Will the Ice King Ever Become Simon Again
By · Published on March 5th, 2019
Beware: serious spoilers below for the entirety of Adventure Fourth dimension.
Adventure Timeis a gift of a show. It'southward remarkable for several reasons, not least of all its near-perfect serial finale last year.
But perhaps its most striking claim to fame is its growth in scope and maturity from a fun kids' drawing to an emotionally rich saga. And its most effective — and most enduring — bound in this direction is its empathetic handling of Ice King, the one-time goofy villain.
Water ice King begins Chance Time's run as the bad guy, a crazy old magician obsessed with kidnapping and marrying princesses, whom our heroes Finn and Jake perpetually beat into submission. He's a little bit evil, only more often than not he's ineffectual, silly, and sorry.
In Flavour 3, however, his tragic backstory begins to unfold. It'due south revealed that he was in one case Simon Petrikov, a kind and brilliant academic who stumbled beyond a magical crown a thousand years ago. The crown kept him alive through the nuclear holocaust that wiped out most of humanity (bad news for u.s., since information technology becomes credible that this devastated past is our nowadays), and it gave him the power to protect Marceline, the orphaned child he adopted in the wasteland of the world. Every time he wore the crown, however, his grip on his sanity loosened a trivial more, until he completely lost his sense of self and became Ice King.
This information is doled out in remarkably few episodes, and they are arguably the bear witness's finest. Marker some of the earliest forays into more serious themes, they succinctly and elegantly tell a story of loss and sacrifice that delivers more graphic symbol development than you tin shake a stick at.
It's also helped, in no small part, by the incomparable vox piece of work of Tom Kenny (aye, SpongeBob) who plays both Simon and Ice King with beautifully subtle differences that are all the more striking when you witness his transformation from 1 to the other.
In the nowadays, developed Marceline has trouble coping with Ice Male monarch's madness and retention loss. Their relationship has all the notes of living with a loved one who has dementia, except both Ice King and Marceline are immortal, and she's been living with it for a thousand years. It'due south plenty to make anyone balk.
Later on the stellar Flavour 4 episode "I Remember You," withal, Marceline warms toward Ice King. She begins to appreciate the person he is for the sake of the person he was, and as she shares his story with her friends, they do too. Finn and Jake treat him much more kindly, calling him Simon, inviting him to parties, and even letting him motion in with them. This change has a profound event on Ice King — he stops kidnapping women, his desperate loneliness wanes, and he all but loses his position as the show'due south villain.
He's still goofy and sorry, but he's a existent person. And a sympathetic one at that.
It'south a modify that'due south built-in out of compassion — Ice King'due south friends treat him well for Simon'south sake — but it has the unexpected effect of encouraging him to be less pitiable.
Because, chiefly, Ice King never remembers his past identity. A handful of times we see Simon's consciousness trapped within, merely Ice King is unaware of him to the cease. They are, for all intents and purposes, two divide people. So when Water ice Male monarch responds positively to kindness and friendship, it'south completely his own doing.
This creates a chip of an odd loop. Water ice King's friends treat him amend because of the person he used to be, but in doing and so they help improve the person he is. Through their pity for someone they meet as a product of madness, they reveal that madness'south humanity.
Just that'due south a difficult pill for people to swallow. Whenever Ice Rex shows signs of reform or growth, they tend to meet information technology as Simon shining through. This just increases the intensity of the loop, every bit treating Ice King more like the person he was as Simon allows him to slip more easily into the office. It'south a clear lesson in empathy that'southward signaled strongly past the show, even if the characters often miss information technology.
No one is more guilty of missing it than Betty, Simon's fiancee, whose obsession with curing him consumes her life.
When Betty start enters the evidence in Flavor 5, her presence is a glimmer of promise, a wildcard tucked abroad in the groundwork, ready to modify things radically just as soon as she'southward called upon. She vows to reverse the crown'southward furnishings, and she seems capable enough to do it. And Simon, in a fleeting moment of clarity, agrees to keep living as Ice King for as long equally it takes her to effigy out how to salvage him.
But somewhere along the fashion, Betty's efforts sour. She sacrifices her past, her present, and fifty-fifty her own sanity all in the proper name of restoring his retentiveness, and none of it works. Meanwhile, Ice King flourishes on his own, becoming a vital (if all the same goofy and lamentable) part of Ooo, and i of the show's most beloved characters.
These conflicting arcs come to a head in the Season 9 "Elements" miniseries. Ostensibly a straightforward struggle to salve Ooo from a bad instance of magic-gone-incorrect, at its cadre "Elements" is well-nigh Water ice King'south personal growth clashing confronting Betty's insistence on restoring him to what he was.
