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Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
Cartoon Network‘s hit animated fantasy series Adventure Time returns for a four-part web series special on the HBO Max streaming service under the subtitle, Distant Lands. The first part of this special is titled “BMO.” This episode’s storyboard is supervised by Mira Ong Chua, with supervising animation directed by Kimson Albert.
Spoilers ahead for those who have finished the original run of the series and do not mind spoilers! In this article, we break down and analyze the episode into its different aspects.
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“BMO” follows its eponymous little robot character BMO (Niki Yang) on a space journey, crash landing on a distant land in the middle of the cosmos. Its first 15 minutes demonstrates what fans have been anticipating: lovely music, beautiful animation, and an overall great narrative.
The opening scene shows BMO strumming on his guitar and singing about “potatoes more exciting than tornadoes” in his spacecraft. Fragments of a meteor hit and nearly suck him into the vacuums of deep space. All of this happens, and then he meets a stray shapeshifting “round and green” service droid, whom BMO calls Olive after his favorite bread. Meanwhile, a bunny rabbit scavenger named Y5 (Glory Curda) investigates a commotion between two different species of beings on her home “The Drift.” BMO and Y5 meet, and they set out to discover a conspiracy deep within the Drift.
The animation in this special’s episode offers landscapes of space that was not often explored in the original run of the television series, having primarily occurred on planet Earth and was thus grounded. Here, we are shown that nature can be beautiful no matter where we go. The artists of this episode introduce fans to new characters and creatures such as Y5, Hugo (Randall Park), and Mr. M (Stephen Root). BMO gazes at the space around him, admiring his environment, and says, “Did you know there are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand in the sky? [Space is] just another knack of mystery in a universe full of mysteries!”
Tim Kiefer composes the episode’s splendid music, which is such a beauty to hark. Both the animation and music are worth staying back for to the end of its post-credits sequence and letting the episode just run its course.
A message about civilization is provided by the inhabitants of the Drift, which is colonized by human-turned-alien Hugo, his right-hand man Mr. M, and CGO, who refers to herself as “practically a janky off-brand cousin” of BMO. In a short backstory, Hugo and his people departed from Earth amidst its nuclear apocalypse and left to space, where gray extraterrestrials “warned him about the dangers of biohacking their alien style, but Hugo gets his way.” A human coughed and the aliens perished, then Hugo and his people adopted alien makeup. This is similar to when white colonists came to the Americas and wiped out the native peoples.
In the final scenes of this episode, Hugo and Mr. M are cast out from the Drift. The inhabitants used their brute force to spark the uprising, and when all of their best resources are ejected with the two men, Y5 suggests that they “manage the remaining resources to survive. We need to learn how to help each other. I know it’s hard, but we have to try, or we won’t make it.” When a leader fools a population, the people must hold themselves accountable for doing their part in making the world what it is now. Hugo tells the Drift’s inhabitants, “This all can’t be on me. You all thought the unity pod [aka energy source] sounded like a sweet deal as long as you thought you were getting a piece of the pie.” All the pods in the Drift are networked, each with useful components. For this reason, everyone has a role in ensuring our survival.
References to Other Works
Adventure Time: Distant Lands – “BMO” contains Easter Eggs that take inspiration from various mediums such as films, novels, and other books. Here is what we found:
Similarities to Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens
- BMO and Y5’s established friendship parallels that of BB-8 and Rey.
- BMO also makes references to a comet named “Lars Starsaber.”
- The duel between the Elves and the Shells — along with BMO and Y5’s subsequent run from the two groups — is reminiscent of the Han Solo and Chewbacca’s (as well as Finn and Rey’s) run from the Guavian Death Gang and Kanjiklub aboard the Eravana spacecraft in the film.
- Later in the episode, a Shell creature says “I got a bad feeling–” before a gaping hole is exposed in the Drift, resulting in his group and the Elves struggling with being sucked into the confines of space. This references the famous line and running gag found throughout the Star Wars franchise.
- Y5 and the body parts of BMO drop down into a trash compactor area, where BMO’s robotic relative CGO (Simone Giertz) is located.
- Finally, Hugo’s maps of the Drift are uploaded into BMO, which is similar to BB-8 holding a piece of the puzzle that leads to Luke Skywalker’s whereabouts. Before leaving to Earth at the end of the episode, BMO presents a projection of the maps to the Drift’s denizens.
Other Popular Culture References
- Upon meeting Hugo — who finds that BMO’s mechanical parts are of no use to him — the robot compares himself to Huckleberry. Like the Mark Twain character, the little robot ran away from his father in an earlier season of the show. Particularly in this scene, BMO is Huckleberry Finn to Hugo’s Tom Sawyer, a character who has others performing his own tasks. BMO retrieves an item for Hugo at no cost.
- The episode also makes small hints at Back to the Future references. BMO witnesses energy drinks being made and responds with “The future is amazing!” Olive later turns into a hoverboard, which was made iconic by Marty McFly. When BMO returns to Earth, he discovers that time may have passed when he finds descendents of Finn and Jake playing in front of their home.
- Y5 is originally Y4, but she soon chooses to change her name. Y5 sounds like Wi-Fi, wireless internet which is disconnected from other beings but is still influential to a society in some ways.
Biblical Allusions
- Mr. M persuades BMO to remove an important energy source called the “Genesis Crystal” from a pod in the Drift, which then drains all the pods of their life and components.
- As told by CGO, Hugo and his crew “led an exodus to the stars” prior to arriving on the Drift. This is most likely a reference to Moses leading a massive group of survivors into the Promised Land.
- BMO’s arrival on the Drift is similar to that of Jesus Christ; both are individuals brought from an otherworldly place. BMO appoints himself as “sheriff” of the Drift, with Y5 as deputy and BMO’s mirror personality Football (Niki Yang) as his other follower. BMO performs a miracle by rescuing a Lard creature from space, and he is also at one point ripped apart and dismantled, only to be brought back to life by CGO and Y5.
- Hugo also acts as Pontius Pilate, whereas Mr. M’s role is as a soldier to the Roman official, or in this case, the leader of the Drift. These characters are responsible for the supposed death of the lead protagonist.
Overall, “BMO” shows that the most beloved of its characters is capable of leadership roles. As the lovable little robot says, “I think I’m dying, but that’s okay. BMO always bounces back.” Time and time again, BMO proves that he is the heart of the series. He is also the comedic relief that the show needs, cluelessly making jokes at Mr. M (“we should accept this ride from a stranger”), the Drift’s unity pod (“a popcorn maker”), and many more! BMO is cute and adorable, but he is more than that; he can be the hero of his own adventure, “of the story I like to call life,” as per Football.
This first part of Adventure Time: Distant Lands proves to be an enjoyable epilogue of the show’s original run in its Biblical and popular cultural references, art design, writing, and musical score while introducing new characters and a new journey for the series.
10/10
Have you seen this series? If not, do you plan to binge it sometime in the near future? Let us know! For more Adventure Time, action, comedy, animation, fantasy, and Cartoon Network-related news and reviews, follow The Cinema Spot on Twitter (@TheCinemaSpot) and Instagram (@thecinemaspot_).
Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
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