30 Best Adventure Time Episodes Ranked

Since the first episode premiered on Cartoon Network in 2010, "Adventure Time" has invited fans to come along with heroes Finn the Human (Jeremy Shada) and Jake the Dog (John DiMaggio) as they explore the magical Land of Ooo. Created by Pendleton Ward, "Adventure Time" is a cornucopia of absurd humor, heartrending emotion, and stunning visuals. It's an ever-expanding world where gap-toothed boy adventurers can fight side-by-side with shape-shifting dogs and guitar-strumming vampires against evil entities with names like GOLB and the Lich.

Years after it concluded its 10 season run, "Adventure Time" continues to delight viewers. It inspired "Distant Lands," a 4-episode series of specials on HBO Max, as well as the upcoming spin-off "Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake," starring gender-swapped fanfiction versions of Finn and Jake. Brimming with wit and weirdness, "Adventure Time" is one of the most original animated shows to air on Cartoon Network. Here are 30 episodes that show "Adventure Time" at its battling best, with some help from IMDb's ratings.

The Emmy Award-winning episode "Puhoy" begins with Finn and Jake making a pillow fort in their treehouse while a knife storm (exactly what it sounds like) rages outside. Brooding about his relationship with Flame Princess, Finn burrows deep inside the fort and finds a door. On the other side is Pillow World, a place where everything –- and everybody -– is made from pillows. While a few minutes pass outside for Jake and BMO, Finn lives an entire lifetime in Pillow World, becoming a bearded warrior (voiced by Johnathan Frakes) and having a family with the beautiful Roselinen. But if Finn dies in Pillow World, what happens to him in the "real" world?

The Pillow World of "Puhoy" is stuffed with visual gags like the Pillow Dragon that spurts feathers instead of blood, and the Pillownomicon, a stitched-together book of dark magic. The dreamlike tone of the episode also provides an ambiguous and bittersweet ending. Blink, and you'll miss one of the most important moments in "Adventure Time" history: The first appearance of the evil entity GOLB.

The Season 6 finale sends Finn and Jake into the dark depths of space. Clinging to the rocket ship piloted by Orgalorg (the eldritch horror formerly known as Ice King's penguin Gunther), the duo tries to stop Orgalorg from consuming the incoming Catalyst Comet and gaining its power. "The Comet" is an example of "Adventure Time" as its most metaphysical, as Finn faces the possibility of dying in space or accepting the omniscient purple comet's offer of a new existence.

Beyond the joy of meeting a sentient space rock played by comedian Tig Notaro, "The Comet" also features Finn's final meeting with his estranged criminal father, Martin (Stephen Root). Finn and Martin finally come to an understanding, but it's not a happy one; Finn accepts that his irresponsible, unloving father will never change and lets him go. This is an emotional turning point for 16-year-old Finn, and a bittersweet lesson that not all resolutions are satisfying, and not all endings are happy.

Hot on the heels of "Marceline the Vampire Queen" and "Everything Stays," "Vamps About" introduces the newly revived Vampire King and his courtly cohorts: the Hierophant, the Fool, the Moon, and the Empress. Divided on what to do with their freedom in the new world, the group separates, seemingly leaving the Vampire King (and his recently turned vampire cow) vulnerable to Marceline's attack. Without her vampiric powers, Marceline fails, but the lion-headed Vampire King is not quite the villain she remembers.

"Vamps About" is an essential episode for Marceline fans, as it finally reveals how she became a vampire. Her last fight with the Vampire King reveals a younger, cockier Marceline — a half-demon infused with vampire powers though she hasn't yet "paid the price" for them. In his final moments, the Vampire King punishes Marceline and ensures the survival of his species by biting her neck at the exact moment she stakes him. A high price to pay for victory.

Alas, poor Fern! First appearing in Season 8's "Reboot," Fern was created when Finn's magical Grass Sword merged with his Finn Sword (a sentient sword containing Finn's life essence). Fern soon assumed the form of Finn while still being entirely made of grass. Finn befriended his green lookalike, but Fern grew frustrated and angry over not being the "real" Finn despite his appearance and memories.

In "Three Buckets," this conflict rises to a boil. Fern traps Finn inside a temple, planning to leave him there while he returns home and steals his identity. Utilizing the hidden features in his robotic arm, Finn escapes and confronts Fern. Though Finn insists they don't have to fight, Fern means to kill him –- until a misheard command turns on the robotic arm's weed whacker setting. The final moments of this episode are some of the most devastating in the series, as the already traumatized Finn doesn't just kill his exact double. He kills someone he considered a brother.

