Summary

• Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake is a spin-off of the beloved series, expanding on the franchise's universe in a new and exciting way.
• The challenges of creating Fionna as a unique character separate from Finn were overcome by giving her different choices and a distinct environment.
• The multiverse concept in Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake was approached differently, focusing on visually different and meaty storylines in each episode.

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake is the long-awaited spin-off of Cartoon Network's beloved series Adventure Time, with the 2023 Max series expanding on the franchise's universe like never before. The spin-off show follows the titular characters of Fionna and Cake, turning what was originally a single episode with gender-bent characters into a major piece of the Adventure Time puzzle. Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake season 1 has already wrapped, but fans are eagerly awaiting more mathematical quests in the Adventure Time universe.

Adam Muto is a storyboard artist and animator who serves as the creator and executive producer of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. Muto served as a storyboard artist, story writer, and director on early seasons of Adventure Time before being promoted to showrunner for seasons 5-10 and executive producer for seasons 6-10. Muto returned to his role for the Adventure Time: Distant Lands Max specials before beginning work on Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake. Muto made an appearance at SCAD AnimationFest 2023 where he showed off some exclusive Adventure Time deleted scenes, hosted a Q&A, and was presented with the SCAD AnimationFest Spotlight Award.

Adam Muto sat down with Screen Rant at SCAD AnimationFest 2023, where the Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake creator spoke on the challenges of creating the spin-off, cut story ideas, and the future of the Adventure Time franchise.

Adam Muto On Adventure Time: Fionna And Cake

Screen Rant: What were some of the challenges that came with differentiating Fionna from Finn in the original Adventure Time series?

Adam Muto: I mean, the biggest challenge is because they were so closely related, kind of figuring out which way to take her, because Finn had a very set arc from being really young and boisterous and bombastic and kind of gradually aging up to where he ended the series. So she didn't have that kind of runway, unless we treated her as exactly the same as Finn. So it was just kind of finding a situation we could put them in that would let her make very different choices and have a very different milieu to be in, in the first place.

Part of the series ending kind of was freeing because we didn't have to tie it in as directly. It wasn't like we were cutting to a Fionna and Cake episode in the final season and then cutting back to the main series. It could kind of live as its own offshoot. And that's kind of how we treated it, like this is a branch that can go in a very different direction if we wanted to. And we don't have to show the whole course of her life, we're just kind of showing, you know, a couple of days in her life.

The multiverse was already established in the previous show, but Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake leaned into it a whole lot more. Were there conversations about all the other multiverse media that's been coming out recently, and how were you able to make your series standout among these other shows and movies?

Adam Muto: I think it sort of helped that [the multiverse] already existed as being in the air and almost too many multiverse things right now. So it was kind of like looking at what we could do differently, and what we could kind of strip away and not try to show every single depiction of the characters because it feels like it's kind of moved in that direction, where it's like, ‘how can I show every single version of the character and include that in the story?’. And on a TV budget, you can't really do that for one thing. So we kind of listed all the things we possibly could do, and then narrowed down the list to the ones that felt like they would have the most meat or visually be different, or you know, just a couple of different factors. And then since it was kind of episodic, we wanted to treat it like we didn't have to track all those multiverse strip threads through the entire thing. Like each episode is basically in its own AU. And you know, we'd all seen Sliders at some point. So we just kind of like said, ‘what did we like about sliders? Maybe we can use that.'

Are there any universes that you hope to include that didn't make it in the final cut that you're able to share?

Adam Muto: I'll have to look at the list. Some of them were just like, ‘oh, this is a look,’ or ‘that looks cool.’ And they just were visually interesting, but it was hard to say we need a whole episode there. I think initially when we talked about like the FlapJack cameo we were like, ‘maybe we just go to Flapjack for an entire episode and have a crossover.’ And then eventually that got stripped away, because we only had 10 episodes. I'm trying to think if [there are] any others, but that was the one that stands out.

So going back to when Adventure Time first made that jump from more episodic storytelling into the lore-heavy serialized stuff. Was there any pushback from Cartoon Network, because around that time, there weren't a lot of animated shows aimed at younger demographics doing these broader stories.

