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Obsidian, the Next Installment of Adventure Time: Distant Lands, Will Dive Into Marceline and Princess Bubblegum’s Relationship

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Obsidian, the Next Installment of Adventure Time: Distant Lands, Will Dive Into Marceline and Princess Bubblegum’s Relationship

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Published on July 24, 2020

HBO Max
HBO Max

Bubbline is back! The next Adventure Time: Distant Lands special is called “Obsidian,” and it’s going to be all about the past and future of Princess Bubblegum and Marceline’s relationship. Marceline herself (Olivia Olson) joined executive producer Adam Muto along with Y5 (Glory Curda) and BMO (Niki Yang) for a panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2020, moderated by Steven Universe’s very own Amethyst (Michaela Dietz), where they teased tidbits of the storyline, revealed a brand-new character, unveiled some art, and shared an exclusive performance of a new Marceline song that will be showing up in the special.

“I was really really excited when I read the script,” Olson shared. “I think the way that they executed this storyline with ‘Obsidian’ is going to be really satisfying for the fans to really tick off a lot of questions that they’ve had…I think a big arc for [Marceline] in ‘Obsidian’ is just sort of getting over the barriers that she’s put in place for herself. If you really look at Marceline as a character, her story started way before the Finn and Jake timeline of things, and so she’s gone through lifetimes of ups and downs with different people and seen them come and go and stuff like that. I think it has put her walls up really really high as far as how much she lets people into her life. She kind of decodes some of those themes, because ultimately, she can’t move forward with Bubblegum unless she tackles some of her own issues.”

All of this character development will be clear in the new batch of Marceline songs, which will really “hone in” on how the character’s style, subject matter, tone, and emotions have progressed since her relationship with Princess Bubblegum became official in the Adventure Time finale. (Skip ahead to 35:08 for Olson’s performance of “Monster,” a new Marceline song that will appear in the special.)

“It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it’s a metaphor,” Muto said about the episode’s title, revealing that the story will take place in a new setting called Glass Kingdom. “Obsidian is a type of natural glass. Spiritually it can be protective and absorb negativity, but it also can be weaponized, as an actionable material. It kind of has those elements to it that the characters within the show are exhibiting in this episode…Cleansing, that’s also a property of obsidian, that it’s supposed to draw out stress and kind of expose things. That’s kind of what this special is about too. Not necessarily a checklist of every event of the PB/Marceline relationship, but just kind of snapshots for seeing some of where their older stresses and conflicts have come from. But we also wanted to keep it sort of about them now, so it’s like what their relationship would be like a couple years down the road. And also, they have a big romantic moment, and then what comes after that.”

Some of this will be drawn out by a new character named Glassboy, a boy made of glass voiced by Dietz, whom Muto described as “the inroad” for the bigger Marceline/PB backstory. “They’re not gonna want to talk about it on their own, so he’s sort of the pushy presence who incites them to come back and revisit,” he said, adding that he’s one of several new characters in the special’s beginning who are “analogs” of sorts for characters from Finn and Jake’s world, some of whom possess “elements of Finn if they were amped up to a more extreme degree.”

There’s no word yet on a release date for Adventure Time: Distant Lands “Obsidian,” but the cast and crew promise that it will arrive on HBO Max “soon.” Check out a preview of the art below!

HBO Max

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