"Embrace the paranormal, bro," Finn tells Jake in another revelatory episode from "Adventure Time" Season 10. Hearing about ghostly activity in their childhood home, Finn and Jake investigate with the hopes that the ghosts are their parents, the private investigators Margaret and Joshua. A videotape made by their parents shows signs of a poltergeist, and Jake and Finn are beset by strange apparitions and moving furniture. After seeing a vision of himself and his brothers as babies, Finn realizes that they aren't ghosts but "timeslips" -– the apparitions his parents saw were glimpses of Finn and Jake in the future.

Finn finds the source of his timeslips, but not before Jake is traumatized by the scene of his bizarre birth from Season 6's "Joshua and Margaret Investigations." As Season 10 rushes towards the series finale, "Adventure Time" picks up loose ends while delivering more surprises, such as Jake's first meeting with his alien "parent."

"Adventure Time" uses one of the traditional rules of vampire lore to their advantage in the fifth episode of "Stakes." The Hierophant (Paul Williams), a mustachioed vampire with shape-shifting abilities, hunts Marceline to propose an alliance against the Vampire King. Marceline is no longer a solitary slayer, teaming up with Finn, Jake, Bubblegum, and, most surprisingly, Lumpy Space Princess to slay the Vampire King's court. And as soon as the Hierophant refuses Marceline's demand to stop draining living beings, the fight is back on.

Fittingly, the Hierophant is taken down by another shape-shifter: Jake the Dog. Taking advantage of the "vampires can't enter a home unless they're invited in" rule, Jake shape-shifts into a house to protect his friends from the Hierophant. It's an ingenious solution and one of the most creative uses of Jake's power on the show. All it takes is a well-timed shove, and the stuffy, traditionalist Hierophant quickly learns the dangers of being old-fashioned.

Superhero comic books are a key inspiration for the aptly-titled "Adventure Time" episode "Crossover." World-shaking superhero comic events are likely to include any mix of the following: an altered timeline, a threat to the multiverse, a hero fighting an evil version of himself, and of course, a crossover. This episode has them all.

Prismo summons Finn and Jake with an urgent problem. The Farm World created in "Finn the Human" still exists in an alternate timeline, complete with the dangerous ice wizard version of Finn. Transported across space and time, Finn comes face-to-face with his alternate self. With the help of the Enchiridion, an ancient book that can open portals to other dimensions, Farm World Finn intends to add the multiverse to his "empire of frost." Unwilling to kill Farm World Finn, our heroes learn that he is the puppet of that universe's Lich. Saving the multiverse is one thing, but ultimately, Finn wants to save himself.

Finn the Human gets one step closer to discovering his origin in the Season 6 premiere, "Wake Up." Initially believed to be the only human in the Land of Ooo, the Season 1 episode "Memories of Boom-Boom Mountain" established that Finn was abandoned as a baby and adopted by Jake's parents, Joshua and Margaret. In "Wake Up," Finn has recently learned that his biological father is alive and in a place called the Citadel. Wanting to find him, Finn and Jake go to Prismo for help, but Prismo warns them that the Citadel is a prison for beings who have committed cosmic crimes.

Prismo gives Jake and Finn the unusual task of retrieving a sleeping old man from his hut. Prismo, who until now has always appeared as a pink shadow on a wall, reveals that the old man is his corporeal form and that he will disappear if the man wakes up –- a cosmic crime. Finn is about to meet his father, but the price he pays may be too high.

In "Checkmate," the penultimate episode of the "Stakes" miniseries, Marceline has regained her powers by defeating the Vampire King's court. But when she is ready for a rematch, the King refuses to fight –- or bite her. After so many centuries, the Vampire King has realized the futility of their battles and the "good vs. evil" paradigm trapping them in predetermined roles.

One advantage of immortality is understanding why society keeps making the same mistakes. As Marceline says, "Everything repeats over and over again. No one learns anything, 'cause no one lives long enough to see the pattern, I guess." Marceline and the Vampire King are now in a unique position to change their fates, with the King offering to take Princess Bubblegum's vampirism cure. The conflict between Marceline and the Vampire King seemingly resolves without bloodshed, but there is still one "Stakes" episode left, and a dark cloud is gathering on the horizon.

Discussion of the best "Adventure Time" episodes would not be complete without mentioning "Bubbline," the romance between Princess Bubblegum and Marceline the Vampire Queen. When the series began, their relationship status was officially "frenemies," but they grew closer over ten seasons, with several allusions made to them having a more complicated history. The series finale sealed their romance with a kiss, and "Obsidian" shows their happily-ever-after.

"Obsidian" is the second episode of "Adventure Time: Distant Lands," a quartet of 45-minute specials streaming on HBO Max. Now living together in domestic harmony, Marceline and Bubblegum are summoned to help the Glass Kingdom defeat a monster they faced before, with disastrous consequences. Tensions between them mount, with flashbacks illuminating their relationship from their exciting first meeting to their painful breakup. The Glass Kingdom tore Marceline and Bubblegum apart, but can it bring them closer together? "Obsidian" is "Adventure Time" at its most romantic.