After years of failed attempts, Betty decides to try "the direct approach," asking Ice King out on a date. Immediately responding positively to the attention, he gets himself a bespoke accommodate, he stops visibly wearing his crown, and he even gets a pair of little round glasses he wears low on his nose.
He looks, for all the world, similar he did when he was Simon.
And his coherence increases tremendously. He rescues the kidnapped Betty (a telling reversal of his original One thousand.O.), he's committed to restoring gild to Ooo, and he's genuinely helpful and pulled together — if a little loose around the edges. He looks and acts the role; information technology's so tempting to believe that his memories are resurfacing and that Simon is coming back.
Betty'southward certainly tempted to believe information technology, and who could arraign her?
Just information technology'south non truthful, and Betty's attempt to take him crumbles into disappointment and desperation as she realizes that fifty-fifty this sane-ish man in a accommodate is not the fiance she used to know. That desperation leads her to betray Finn and use the magic gems he's collected not to set the present to rights, but to alter the past. She can't come to terms with the person Simon has become, and so she makes a last ditch endeavor to make it so he never changed.
"People say you shouldn't live in the past. But I say: Why not!" Betty preaches. She has big plans to open a portal to the past and driblet Ice King's crown in a volcano, making information technology so he never existed. She really gets on a roll with her plan to brand everything ameliorate, speculating that she might even avert the Bang-up Mushroom War, the nuclear holocaust of a thousand years ago.
Our favorite inter-dimensional losers Prismo and the Cosmic Owl are horrified past this terminal signal, and nosotros should be, too. We don't need to worry as much well-nigh paradoxes and timelines, but the implications of a world without that calamity are dreary. (We even saw it at the beginning of Season five). The war may take been a real bummer for everyone involved at the fourth dimension, but something beautiful somewhen came out of it. It'due south how we got Finn and Jake. Information technology'southward how we got magic. It's how we got Risk Time. Things got amend and the world healed itself, not by going back to what it in one case was, but by condign something dissimilar.
Changing history and then drastically would practise away not just with Water ice King, but with everyone nosotros know and love.
And so Betty'due south insistence on altering the past, rather than saving the present, is inherently backward. Information technology comes from a place of love, and it's hard to error her for it, but within the show, it merely tin can't stand.
The person who realizes this and saves the day is, fittingly enough, Water ice Male monarch. Possessed with newfound self-worth (born out of everyone'due south new efforts to have him seriously) he stands up for himself and delivers the well-nigh moving line in his long history:
"Lady, this Simon sounds absurd, only I'm Ice King. I guess I'm a special person, and I am worthy of respect."
He short circuits Betty'due south magic and saves himself and Ooo, blowing up his bespoke conform in the process. His go-to blue muumuu bursts back out into existence, revealing the bizarre fact that he had it on underneath the whole time. It'due south a fun gag, simply information technology'south also proof that Ice Rex was himself all along. Simon's memories were never informing his actions; he was just responding, equally people often practice, to being treated well. He was shown respect, and he found respect for himself, and that respect is what saved the twenty-four hours.
When he returns to his "Archetype Water ice King" look every bit he calls information technology, he's no less the person he was. If anything, he's much more.
Meanwhile, Betty's obsession with curing Simon becomes even more than destructive. In the series finale she summons Golb, an all-powerful being of chaos, and very nearly ends life in Ooo, thus completing her transformation from signal of promise to ultimate villain, the final boss in a decade-long string of dungeon fights.
As always, Betty'south intentions are skilful, but the show insists that no good can come of them. Restoring Simon, while a noble cause, is tantamount to killing Ice King, a character we started to love for Simon's sake simply have since come to love for his own. It's a theme of saving-turned-murder that's extrapolated several times into the destruction of the world every bit we know it.
This brings us to the interesting question of what it ways to "heal" someone at all.
Center color is a telling feature inAdventure Time.Most characters — humans, in particular — have black dots for eyes. It'southward a pleasantly simple design that carries a lot of weight when it varies, such as with characters who've had their minds altered by magic, whose optics are always white.
Magic Human being has these optics. So does Peppermint Butler (always a devout student of the Night Arts). So does Water ice King, and so does Betty, after she acquires Magic Man'south power and starts to lose her grip on reality.
And, critically, so does Simon. The very first time we see Simon in "Holly Jolly Secrets Part two," his eyes are white, while in an old photo of him and Betty, they're black, suggesting that the crown has already started to transform him.
