Adventure Time 6.17 “Ghost Fly”

We fell a little behind with our Adventure Time reviews here at PDI, so get ready for an Adventure Time onslaught! Today and tomorrow will get us caught up on back episodes, and then every day this week we’ll have reviews of the Adventure Time Corn-Ooo-Copia marathon of new episodes that aired Thanksgiving Week! Tell your friends!

For Halloween, Adventure Time gave us a trip to the Underworld with “Ghost Fly” and I’m not really sure why. While it was nice to get some attention paid to at least one of our main characters, Jake’s casual killing of the titular fly, along with the haphazard way he sacrifices other ghosts later in the episode, and the final fate of the Ghost Fly all make this a puzzling episode, thematically.

The story is pretty straightforward. Jake is making soup, kills a fly trying to eat some of the soup, and is then haunted by the ghost of the fly. When he, Finn, and BMO are unable to deal with the ghost, they call in an expert to exorcise the unclean spirit (Peppermint Butler, of course). But when that fails, Jake takes a trip to the Other Side in order to take the fight to the ghost on its own terms.

But as it turns out, ghosts always have unfinished business, and that’s the case here, as well.

The murderous, Finn-possessing rampage that the ghost fly goes on is all so it can get one last taste of Jake’s soup — which it can’t get until the soup crosses over to the world of low-level ghosts, too.

While this is a particularly easy-to-miss episode, there are still quite a few nice moments that make it worth working into your Halloween Special rotation. The notion that apparently ghosts love 30s Jazz music is a particularly odd choice, but a satisfying one. The sound of that scratchy record immediately puts one in a creepy mindspace.

But that could just be me.

The brief visual reference to the Exorcist when Peppermint Butler shows up was a perfect touch for the older viewers, and the fact that Finn’s protective chalk circle transformed into the outline of a woman when he extended it was an interesting, if odd visual choice. Checking in on the Adventure Time subreddit, there are a few possibilities mentioned (Shoko being the most prominent, but the drawing has two arms and doesn’t really look like her), but no real answers to be found. Is it another spectral appearance in this Halloween-themed episode or something else?

Shout out in the comments and let us know what you think!

BMO’s excitement about getting to kill Jake and send him to the Underworld was a bit disturbing, but at least he seemed sure that he could bring him back. Of course, that doesn’t end up working out, as Doctor Princess is on the case as the episode closes, giving those final moments a little darker and more dangerous feel than what came before.

But all of that was cool and entertaining. What kind of put me off the episode was Jake’s casual attitude towards killing others — even if they’re low-level others. The initial killing of the fly is understandable, although by focusing so much attention on it, we’re immediately pulled into questionable moral territory. But it’s just a fly, so we’re right there with Jake.

Flies are disgusting, disgusting creatures. He’s not wrong.

But once Jake crosses over, he has no hesitation at all about throwing other low-level ghosts into the deadly path of the ghost fly’s scythe, including a cat, a table, a teddy bear, a duck, and a horse! Finally, once he spills the soup and the Ghost Soup appears, the ghost fly’s unfinished business is resolved and he begins to transcend to a higher dead world.

Until Jake smashes it again; killing its soul.

His “Shouldn’ta tried ta kill me, son!” was funny, but unsettling. But I’m probably thinking about it too much.

Moving on…

Did anyone else think that the Adventure Boy magazine Finn was reading was a shout-out to the Venture Brothers? I mean, the Boy Adventurer was named Rusty. And was anyone else really creeped out by Finn-Fly? Ick.