Adam Muto: What's strange is that they were resistant at first, but then it became sort of a marketing thing, like you could package a bunch of episodes together and promote it as an event. And it was a lot harder to get promos for individual episodes. So it wasn't like we were the only show. They were kind of going to a lot of shows and saying, ‘Hey, we want an eight pack or a 10 pack of episodes that we can kind of lump together’ and even in the later seasons of some of the shows that are still running. Like the last season of Summer Camp Island that was like one big arc. And some of that comes from the creators, and some of that came from the network itself, just having a harder time promoting individual episodes.

So elements that ended up playing a big role in the overall story like the Enchiridion - which was around in the pilot - were these things that you always hope to include or was your team just going through and finding things that could work in the overarching story?

Adam Muto: It's kind of both, where you have things in mind, like what are your significant objects and events in the past that you can refer to that feel like - not that every single audience member would know it - but that felt significant enough in the backstory of each character that you could bring it back and it would have some significance.

We tried to leave it in a place where you could start and if this was your first series that you watched, it might be confusing, but you could kind of pick it up. And like, it would just seem like part of the backstory that maybe doesn't even exist. If you didn't know there was an original series, you could still watch it and just think that you're referring to something in the distant past. I think because we’d shown the Enchiridion in relation to Simon, it felt natural to kind of revisit that.

The Adventure Time fan base is obviously massive. Did you ever dream that it would get this big?

Adam Muto: No, we just were trying not to get canceled the first season. I think a lot of that feels so outside of your control. We never sat around and wondered about like, ‘what's Comic-Con gonna be like,’ ‘which characters are people going to ship?’. I don't think we ever had conversations like that. It was more ‘how are we going to finish this in time for the next deadline?’. I think you get kind of tunnel vision. And especially if you're working in a studio, you can look at stuff online, but your day to day is just production. So you know, it's cool to see fan reaction. And when it's in person, it feels like realer in a way because you can see it online and you know, it's detached. It's just text on a screen, or fan art. But then when you see people in person, you're like, ‘Oh, I thought you were tricking us.’ I didn't know if people were actually watching. So it's nice. It's definitely nice, but it's not why we were making it.

So with the later seasons, and with Fionna and Cake, and Distant Lands after this fan base was already established, do you feel like the influence of the fan base and the things they wanted to see influenced the show's production at all?

Adam Muto: I think it influenced especially what characters kind of showed up. Because if they had an established fan base, and the show is sort of fan facing, there are certain characters that lend themselves to a new series more than others. Like it'd be really hard to do a Mr. Pig series or a Shelby series or one about the Snail because the world was so expansive, you could focus on anything. But I'm pretty sure Max wouldn't have said ‘yes’ to a lot of those ideas. So I think the fact that the Fionna and Cake episodes usually got pretty high ratings when it was on linear, kind of made it an easier sell when we were like pitching what the series could be.

Are there any hints you can give us as to what's coming next for the Adventure Time franchise?

Adam Muto: I wish. I mean, I think streaming has made it a lot harder to predict the life of what's going to happen for a different iteration of the show, because I'm pretty confident there will be, but I have no idea when. I think in the meantime, we're just developing stuff and kind of seeing what the next year is going to be like.

About Adventure Time: Fionna And Cake

Based on characters from the beloved “Adventure Time” franchise, this brand-new 10-episode series set in the land of Ooo follows the alternate universe versions of Finn & Jake on a multiverse-hopping journey towards self-discovery. When Fionna and her sidekick Cake find themselves in the crosshairs of a powerful new foe, they have no choice but to seek the help of former Ice King Simon Petrikov. With appearances from Marshall Lee, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Princess Bubblegum, and Finn the Human, “Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake” transports fans of the classic series to worlds both familiar and alien. Voices include Madeleine Martin, Roz Ryan, Tom Kenny, Andrew Rannells, Donald Glover, Kayleigh Mckee, Sean Rohani, and others. Executive Producers: Adam Muto, Fred Seibert, Sam . Studio/Prod Co: Cartoon Network Studios.

Check out our other Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake interview here:

• Adam Muto and Ryann Shannon

All episodes of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake are out now on Max.