Infinity Train is a good replacement for Adventure Time
By Drew Koenig
Ever since Adventure Time went off the air nearly two years ago, fans have been trying to find a worthy successor. They might have it now in the form of Infinity Train.
It’s difficult to say goodbye to a show you love. Not only are you losing the actual thing itself, but you’re also being deprived of this kind of thing that you adored so much. When we lost Adventure TIme, not only did we not have the show we adored but we also didn’t have that kind of show anymore.
That ended up leaving a vacancy for a lot of us. We had Steven Universe, and it’s excellent in its own right with definite similarities to that long-running series, but it was still very much its own thing. The two shows just had very different energies to them.
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Ultimately, that is what it comes down to. You want something that can evoke a kind of feeling in your heart without necessarily being that exact thing and that can be a hard thing to come by. You have this deep love for something and it won’t technically ever be gone — you can always go back and watch it again — but that journey is over. What you want is something that can remind you of that fondness again.
Thankfully, we have a solid contender in that space now with Infinity Train, which just wrapped up its second season on Cartoon Network and is, by all indications, rather great.
The first season followed Tulip, a preteen girl running away from her divorced parents to go off to coding camp and finds herself trapped on a train with endless compartments. She also has a number on her skin that goes up and down depending on the choices she makes. This is because you get onto the train by having emotional issues that you need to work out.
At its core, Infinity Train has the components that made Adventure Time such an excellent show. There are expansive world-building and dynamic characters, but also, and perhaps most importantly, it allows to be anything from one episode to the next while also having important messages embedded throughout.
This comes through even stronger in the second season where it revolves this time around Mirror Tulip, a version of her from the Mirror realm that has escaped and is determined to exist as something more than just a reflection of Tulip. She wants something for herself.
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This brings about a story that is able to touch upon ideas like identity and self-worth, which is so necessary with a program that skews younger like this. Adventure Time did much of the same thing of taking concepts that felt big and unwieldy even to adults and doing that in a way that is accessible for younger audiences.
It’s able to say that this is what it’s like to go through something like this and it might not be exactly what you’re going through but you recognize the bones of it. More than that, a part of what made Adventure Time so interesting and resonant was the idea that an emotional journey is worthwhile. It’s not this waste of time that could be better spent elsewhere.
In the same way, Infinity Train has this baked into its very DNA that it is all about personal growth. This is a show that says that you’re going to go through some compartments that you think are nonsense and it’s keeping you from your big goal but it’s not. It’s all-important and necessary to get where you need to go and that’s a pivotal message to hear, regardless of your age.
Infinity Train airs on Cartoon Network and will return for a third season. What do you think of this show? Are you a fan? Let us know in the comments below.