new opening theme.

I’m not just going to break down the new intro, I’ve also got a theory as to what

the plot of what Elements is about.

The intro starts with us descending down through the clouds,

and then we traverse the sea, which makes me think of Finn and Jake returning to Ooo

from their ocean voyage.

In fact, there’s the freight ship they used.

I wanna rewind though to discuss this choice of bird’s eye view perspective for the opening

shot.

I’m about to give away the titles of the episodes in the miniseries, but I think they’re

too vague to constitute spoilers.

The first and last episodes are called Skyhooks.

This is most likely a reference to Ice King’s coat hangers.

These were what he used to free Patience St. Pim, and Finn and Jake hang from these at

the splash screen for Elements.

Coat hanger hooks from the sky.

Sky hooks.

We also see Finn, Jake, Simon, and Betty up in the clouds at one point in the intro, and

one of the episodes is called “Cloudy.”

Also Patience is flying in the sky due to her little helicopter hat.

To go even further, the title card for the episode that will precede Elements, called

“Orb,” shows Finn,, Jake, and BMO atop teeth either falling from the sky or floating

in the sky.

Being elevated in the sky is a very common motif here, it seems very likely to have significant

plot importance, and that’s why the first opening shot has us drop down from above the clouds.

I’ve got a theory as to why that’s the case.

The bright pink used for the intro is immediately striking and puzzling; the ocean and land

has turned pink.

Something has colored the world a bubblegum-y hue.

And fish are Swedish Fish.

And birds are made of candy.

A lemon camel, and a lemon carriage, things that are supposed to be yellow, are also pink.

Plus mountains have cherries at their snowy peaks.

Candy has infected the landscape.

Something has gone out of control and caused candyfication of organic and inorganic matter.

We see the likely culprit, the amorphous mass that attacks the tree house, and it reminds

me of the life-seeding gunk Princess Bubblegum was trying to send off into space in the episode

“High Strangeness.”

Whatever this is, and I’ll discuss some possibilities later, it seems to spread by

physical contact.

And that’s why there’s a motif of being in the sky.

Because it’s how you escape the contamination happening below - running away probably won’t

cut it (though who knows, perhaps the Grass Sword might).

Patience is in the air too, though I think her advanced ice domes are also shielding

whatever they encapsulate from the infectious candy.

What about Cinnamon Bun and his trusty steed?

Well, remember…

[Finn: “So, your fire wolf can fly?”

Cinnamon Bun: “Yup.

I taught him.”]

It all checks out.

So what caused this?

Well, Patience had a plan after all.

[Patience: “Gonna start some crazy biz, man.

Just watch.”]

She was working toward unlocking PB’s powers, and had a grand scheme involving all the Elementals.

I think Patience has done something to further awaken the powers of the Elementals, but these

powers surged out of control and caused stuff like this.

Not just for Princess Bubblegum, however, but for the other Elementals too.

Princess Bubblegum does not appear in the intro, but she is the one who sings it.

Listen to this part in particular: “We’ll go to very messed up lands.”

Messed up lands, huh?

You should have noticed that the background scenery has slime coating the land and weird

slimy creatures flying through the sky.

As for fire, the only normal orange fire we see is the flame above Cinnamon Bun’s head.

The fire wolf has blue cracks on its body rather than red ones, this flying creature

has blue flames running down its body, and even Jake in the form of a fireball is blue.

It’s common knowledge that blue fire is hotter than orange.

Well, in real life not always, the material being burned matters obviously, but in certain

cases it is true.

In fiction though, where magic is involved, blue flame is hotter than orange - that’s

pretty much fact.

So yeah, there we go, messed up lands.

The kingdoms are being supercharged by their corresponding element, and the boundaries

to these kingdoms might even be vying for territory and trying to conquer the other.

Now this next idea might be a bit of a stretch, but I think this mass of pink might just be

Princess Bubblegum herself.

Too much elemental power has transmogrified PB into this creature that transforms the land.

Perhaps this happened with the other princesses too, as none of them appear in the intro.

This would explain why Cinnamon Bun is confronting Patience; he wants to return Flame Princess

to her previous state.

If this hypothesis is correct though, why is Patience fine?

She looks the same.

I’ve got three potential explanations.

She did not get supercharged with elemental power in the first place.

She was able to control it better and maintain her form.