There are television episodes that go down in fan history as one that "changed everything," and "Escape from the Citadel" fits that description. In this continuation of "Wake Up," Finn and Jake follow the Lich to the cosmic prison called the Citadel. Once there, they free Finn's father Martin Mertens, but Martin is a coward who can't even explain to Finn why he abandoned him.

Finn's disappointment turns to horror as the Lich's corrosive power releases the other cosmic criminals from captivity. The Lich plans to unleash their evil on an unsuspecting universe, but when Finn splashes his skeletal form with the healing blood of a Citadel Sentinel, the Lich is "rebooted" (as Jake says) into a giant baby. But in another unexpected blow to Finn, he loses his right arm while attempting to stop Martin's escape -– something foreshadowed in visions and alternate timelines since Season 2. Finally, Finn entrusts the new baby Lich to the care of Tree Trunks and Mr. Pig, proving that he is already a better man than his deadbeat dad.

A dungeon crawl takes Finn the Human down a strange path to "The Hall of Egress." Alone in a mysterious cave, Finn stands before a doorway to the Hall of Egress. But when he passes through, he finds himself standing in front of the door again. After several rounds of trial and error, Finn learns that he can pass through the Hall's labyrinth as long as he keeps his eyes closed — but after opening his eyes even once, he seemingly leaves the cave and ends up back at the starting point. How can Finn escape a labyrinth with no exit?

"The Hall of Egress" is an episode of pure fantasy, relying on mood, atmosphere, and imagery over action and exposition. The viewers simply follow Finn as he unravels the riddle and hunts for an exit. The result is an enigmatic and intriguing "Adventure Time" episode. In the end, what does it all mean? To quote Finn, "No comment."

Finn and Jake are "Together Again." Finn and Jake are ... dead? The third "Distant Lands" special, "Together Again" is the epilogue to the entire "Adventure Time" saga. Several years after "Obsidian," Finn dreams of an adventure with Jake that resembles the more carefree, innocent episodes of Season 1. But in reality, he has passed away.

The elderly Finn enters the Land of the Land, resumes his teenage form, and searches for Jake, who died years before. Jake is serene in the 50th Dead World, but something is rotten in the Land of the Dead. New Death, the rebellious teenage son of the old Death, is destroying all the paths to reincarnation. Somehow adventure keeps finding Finn and Jake, even after they've died.

"Come Along with Me" is such a rich and satisfying series finale that perhaps "Together Again" didn't need to exist, but it is wonderful that it does. "Together Again" is like a reunion with dearly missed friends, and it had many fans in tears.

Given their popularity and lasting resonance with fans, it is unsurprising that "I Remember You" and its thematic sequel, "Simon & Marcy," are both ranked so high on this list and so close together. Who could bear to split Simon and Marcy up again?

Explaining her history with Ice King to Finn and Jake, Marceline tells them that she once fell ill when she was traveling with Simon in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Simon did his best to entertain little Marcy, even recreating an episode of "Cheers" from behind a broken television. But every time he used the crown to protect them, he lost more of his memories. While scouring the city for a can of soup for Marcy, they ran into mutated victims of the Mushroom War, and Simon had to put on the crown one more time.

"Simon & Marcy" is "Adventure Time" at its best, and it achieves the miracle of being simultaneously funny, touching, and harrowing. The production staff pitched this episode to the network as "'The Road' except for kids" (via Entertainment Weekly), which is dark but fitting. Anyone who watches "Simon & Marcy" will never hear the "Cheers" theme song the same way again.

Singer Ashley Eriksson's "Island Song (Come Along with Me)," the ending theme for almost every "Adventure Time" episode since the show began, lends its name to the series finale. These final four episodes –- which aired on Cartoon Network as a single 44-minute special -– wrap up ten seasons of action and adventure with magic, majesty, and music.

Framed as a story told by BMO in the far future to new (but familiar-looking) heroes Shermy and Beth, "Come Along with Me" begins with an all-out war between Princess Bubblegum and her Uncle Gumbald for the fate of the Candy Kingdom. Finn uses a hallucination potion in hopes of peacefully resolving the differences between Bubblegum and Gumbald, as well as the conflict between him and the revived Fern. If the Gum War ends, that still might not be enough to save the world from the sudden appearance of GOLB, an eldritch entity of evil and disorder.

"Come Along with Me" is a celebratory finale and a love letter to the fans who have followed all 10 seasons. Nearly every significant (and not so significant) character appears for one last bow, including Flame Princess, Lemongrab, Jermaine, and the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant. Friendships are forged, sacrifices are made, and yes, there is that long-awaited kiss between Marceline and Bubblegum. The adventure never ends on "Adventure Time."