The eighth season of Adventure Time, an American animated television series created by Pendleton Ward, premiered on Cartoon Network on March 26, 2016, and concluded on February 2, 2017. It follows the adventures of Finn, a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape and size at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with the other main characters of the show: Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess, BMO, and Flame Princess. The miniseries Islands, which follows Finn, Jake, BMO (voiced by Niki Yang), and Susan Strong (voiced by Jackie Buscarino) as they leave Ooo and travel across the ocean to solve the mystery of Finn's past, aired during this season. It also features guest animators Alex and Lindsay Small-Butera (who worked on "Beyond the Grotto") and James Baxter (who worked on "Horse and Ball"). The season debuted with the episode "Broke His Crown", which was watched by 1.13 million viewers marking a slight decrease from the previous season finale, "The Thin Yellow Line", which was seen by 1.15 million viewers. "Islands Part 8: The Light Cloud," the eighth-season finale, was watched by 1 million viewers, making it the lowest-rated Adventure Time season finale at the time. Critical reception to the season was mostly positive, with The A.V. Club writer Oliver Sava expressing pleasant bemusement that the show's quality had not suffered despite this season being its eighth. Critics were also complimentary towards the Islands miniseries: In April 2017, Common Sense Media awarded the miniseries "The Common Sense Seal", and at the 69th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2017, the Islands episode "Imaginary Resources" won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation. Several compilation DVDs that contain episodes from the season have been released, and a set containing the entire season was released on September 4, 2018.
Development
Concept The series follows the adventures of Finn the Human, a human boy, and his best friend Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape, grow, and shrink at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with the other major characters, including: Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess, BMO, and Flame Princess. Common storylines revolve around Finn and Jake discovering strange creatures, dealing with the antagonistic, but misunderstood, Ice King, and battling monsters in order to help others. Multi-episode story arcs for this season include the introduction of the character Fern, and Finn meeting his mother and learning about what became of humanity.
Production
On July 7, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter announced that the series had been renewed for an eighth season. The season's storyline writers included Jack Pendarvis, Adam Muto, Kent Osborne, and Ashly Burch. Originally, the show's seventh season was supposed to comprise the episodes "Bonnie & Neddy" through "Reboot", and its eighth season was supposed to include the episodes "Two Swords" through "Three Buckets", but when it came time to upload the seventh season onto streaming sites, Cartoon Network chose to end the season with its 26th episode, "The Thin Yellow Line." Consequently, the episodes "Broke His Crown" through "Reboot" (which had originally been ordered as the last episodes of the show's seventh season) and the episodes "Two Swords" through the Islands miniseries (which had originally been ordered as the beginning of the show's eighth season) were combined to form the show's official eighth season. This new episode count was cemented by the release of the complete seventh season DVD on July 18, 2017, which included episodes up until "The Thin Yellow Line", as well as the release of the complete eighth season on the Cartoon Network website. This season's episodes were produced in a process similar to those of the previous seasons. Each episode was outlined in two-to-three pages that contained the necessary plot information. These outlines were then handed to storyboard artists, who created full storyboards. Design and coloring were done at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, California, and animation was handled overseas in South Korea by Rough Draft Korea and Saerom Animation. Continuing a tradition that started with the fifth season episode "A Glitch is a Glitch", this season also features the work of guest animators. "Beyond the Grotto" features 7 minutes of animation courtesy of Alex and Lindsay Small-Butera, a husband and wife duo known for their web series Baman Piderman, and the episode "Horse and Ball" features animation courtesy of James Baxter. He had previously provided guest animation for the fifth-season episode "James Baxter the Horse". In both episodes, James Baxter the animator lends his voice to the equine character of the same name. This was the final season to feature several long-serving storyboard artists and production crew members. Moynihan left the show after completing "Normal Man" to finish his web comic Forming. Finally, supervising director Andres Salaff left after this season to storyboard on Cartoon Network's series Uncle Grandpa. Conversely, the season also saw the return of former storyboard artist Ako Castuera (who returned to storyboard the episode "Broke His Crown" with Nyström before working as a storyboard revisionist, starting with "Two Swords"). and former storyboard artist and creative director Cole Sanchez (who took the position of one of the series' supervising directors starting with "Two Swords").
Miniseries
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