But every other fourth dimension nosotros see Simon — when the crown's powers are negated, when he's in his ain head, even when we flash back to his life with Betty before he constitute the crown, his optics are nevertheless white. Simon was a scholar of arcane magic, later all, and this flashback, in item, suggests his mind was already being contradistinct without whatsoever help from the crown.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
In the series finale, Ice King, Betty, and Finn are swallowed past Golb and slowly digested down to their "near essential forms." Betty loses her magic and madness, and Ice Male monarch reverts to original Simon — pocket square, bowtie, elbow patches… and white eyes. It's difficult to authorize simply what it means to be your well-nigh essential self, but for Simon, that apparently means existence just a little bit unhinged.
And it makes sense. Magic or no magic, this pure grade of Simon has yet lost the adult female he loved, wandered through a mail service-apocalyptic wasteland, sacrificed himself in increments to relieve his adoptive daughter, and spent a chiliad years trapped in a labyrinth in his caput.
Betty may have lost her mind over a brusk fourth dimension by force of will, but Simon has had some serious life experience.
In a similar vein, Finn's missing arm isn't restored by this digestion procedure, either. One of Take chances Time's more fascinating threads of continuity is the fact that no matter the timeline or incarnation, the essence that is Finn always loses his right arm. And that's okay. Merely similar Simon, he isn't "made whole" in an easy sense, and the things that take made him who he is aren't expunged.
The show has a clear lesson to teach: your most essential self might not necessarily be your simplest or your earliest iteration. Trauma can be edifying, and alter can be a vital function of becoming who yous are.
Just if Simon's essential class is already contradistinct by magic and by ordeal, then who exactly has Betty been trying to salvage? It's an added layer of futility to her struggle, a reminder that achieving her goal wouldn't only kill Ice King, it would modify the person Simon has go, too.
Both of them may have inverse, but neither of them is in need of irresolute dorsum.
The fact remains, however, that Simon and Water ice King can't exist at the aforementioned time. They are two unique consciousnesses in one trunk, and prioritizing one would doom the other. Whether by blow or past design, Adventure Fourth dimension'due south greatest lesson in empathy backed it somewhat into a corner. One of the audience's oldest and nearly fervent wishes is to see Simon restored, just to exercise so would essentially kill Ice King, a grapheme the audition knows and loves much better.
What can you practise?
You practice precisely what Adventure Timedoes in its series finale. Unable to abandon Simon or destroy Ice King in skillful conscience, it splits them. Simon is digested past Golb just long enough for his trunk and heed to be restored, and and so he's rescued. And and then the world is without an Ice King for all of 30 seconds, until the crown, in search of a new master, finds Gunter the penguin.
And Gunter's deepest, truest wish is, it turns out… to be Water ice King.
It'south a lovely repeat of the original Gunther, a little dinosaur whose wish millions of years agone to be like his teacher started this whole crown business organization.
And more importantly, information technology's a adventure for Ice King to live on. He may look a little different, but he's got the same phonation, muumuu, and penchant for drumming. And since the first words out of his mouth are "Say, where'south Gunter?" it's articulate that his penguin memories and identity are gone.
Equally far every bit we need to be concerned, he is Ice King.
If the show'due south addition of Water ice King's backstory was its first sign of maturity and depth, this decision is a sign of something much greater. Rather than adhering to the genu-jerk solution (and possibly the original goal) of healing Ice Male monarch and reverting him to the person he one time was, it respects the worth and the autonomy of both characters, and it gives them both a chance at a happy ending.
And they both get information technology, to an extent. Whether the new Ice King is a trivial ameliorate with the ladies, or it's just a logical pace in his improving self-respect, he finally marries a princess. Simon has a tougher break (Betty sacrifices herself to save him and Ooo) but his memory and sanity — whatever that means — are restored for proficient.
Glimpses further into the future propose trouble — Ice King eventually turns into a monster and a new kind of adversary, and Simon launches his own impossible crusade to salvage Betty — just that's in keeping with the spirit of the finale. There are no truthful endings, happy or otherwise. Things change, people evolve, and no one time is more real than another.
And while the future of Ooo is nighttime and uncertain, the end of the finale shows a more peaceful and quotidian present — Ice King and Simon living side by side, having a nice night in with their family.
It's near the happiest catastrophe we could wish for, and the only reasonable solution to a mounting problem that the show congenital for itself equally information technology matured by leaps and premises over the years.
Adventure Fourth dimension did a lot of things superbly over its 10-flavor run, just its compassionate and evolving treatment of Ice Rex might be its best. It'southward i matter to requite your mad villain a tragic past… it's some other to use that tragedy to cultivate his madness into its own viable character. Its delivery to Ice Male monarch'south growth is beautiful, and its respond to his and Simon's autonomy is perhaps the greatest instance, amongst many keen examples, of just how much the evidence grew up, and how much it had to teach us.
Related Topics: Adventure Time
Liz Baessler is a frequent contributor and infrequent columnist at Film School Rejects. She has an MA in English and a lot of time on her easily. (She/Her)
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