Honestly I was extremely pleasantly surprised by this first episode of "Distant Lands", featuring and named after one of the most beloved characters from the original series, the endlessly lovable BMO, and this episode certainly is a whirlwind from start to finish that never stops giving, a rollercoaster of emotions and just what we needed to see for a first dive back into the world of Adventure Time.
Personally I thought they really ticked pretty much all the boxes for what I would expect and want from a spin off - there were a lot of voices and characters (some more obvious than others) from the original, there were actually lots of references to the original series from characters to plot points and especially some of the new info dropped about the universe of AT which we never got in the original. There really were some quite big reveals and a fair few other references that are more mysterious in nature, as well as some that only megafans will catch. I wasn't particularly expecting this spin off to expand too much on the original universe, you never really know how much a team wants to touch anything surrounding the source material, especially with a show as fondly remembered as "Adventure Time", so this was a nice surprise for me and I really hope they continue this trend in the other three episodes as I have rarely been so invested in the lore and world building around a show so much as Adventure Time.
The hour long format is great for the Adventure Time writers and allows a story to be built and developed a bit more easily, or perhaps deliberately, than in the original series, and although I'm only giving this a 9 right now I can see that changing when the other 3 parts have been released, if they are all of this quality I would be happy to revise that to a 10 and of course I very much hope that's the case. I would 100% recommend this to anyone who liked the original show, I fail to see how you could be a big fan of Adventure Time and not enjoy this spin off, if you haven't seen it yet, what are you doing?! Go watch it NOW!!
