Islands (miniseries)

"Islands" is an American animated miniseries comprising eight episodes from the television show Adventure Time, created by Pendleton Ward.

The trip culminates with a visit to Founder's Island, where Finn meets his biological mother, Minerva Campbell (voiced by Sharon Horgan), and discovers what happened to the remainder of the human race.

Storyboard artists who worked on this miniseries include Sam Alden, Polly Guo, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Tom Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Graham Falk, Pendleton Ward, Hanna K. Nyström, Aleks Sennwald, Kent Osborne, and Adam Muto.

Initially, the journey is easy and uneventful, but after a series of mishaps, the group's boat is destroyed by a mysterious colossus, throwing everyone overboard.

Roughly a thousand years prior to the main events of the series, a group of humans fled Ooo on a container ship (as seen in Stakes).

With that said, there were those few who occasionally grew dissatisfied with their rigidly structured lives and attempted to flee the island; these "hiders" were in turn hunted down and returned by specially trained "seekers".

The audience is then presented with a series of flashbacks detailing how Minerva, a doctor, met Finn's father Martin Mertens (voiced by Stephen Root) when he was hospitalized after it was mistakenly believed he was attempting to leave the island with a group of escapees.

While Kara seeks to make amends with Frieda, Finn and Jake discover that Minerva had digitized her consciousness in the past and now exists only in virtual reality.

While setting sail on a new boat bound for Ooo, Finn has one final talk with Minerva through the VR headset, where the two embrace in the digital realm.

[1] Comprising 8 episodes and airing in November 2015, this miniseries was a "phenomenal success, ranking as the #1 program in its time period with all key kids and boys audiences.

[13] The miniseries' story was developed by head writer Kent Osborne, series showrunner Adam Muto, Jack Pendarvis, and Ashly Burch.

Storyboard artists who worked on this miniseries include Sam Alden, Polly Guo, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Tom Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Graham Falk, Pendleton Ward, Hanna K. Nyström, Aleks Sennwald, Kent Osborne, and Adam Muto.

Root had previously appeared in a string of sixth-season episodes, beginning with "Escape from the Citadel", and Parham had last voiced her character in "Preboot".

[22] The premiere episodes, "The Invitation"/"Whipple the Happy Dragon", were collectively watched by 1.20 million viewers and they both scored a 0.3 in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic according to Nielsen (Nielsen ratings are audience measurement systems that determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States); this means that 0.3 percent of all households with viewers aged 18 to 49 years old were watching television at the time of the episodes' airing.

Tonally, Smith described the miniseries as possessing "the feel of an old-school post-apocalyptic SF saga—a journey through a devastated-but-wondrous world, with a sense of danger and mystery detached from the Land of Ooo.

[26] Matthew Jacobson of The Spectrum wrote that "the story is masterful and imaginative" and that "if Islands is a litmus test, then the final season should be one heck of an adventure.

Club awarded the miniseries an "A" and wrote that it "can be seen as a summary of Adventure Time's growth over seven seasons, beginning with smaller, sillier tales that build to something much deeper.

"[28] He applauded how Islands "does fantastic work fleshing out supporting characters", specifically highlighting the show's nuanced and multidimensional portrayal of Martin, Dr.

Unfortunately, the style (and the duration) of Adventure Time episodes works against ... delving into [the show's] mythology ... so we'll just have to obsess over whatever glimpses we get and settle for watching this series again and again.

"[29] In a highly complimentary review for The New Republic, Juliet Kleber wrote that "Islands does a dizzying amount of plot development in 80-something minutes.

"[30] Furthermore, she argued that "Finn's coming-of-age story and the exploration of the post-apocalyptic plotline" as featured in the miniseries "are handled just as deftly as any other subject—with fun and a tinge of sorrow.

He complimented the philosophical musing of the miniseries, which he argued "takes on shades of Black Mirror and existentialism to cast a critical eye on technology and the human spirit.

"[31] Blumenfeld wrote: Islands [...] [gives] us a world in which incredibly advanced bioengineering and cybernetics have kept humans alive and ensconced in relative comfort.

[5][38] In October 2016, it was announced that the stand-alone comic book, Islands, written by series' storyline writer Ashly Burch would function as a prequel to the miniseries.

A comparison of two shots from the original Adventure Time intro sequence ( left ) to similar shots from the Islands intro ( right ).