Adventure Time is by far, my favorite TV show to get my mind lost in: a temporary escapism from reality as a means for satori. Although at the surface Adventure Time looks like a regular kids show, the show’s writers and producers are no strangers to weaving the philosophies of life and underlying metaphors into the beautiful allegories.
Title Card
The Hall of Egress deeply resonated within me. Not only did this episode get nominated for an emmy, the AV Club says this episode is:
A psychological horror story about a boy shedding everything that defines him in order to move on to the next phase of his life.
Ahh, exactly the type of genre I love…
Who Finn was in the past, who Finn is now, and the process of Finn’s transformation are the three pillars that hold the episode together. I will go over the first pillar in this post: Finn’s past.
Finn’s Past
The episode starts with Jake discussing the mistake Finn has made with Flame Princess in the past. In a previous episode, Finn was a manipulative liar to his then girlfriend Flame Princess, writing hurtful, but truthful letters as an outlet for his insecurities. Finn acted as Ice King’s proxy, without consent, and told Flame Princess that the letters were from Ice King. This caused Flame Princess to attack Ice King and melt his kingdom to the ground. Finn’s guilt was the main catalyst that caused a breakup with Flame Princess. Finn thought telling the truth would be the catharsis to the dissonance the lie was causing to his heroic beliefs.
The second history lesson we get from the episode is when Finn reminisces about the good times he had in the dungeon train.
All aboard the dungeon train…now with awesome loot!
Except…it wasn’t a good time for Jake.
It’s all about perspective Finn.
The dungeon train was the drug Finn became addicted to, using it as a coping mechanism with his breakup with Flame Princess. Finn would have been lost forever by never leaving the dungeon train, but his best friend Jake stayed by his side. This awing, unshakable friendship was the support system Finn needed to eventually overcome his addiction.
It is obvious to think that the episode just gave two instances of past, negative experiences Finn went through. Instead, consider these experiences as the most important reference frames to Finn’s milestones of growing up.
Relevance
According to Jean-Paul Sartre, we are thrown into existence, become aware of ourselves, and make choices. The choices we each make reveals what each person thinks a human being should be.
The past one chooses to remember is the infrastructure to the mold of the image that person wants to be. Therefore, the historical facts of what happened in the past, along with lessons learned, makes up for who you are.
I like to think of each of the past events you choose to remember as imprints on a movie film. When the movie is played, the projection of the film represents the gateway between the past (the film) and the present (the screen). The past events that are showing on the screen represents the image of who you want to be.