November 17, 2015
Hello blog readers, it's Neil. My next review is of the most recent James Bond film, Spectre. My dad is a pretty big Bond fan. I understand why, but I think that there's something of a generation gap between older and younger people when it comes to Bond. Most of his actions, particularly what he does with the women of the Bond movies, come off as more like the actions of a creepy man with a rock in his chin rather than a suave action hero. That's not to say the movies are poorly made, it's just that they may be past their time.
The movie opens with a long-panning shot of Bond (played reluctantly by Daniel Craig, most likely for the last time) in a costume of a skeleton in a tuxedo during Day of the Dead festivities in Mexico City, using the costume to sneak through the masses, then take it off once he's reached a high-up hotel room, walk out on the ledge of the room's balcony, and travel across the rooftops to find and kill two people that were trying to blow up a stadium that the previous M (played by Judi Dench) wanted him to kill as a last request before her death at the end of Skyfall, the previous Bond film. This is just the first step in a global search to find and take down the shadowy global criminal organization known as Spectre, hence the film's title. Spectre has not been in the Bond movies since the early 1970s, and has returned in a more modern and menacing fashion. Their name stands for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion, a name that might not work now like it did in the 1960s, but whatever. The group is led by Franz Oberhauser (played by Christoph Waltz), who almost feels like a Saturday morning cartoon villain in his maniacal delight in being evil. Meanwhile, the current M (played by Ralph Fiennes) deals with a would-be colleague codenamed C (played by Andrew Scott) that plans to overhaul MI6 with a new surveillance program, making field agents obsolete.
The production values are great, especially in that opening scene. Unfortunately, none of the other aspects of the movie are as good. Craig seems to be phoning it in with his performance as Bond because of how tired he's grown of playing him. Everyone else still makes the best of the script's painfully-average material, which actually does come with some good lines that I would appreciate more if they weren't in a Bond movie. The movie often tries to be self-referential about most Bond tropes, which works sometimes, but not every time. One of the good ones was how during his trademark scene of saying "Shaken, not stirred" when ordering a martini was turned on its head when the person serving drinks said that he was at a clinic that didn't serve alcohol. It shouldn't matter anyway, because in spite of his frequent drinking of fancy liquor, he still acts sober. The very idea of a "Bond Girl" is more disturbing than it should be. The idea of any women being able to fall in love with him, even the widow of a man he killed and the daughter of an old enemy with plenty of reason to mistrust him, may have been a charming fantasy in the Golden Age of James Bond, but now comes off as extremely disturbing. I only saw it because it was a big blockbuster that my dad wanted to see with me, and I didn't expect too much, but then I was reminded just how discomforting it can be to watch James Bond around women, and while I don't usually judge movies for reasons like this, you can't really not judge James Bond movies on that aspect. At least for me personally, I give Spectre a 4/10. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week with a review of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Monday, November 9, 2015
Neil Rush CMT Blog- The Peanuts Movie Review
November 10, 2015
Hello, blog readers, this is Neil again. There will be no new Gravity Falls until November 23, so the next time I'll review it will be for the blog post on December 1. So for now, I'll review a movie that I saw this weekend- The Peanuts Movie.
It was a risky move- bringing the classic and beloved comic strip back to theaters in an animation style that mixes modern CGI with the 2D of the old strips and cartoons. Most attempts to please older fans had the potential to alienate younger fans, and vice versa. The humor of Charles Schulz's comics may have been too dry for today's kids, and the focus on failure might be too cynical for a child audience. Fortunately, thanks to the involvement of the Schulz family, who has owned the rights to the characters ever since Charles Schulz's death on February 12, 2000, it manages to reflect the slightly-melancholy tone of the old strips and specials while also being appropriately uplifting for modern audiences.
Everyone is the same as they were before. Charlie Brown is still a good soul with the worst luck possible for any human. Linus is still the thumb-sucking, blanket-clinging wise sage. Sally is still the immature little sister that stalks Linus, her "sweet baboo". Lucy is still the cruel girl that stalks Schroeder, tries to say that she's prettier than any other girl in school, pulls the football away from Charlie Brown, works as a five-cent psychiatrist that has no idea what she's talking about, and wants to slug every other boy or dog in town. Schroeder still practically worships Beethoven and is tormented by Lucy's obsessive crush on him. Pig-Pen is still constantly dirty and unrecognizable without his dirt cloud (which has made him something of a girl magnet among some girls). Peppermint Patty is still the aggressive tomboy with the crush on Charlie Brown, or "Chuck" as she calls him. Marcie is still Peppermint Patty's quiet sidekick that calls her "Sir" and also has a crush on Charlie Brown, or "Charles" as she calls him, albeit a much more understated one. All the adults still speak in trombone sounds and are always offscreen. Snoopy is still an author, a World War I flying ace, and Joe Cool. Woodstock is still Snoopy's sidekick bird. The only major difference is that it's in a 2.5D traditional animation/CGI hybrid. The plot isn't too out of the ordinary for Peanuts stories. A new girl simply referred to as "The Little Red-Haired Girl" comes to town, and Charlie Brown is instantly smitten with her, but lacks the courage to talk to her. He tries many times to talk to her or appear more confident to impress her, and Snoopy often acts as a wingman of sorts, but none of his attempts at success last until the very end, when The Little Red-Haired Girl says that she likes him anyway because of his genuine and kind soul. Meanwhile, Snoopy writes a story about himself as the pilot of the Sopwith Camel (but, even in his fantasy sequences, flying his doghouse like a plane) rescuing his love interest meant as a response to The Little Red-Haired Girl, a girl-dog named Fifi (voiced by the only major star in the cast, Kristin Chenoweth, and even then she's not so much voiced, per se, so much as she simply makes more feminine versions of Snoopy's sounds) from his mortal enemy, the Red Baron.
