‘Infinity Train’ Ends As One of the Most Innovative and Undervalued Shows on TV

It’s always a bit sad when a show ends. It’s even sadder when that ending happens before said show truly finds its people. After four breathtaking, imaginative, and consistently daring seasons, Infinity Train has premiered its final season, Book 4: Duet. As upsetting as that is, there’s a lesson hiding in the gloom: never forget to live, and appreciate the life you’ve got.

Owen Dennis’ quiet masterpiece revolves around the same bizarre concept. There’s a magical train that appears to people when they’ve messed up their lives. After a passenger boards they get a green number on their hand. Learn life lessons, get that number down to zero, and they can leave the train a better, more well-rounded person. Fail, and they die; either of old age, or at the hand of one of the train’s many threats. It’s pretty high stakes, as far as kids’ shows go.

Infinity Train could have phoned it in. Even if a protagonist’s season-long life lesson was an obvious one, the show is so gorgeously animated and filled with car after car of so many unique worlds it would have been forgiven for compromising on story. After all, this is a show that features a sentient column of water who wants people to join his pyramid scheme, and a talking toad who begs passengers not to kick him. There’s enough weird and fun here to balance out any lackluster character growth. Yet Infinity Train, like the lessons it taught, never took the easy path.

Instead, it hid the lessons its characters needed to learn, concealing their faults and insecurities under layers of ego and confidence. That’s how real people handle their problems, and that’s how these cartoons operated. For Tulip (Ashley Johnson), it meant focusing on a young woman who was so competent and smart that both she and the audience forgot that she does in fact need other people. For Book 2’s Jesse (Robbie Daymond) that meant giving him an ally who proved his overwhelming need to be liked wasn’t actually a strength, but that his kindness was. Book 3’s Grace (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) and Simon (Kyle McCarley) were such a natural leader and follower pair that the fears that led to them taking on these defining characteristics were almost completely hidden.

And then there’s Book 4’s Min-Gi (Johnny Young) and Ryan (Sekai Murashige). Out of all Infinity Train‘s sagas, Min-Gi and Ryan’s journey is by far the most emotional. It’s the story of two friends terrified of leaving each other, yet equally terrified of telling the truth. Their story is about the dangers of both moving forward too quickly, and staying too still. It’s clear that these best friends love each other. That very love is also what tears them away from one another at almost every turn.

These stories are emotionally complex and authentic. As their numbers rise and fall, you can watch Tulip, Jesse, Grace, Simon, Min-Gi, and Ryan’s internal victories and countless setbacks. Watching a season of Infinity Train feels a bit like spying on someone’s therapy sessions. Only instead of taking countless hours over the course of years, it takes 10 quarter-hour episodes.

Pairing these emotionally resonant stories with increasingly wild settings would be enough. But Infinity Train always pushed the envelope further, taking the time and care to explore the ramifications of the train’s odd world. That’s how the series introduced Amelia (Lena Headey), a brilliant passenger who takes over the train in a desperate attempt to bring back a version of her dead husband. It’s how Grace and Simon’s Apex came to be, a group of passengers who are dedicated to getting their numbers as high as possible all because of an encounter Grace had with Amelia when she was a child. Passenger stories never exist inside a vacuum in this show. They shape and change each other as well as the cars around them.

That same level of respect was always extended to the non-passenger members of the train, known as its denizens. Denizens’ agency and purpose was most thoroughly explored in Book 2. In Book 1, Tulip set a mirror version of herself free. The following season was completely devoted to MT (Mirror Tulip, later known as Lake) and her quest for freedom. As she helped Jesse lower his number, the show asked difficult moral questions about its own universe. Is Lake’s only purpose to serve passengers? Does she even have free will? Can she ever fully exist separate from the will and whims of her creator? Infinity Train never fully answered these questions, but in refusing to answer them it gave Lake the respect of her own narrative.

These caring flourishes appear in other seasons as well. One of Book 3’s major arcs revolves around whether or not the feelings of denizens really matter, echoing a larger argument about the evils of prejudice, how we should always care for others as much as we care for ourselves, and the moral rights of respecting every living creature. Book 4 offers a softer reflection. Woven throughout Min-Gi and Ryan’s fighting is a look into how denizens feel about passengers. What is it like to care for and love someone who is destined to leave you? How do you live in the crater of their memory?

With all of these ambitious, well-crafted elements you would think that Infinity Train would end as one of the most beloved shows of its time. That’s not the case. Book 1 ended on a 0.48 Nielsen rating. Book 2, the only other season to premiere on Cartoon Network, ended at 0.38. It’s impossible to know how Infinity Train Book 3 and 4 have performed on HBO Max, since streaming services are notoriously guarded about their numbers. But you can look at the fans. Compared to similar Cartoon Network fare like Steven Universe or Adventure Time, the fanbase seems notably small. It’s possible that in the coming months more people will find and treasure this gem, but for now that’s not happening. One of the coolest and most imaginative shows to grace television is ending with crickets.

Tackling even one of Infinity Train‘s dozens of worlds, stories, and moral questions would have been enough for a show. Instead, Infinity Train chose to juggle them all. It was never perfect. Every Book of Infinity Train ended with more questions than answers, more loose ends to keep fans up at night. We now know that some of those mysteries will never be solved. But that was always the point. Infinity Train is a show about taking risks and trying. It’s a show about living to the fullest and embracing everything — the good, the bad, the possibility of failure, the joys of success. In the wake of its finale, take a page out of the train’s book. Don’t be sad that it’s over. Learn from its lessons, and be grateful that it happened.

Watch Infinity Train on HBO Max