And this last one I like the best: Patience is a human incarnation of the Ice Elemental.

However, Princess Bubblegum is made of candy, Slime Princess is made of slime, and Flame

Princess is made of fire.

Perhaps whatever Patience instigated caused a drastic change in the other Elementals who

are physically composed of their element, but not to her whose body is essentially that

of a human.

So that’s my theory as to what occurred to the Land of Ooo.

Let me know how plausible you think my idea is, and share your own if you’ve got ‘em.

I’ve still got segments of the intro I need to dissect though, so let’s get back to that.

Inside one of the ice domes is the snowman from the episode “Thank You.”

He’s now an iceman rather than a snowman, and he’s got a frown on his face.

Perhaps he’s simply super-charged from magic, or perhaps he is under Patience’s control.

In the Cloud Kingdom we see our crew for this miniseries: Finn, Jake, Simon, and Betty!!

Or, Magic Woman rather.

She’s back, and I’m sure we’re all really happy to see that she’ll be interacting

with Ice King rather than trying some scheme and wazooping away!

She’s scanning the landscape below and there’s an open book, so I think Betty is spearheading

the operation against the elemental overloading.

Or perhaps she wants to find a way to harness the magical power to help Simon.

Whom, the intro does still refer to as Ice King.

Though it also calls Magic Woman Betty.

Which is kinda weird.

Maybe that’s just cause the intro is sung from the perspective of Princess Bubblegum.

So.. is this classic Ice King, is it Simon, is he halfway between the two?

Physically he still looks like normal Ice King, and his goofy smiles make me think that

this is indeed classic Ice King.

[Ice King: “Classic Ice King!”]

A really important detail is that he’s missing the Ice Crown, not just here, in all shots with him.

Since Patience was staying with Ice King, and since the Ice Crown has vast magical power,

perhaps whatever plan Patience had involved the Crown?

Maybe that’s why Betty is trying to stop all this - because it threatens Simon’s livelihood.

And yup, there’s also coat hangers here.

Finn and Jake are inside one of the ice domes, so it seems likely either Patience will trap

them inside one at one point in the miniseries, or they have to break into one for some reason.

Finn is still using the same rapier from Islands as his weapon of choice.

Their sweaters are also really cute, and I find it amusing how Finn’s has Ice King’s

face on it.

In the shot of Magic Woman and Ice King on the flying carpet from the episode “Betty,”

Ice King is trailing the coat hangers, which harks back to that whole “Sky Hooks” thing.

And as I mentioned before, Finn and Jake descend down on them as well in the final shot of the intro.

Clearly, coat hangers that are tied together are really important for this miniseries.

Seems like our crew will somehow resolve the crisis with the help of coat hangers?

I’m really curious how.

The sword that slides into the Adventure Time logo is an ice sword, and a pretty fancy one at that.

If this isn’t purely cosmetic and has actual plot significance, could it have been constructed

by Patience for use by Finn?

Did Patience not predict would would happen to Ooo, or perhaps does she decide to help

in the end, hence the Ice Sword?

But if we remember the sword from the Islands into, it’s similar to the rapier Finn used,

but not the same, so, this might simply be a cosmetic thing after all.

And that’s that.

Before I go, I want to correct Wikipedia’s current entry on Elements which may have created

some misconceptions prior to the new intro’s release:

“Elements will explain ‘what happened to the kingdoms of Ooo while [Finn, Jake,

BMO, and Susan Strong were] away at sea’ during the events of the previous miniseries, Islands."

This technically isn’t incorrect, but it does frame the miniseries as being primarily

about what happened during Islands, while Finn and Jake were away.

If we follow the sources listed on the Wikipedia entry, however…

If you read the original reporting, there’s no way to misinterpret it.

And this is an example of why when you rely on Wikipedia entries, always check out the

sources, because the transfer of information isn’t always clean.

Somebody should probably edit that plot section to be more clear.

Alright, I hope you’ve enjoyed my breakdown.

Let me know if I missed something, if you have your own theories, or what you think

of my ideas.

If you’d like, follow me on twitter and check out my Patreon account.

The reason this video is a little late is because my computer died on me and I had to

buy a new one.

If you follow me on twitter you can be in-the-know on these sorts of setbacks.

On Patreon, I’m more detailed and try to keep my supporters up-to-date on the plans

and ideas I have for videos.

Thanks for watching, see you later.