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After eight years on air, beloved Cartoon Network show Adventure Time is wrapping up with a season — and series — finale this Monday. It’s bittersweet to say goodbye to such a longstanding animation staple.
Showrunner Adam Muto says that if the show had ended any earlier, however, the finale would’ve been different.
“[We] didn’t have a definite, ‘This is the exact story that’s going to be in the end,’” Muto told Polygon.
It wasn’t until the eighth season that a clear finale took shape. Muto says that until the team got definite word that the series would end, it was hard to commit to a specific story.
But with the end of Adventure Time just around the corner, what of the much-rumored Adventure Time movie that has been supposedly in the works since 2015?
Muto assured us that the ending of the show would not affect the potential movie — nor would the end of the show lead directly into a film.
“That was always its own sort of parallel path being followed by most of Warner Brothers,” he said.
A movie was never specifically part of the greater plan of the show (although creator Pendleton Ward was attached to write). While Muto says an eventual movie would be a cool addition to the series, he also says that he doesn’t know exactly how a movie would happen.
“All the lore and stuff would not work for a first time viewer,” he said. “These movies kind of live and fall on their accessibility.”
The last episode ever of Adventure Time will air Sept. 3 at 6 p.m. EST. It will be the length of four regular episodes, giving us a fitting farewell to the beloved characters and the land of Ooo.