‘Adventure Time: Distant Lands’ Beautifully Rewrites BMO’s Story

Any time a spinoff is announced for a recently concluded show, the question immediately pops up: is this necessary? That’s especially true for a show like Adventure Time, a series that ended in such perfect harmony with its themes and characters. Adding even another minute borders on sacrilege. And yet the first episode of Adventure Time: Distant Lands is able to add to this series without once trivializing its legacy. “BMO” proves that there are more stories to tell from the Land of Ooo, and we can trust Pendleton Ward to deliver even more heartwarming tales of adventure and friendship.

BMO (Niki Yang), Finn and Jake’s little robot best friend, has always been one of Adventure Time‘s more one-dimensional characters. Throughout the history of this Cartoon Network show there have been several standalone episodes that revolve around BMO’s low-stakes quests as he tries to prove he’s not a little kid. Though BMO is always charming, making this little bot the protagonist of an hourlong epic seems daunting. BMO’s adventures typically wear thin after 15 minutes, let alone 60. And yet “BMO” works.

While making his way to Mars to start a potato farm, BMO befriends a shapeshifting outer space droid that he names Olive. Within minutes of meeting BMO, Olive changes the robot’s destiny, hijacking him and his spaceship to return to his home base, a cluster of environmental pods known as The Drift. Once on this foreign base, BMO and Olive meet Y5, a space bunny (Glory Curda) who has been sent to collect parts for her controlling parents, but who really needs to grow a backbone.

Initially, it seems that BMO is destined to once again become the sidekick in his own story. Though he commands Y5 and calls her his sidekick, at least during the first half of the episode this is unmistakably Y5’s story. She’s the one who has to choose between protecting this sweet little robot or breaking him down for parts to satisfy her parents. Y5 has all the emotional pressures of the hero’s journey, not BMO.

But through her floundering and many betrayals, “BMO” reveals something never before articulated about its titular character. The reason BMO is free of these emotional toils isn’t because he’s a forgettable sidekick. It’s because he’s built, both literally and in this story, to be a mentor. Thanks to his kindness and unrelenting trust, Y5 is finally able to see herself as her own person. Similarly, BMO’s childlike frankness encourages the citizens of The Drift to question exactly why they’re fighting one another. Why can’t they, as BMO asks repeatedly, stop being a bunch of dummies and just help each other out?

That honesty and focus on friendship is what ultimately saves the day in the end. After Hugo (Randall Park), an esteemed scientist who has secretly been draining the base of its resources, takes off in his spaceship, BMO opens the citizens of The Drift up to a new way of living. Instead of seeing The Drift as a prison and trying to run away from it, he encourages them to see it as home. That’s not a lesson a sidekick can teach. It’s one from a leader.

This is the fearless, confident BMO who arrives on Earth to meet a teenaged Jake the dog and Finn the human child. Not a sidekick, not someone to be ignored. BMO arrives at The Land of Ooo a hero in his own right.

For all of Adventure Time’s 10 seasons, BMO has been presented as exactly what he says he’s not. He’s been patronized, ignored, and coddled by Finn and Jake. He’s been treated as a child. But through one glimpse into BMO’s past, Adventure Time was able to rewrite this character’s entire history. Distant Lands proves that BMO was never a little kid. He was a wise mentor who helped sculpt Finn and Jake into the world-saving heroes they would become.

Watch Adventure Time: Distant Lands on HBO Max