The eight episodes were storyboarded by Ako Castuera, Jesse Moynihan, Muto, Hanna K. Nyström, Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Lyle Partridge, and Luke Pearson.

Andres Salaff, Elizabeth Ito, and Muto handled supervising direction, and Sandra Lee served as art director.

Former Adventure Time storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar returned briefly to the show to voice Marceline's mother and to contribute a song entitled "Everything Stays".

However, as Finn and Jake chase the vampiric essence, a mob of angry villagers capture Marceline and tie her to windmill, hoping that the rising sun will kill her.

As of a disagreeance of how to reestablish dominance, Hierophant goes to the forest, Empress goes to the Ice Kingdom to gather new troops, and Moon retreats to a marsh-like area.

Fearing for the safety of the Ice King, Marceline gives chase, and with the help of Finn and Bubblegum, slays the Empress, reabsorbing her powers of invisibility.

Finn and Jake lure the Moon back to Marceline, who manages to reabsorb the vampire's healing power, thereby allowing her to recover from her injury.

Stakes was announced in February 2015 alongside news of Long Live the Royals, a separate miniseries created by Sean Szeles, at an upfront regarding Cartoon Network's programming for the 2015 to 2016 television season.

[1] Writing for Cartoon Brew, Amid Amidi speculated that both were commissioned following the success of Over the Garden Wall, the network's first miniseries created by Patrick McHale (a former writer for Adventure Time).

"[3] Despite being touted by some outlets as a "spin-off",[4] Adventure Time showrunner Adam Muto later clarified that Stakes was considered part of the series' seventh season.

[5] At the 2015 New York Comic Con, Muto revealed that the miniseries originated with ideas that were initially developed during the show's second season.

"[6] In a 2020 interview, former series creative director and storyline writer Patrick McHale clarified what exactly this original idea had been: I realized [sometime during the production of season two] that we'd never actually had Marceline and Ice King interact with each other in the same episode, and we’d also established that they were both 1000 years old.

[6][8] Due to the Marceline-centric nature of the miniseries, a new opening was created that features Olson singing the theme song over a bass guitar.

[10][11] The miniseries' story was developed by head writer Kent Osborne, series creator Pendleton Ward, Jack Pendarvis, and Muto.

The eight episodes were storyboarded by Ako Castuera, Jesse Moynihan, Muto, Hanna K. Nyström, Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Lyle Partridge, and Luke Pearson.

[12][13][14] Castuera storyboarded the first, sixth, and seventh parts of Stakes alongside Moynihan, and Sugar wrote a new song for the miniseries entitled "Everything Stays" and voiced Marceline's mother.

[15][16][17] In regards to the miniseries' cynosural song "Everything Stays", Nyström revealed that, during the storyboarding of the episode of the same name, she found herself unable to write a lullaby for the scene between Marceline and her mother.

[20][21][22] Ghostshrimp, who had left the series during the middle of season four, noted: "I was super pumped that they wanted me to work on it, [and] it was great to return to that world for another go around.

[9] Other guest stars include Rebecca Romijn as the Empress, Billy Brown as the Vampire King, Paul Williams as the Hierophant, Ron Funches as the Fool, Beau Billingslea as the Moon, Kyle Kinane as Cloud Dance, and Ava Acres as Young Marceline and the rabbit-hatted child.

"[35] The premiere episodes, "Marceline the Vampire Queen"/"Everything Stays", were collectively watched by 1.87 million viewers and they both scored a 0.45 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 0.45 percent of all households with viewers aged 18 to 49 years old were watching television at the time of the episodes' airing.

Charlie Jane Anders of io9 applauded the miniseries, noting that it is an interesting meditation on the concept of change, as well as the on philosophical idea that everything is cyclical.

[40] Writing for Vox, Emily VanDerWerff wrote highly of the miniseries, arguing that it was an excellent example of the coming-of-age story that "shows off the kids series' emotional maturity".

[41] She did note that the miniseries is "less a cohesive whole than a bunch of short stories that feel as if they accidentally add up to something bigger", and that the need for every installment to exist as a self-contained unit made Stakes "a little clunky".

"[43] However, Russell critiqued the fact that, due to the individual episodes' lengths, some of the miniseries' more poignant material was not explored to its full extent.

Club awarded the miniseries a "B", noting that the event "loses steam when it moves away from the introspective personal elements of the past to detail Marceline and her friends' vampire hunting adventure in the present.

"[44] He also bemoaned the fact that only "Everything Stays" features flashbacks, arguing that "rushing through those past events is a missed opportunity to offer a more comprehensive look at where Marceline comes from and how those circumstances have shaped her".