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Explaining Adventure Time Evergreen isn’t easy. The episode was pretty much everything I love about Adventure Time, all rolled into one. This show is definitely not just a kid’s show. (SPOILERS below through the episode Evergreen.) 

Btw, if you haven’t watched Evergreen yet or if you want to see it again, it’s already available on Amazon Instant Video (click here).

The episode explained sooooo much that we didn’t know about the Adventure Time universe and left us with a lot of new questions. Let me point out the biggest “universe-shattering” tidbits that we learned. Please leave a comment if I left out anything important!

• We now know the crown’s origins. 

I always wondered how the Ice King’s crazy crown came about. Now I know that Evergreen made it, during the time of dinosaurs, looooong before Earth “today” or the Earth of the Adventure Time period.

• How do we know that Evergreen took place before the Mushroom War?

Well, not only did it take place before the Mushroom War, but also before humans even existed. The episode gives us multiple hints. First, it shows that dinosaurs roamed the Earth plentifully. It also shows the Earth is whole (and in current Adventure Time history, the Earth has a big chunk taken out of it.) We also see the crown get invented, and it already existed before the Mushroom War.

• We know how the crown works and why it turns people crazy. And it’s NOT about your deepest desire. 

The crown was designed to grant its wearer’s deepest desire — but only its FIRST wearer. In this case, Evergreen intended to wear it because his deepest desire was to stop the comet. Instead, it granted Gunther’s deepest desire, which was to be like Evergreen.

But the crown only grants the FIRST wearer’s deepest desire. After that, it grants the SAME wish to everyone who wears it later. Gunther, being a little kid, only had a kid’s caricature idea in his head of who Evergreen was. So THAT is what the crown turns people into. This is also why the Ice King seems so kid-like and immature. If you look at his bedroom at the end of the episode, it’s decorated like a kid’s bedroom. The Ice King has Gunther’s maturity level. Simon was turned into an Evergreen caricature. However, a bit of his personality was allowed to remain, although warped. Gunther didn’t care about women or princesses. Ice King (at least at the beginning of the series) was always hunting princesses, which was a remnant of Simon’s desire to find his princess, Betty.

• The green comet might have been the Lich.

When they show the green comet, it has horns like the Lich’s. It also is intent on extinction, which is the Lich’s purpose. It’s possible this comet was the Lich and his first interaction with the Earth. The elementals even said this comet was different somehow from previous comets. However, we’re also led to believe in previous episodes that the Mushroom War created the Lich. I’m willing to bet the two combined somehow. Perhaps the comet was a proto-Lich and the Mushroom War gave it sentience. OR the Lich was in the comet, and although the comet destroyed life as Earth knew it, the Lich wasn’t released from the comet until the Mushroom War. So many possibilities…

• The comet comes every 1,000 years and now we’ve got another one headed our way. 

Can anyone actually handle the crown well enough to stop a comet? Well, Gunther was taken over by the crown FAR faster than Simon was taken over. So it’s possible the crown’s speed decreases each time it’s worn. In “Finn the Human” and “Jake the Dog,” Simon was able to stop the bomb from landing by wearing the crown, thus averting annihilation. Perhaps the crown gave the Ice King this dream because it sensed another comet was near.

• We now know the origin of “Gunther” (aka Gunter) and a possibility of who Gunther really was…

Gunther was Evergreen’s protege. When Gunther wore the crown, he turned into a caricature Evergreen with a pet/protege named Gunther. So everyone who wears the crown after Gunther is destined to have at least one pet/protege also named Gunther.

Another thought, brought up on Reddit… Adventure Time is big on past lives. Could Gunther from Evergreen’s time have been one of Finn’s past lives? This title card for Adventure Time (as found on Reddit) shows the parallels and strongly hints at that idea.

• The Mushroom War brought magic back, but what about the portals?

Magic (or “very advanced science” as Princess Bubblegum would put it) clearly existed during Evergreen’s time. The comet destroyed all that, and Evergreen froze the elementals. After the Mushroom War, magic returned, probably thanks to the slime that was somehow released during the war. We saw the first hint of “magic” when pink goo winked during a Simon and Marceline episode.

In Evergreen’s time, the elementals visited through four portals that corresponded with the four elements. Were these portals closed when the comet hit? Did they reopen during the Mushroom War? Where are the portals now?

• Tree Trunks is the Lava Dog, or related to it somehow. 

When the Lava Dog lost its crystal eyes, we saw that it looked surprisingly like Tree Trunks. We also saw in the episode “Crystals Have Power” that Tree Trunks easily became leader of the crystal kingdom. This is either because Tree Trunks is really really old and really IS the lava dog, or Tree Trunks is descended from the lava dog. Check out these pics of Tree Trunks possessed by the crystal, and the lava creature. (Thanks to this Reddit thread for the idea.)

View post on imgur.com

View post on imgur.com

• The episode is an analogy for what can happen in a very bad parent-child relationship. 

This episode goes really deep if you think about it for awhile. A writer explains very eloquently on a Reddit thread that this episode shows the danger of a child being raised by a disinterested, mean parent. It’s a good read, so I suggest you check it out.

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Stephanie

Stephanie Dwilson started Post Apocalyptic Media with her husband Derek. She's a licensed attorney and has a master's in science and technology journalism. You can reach her at [email protected].

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