though we've never seen her commanding thralls or ordering other vampires around. We're not even sure if there are any vampires besides her. Also, the viewer doesn't know it yet, but those five shadows that take shape from her broken pieces foreshadow the threat that Marceline unleashes when she "loses her teeth."
Finn and Jake are called in that morning to investigate some farmers' animals being drained of blood. Jake and the villagers are quick to accuse the only vampire they know of, but Finn isn't so quick to blame Marcy. Jake... isn't having it.
Now we have the characters themselves alluding to Marceline's solo status as the only living vampire in Ooo.
Jake stokes the villagers' paranoia and urges them to sharpen their pitchforks and light their torches. The duo goes to visit the suspect at PB's house. Before they arrive, we see PB and Marcy talking about her condition post-procedure: wondering about "side effects" and "what happened in [her] sleep last night." Their conversation also implies that Marcy was actually a vampire hunter in the past. Wait what? Anyways, Jake bursts in and accuses Marceline bad-cop style. Finn humors him, asking Marcy to explain herself.
With that, they set out to find the true cause of the animal attacks while Marcy rests. Sure enough, there are some other blue-black creatures feeding on animals. Unfortunately, the villagers are already roused up in a rabble, and kidnap Marceline while Jake and Finn are out searching. They tie her to the windmill just as dawn as breaking, so the rising sun will destroy her. The villagers don't know she was ostensibly cured of her vampirism, and Marcy herself has good reason to doubt that she's not still undead. So it's a pretty tense moment...
... to end the episode on. And what a set of last words! She could be about to die and the best thing she can think of to say to one of her closest friends is "burn my stuff." So much for growing up?
Well, we know we're in for a whole miniseries, not just a single episode. I'd like to go into more detail about the whole arc, one episode at a time. I hope you'll join me next time to find out if Marceline survives and what other consequences unfold as a result of her being cured.