The animation was some of the best animation I've seen in an animated movie so far this year, and quite the step up from the generic CGI from most of Blue Sky Studios' productions. The storyline isn't overly risk-taking, aside from Charlie Brown actually getting a happy ending for once, but works as a semi-modern Peanuts story nonetheless. The writing has humor that represents all of the traits of the characters present. One of the best quotes is when Sally is happy to be at the end of the school year, thinking that after the end of this day, she'll never have to go back to school ever again, but Charlie Brown reminds her that they still have six more years of grammar school, then four more years of high school, then four more years of college (even though there are younger and older siblings, everyone's in the same grade for simplicity's sake). Because of Sally's poor math skills, after adding all of those up, she says, "Oh no! That's thirty-seven more years of school!" Technically, she's close to right, seeing as how the Peanuts gang never ages in their official media, so therefore, they'll be in elementary school forever. The music, while it may have been oversaturated with pop music that seems out-of-place for Peanuts, and by Meghan Trainor, no less, whose musical style in most of her music that's not in this movie is more than a little annoying, still sounds much better than some may have thought, and actually works well alongside Vince Guaraldi's classic jazz soundtrack from the old specials.
While I doubt it will receive the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, which will probably go to Disney/Pixar's Inside Out (if you've seen Inside Out, you'd know why it will win that award), at least from a perspective of personal enjoyment and nostalgia, it was my favorite movie of the year, animated or otherwise, and shows that, when the right people are working on their movies, Blue Sky Studios can reach similar levels of storytelling quality to Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DreamWorks Animation. So what's next for the Peanuts gang? Will Blue Sky make more movies about them? Will they work on any future TV specials for the characters? Only time will tell, but for now, it's good to have the characters back in a major capacity such as this. 9.7/10. Thanks for reading this blog, and I'll be back next week with probably a review of Spectre, the newest James Bond film.
Hello, blog readers, this is Neil again. There will be no new Gravity Falls until November 23, so the next time I'll review it will be for the blog post on December 1. So for now, I'll review a movie that I saw this weekend- The Peanuts Movie.
It was a risky move- bringing the classic and beloved comic strip back to theaters in an animation style that mixes modern CGI with the 2D of the old strips and cartoons. Most attempts to please older fans had the potential to alienate younger fans, and vice versa. The humor of Charles Schulz's comics may have been too dry for today's kids, and the focus on failure might be too cynical for a child audience. Fortunately, thanks to the involvement of the Schulz family, who has owned the rights to the characters ever since Charles Schulz's death on February 12, 2000, it manages to reflect the slightly-melancholy tone of the old strips and specials while also being appropriately uplifting for modern audiences.
Everyone is the same as they were before. Charlie Brown is still a good soul with the worst luck possible for any human. Linus is still the thumb-sucking, blanket-clinging wise sage. Sally is still the immature little sister that stalks Linus, her "sweet baboo". Lucy is still the cruel girl that stalks Schroeder, tries to say that she's prettier than any other girl in school, pulls the football away from Charlie Brown, works as a five-cent psychiatrist that has no idea what she's talking about, and wants to slug every other boy or dog in town. Schroeder still practically worships Beethoven and is tormented by Lucy's obsessive crush on him. Pig-Pen is still constantly dirty and unrecognizable without his dirt cloud (which has made him something of a girl magnet among some girls). Peppermint Patty is still the aggressive tomboy with the crush on Charlie Brown, or "Chuck" as she calls him. Marcie is still Peppermint Patty's quiet sidekick that calls her "Sir" and also has a crush on Charlie Brown, or "Charles" as she calls him, albeit a much more understated one. All the adults still speak in trombone sounds and are always offscreen. Snoopy is still an author, a World War I flying ace, and Joe Cool. Woodstock is still Snoopy's sidekick bird. The only major difference is that it's in a 2.5D traditional animation/CGI hybrid. The plot isn't too out of the ordinary for Peanuts stories. A new girl simply referred to as "The Little Red-Haired Girl" comes to town, and Charlie Brown is instantly smitten with her, but lacks the courage to talk to her. He tries many times to talk to her or appear more confident to impress her, and Snoopy often acts as a wingman of sorts, but none of his attempts at success last until the very end, when The Little Red-Haired Girl says that she likes him anyway because of his genuine and kind soul. Meanwhile, Snoopy writes a story about himself as the pilot of the Sopwith Camel (but, even in his fantasy sequences, flying his doghouse like a plane) rescuing his love interest meant as a response to The Little Red-Haired Girl, a girl-dog named Fifi (voiced by the only major star in the cast, Kristin Chenoweth, and even then she's not so much voiced, per se, so much as she simply makes more feminine versions of Snoopy's sounds) from his mortal enemy, the Red Baron.
The animation was some of the best animation I've seen in an animated movie so far this year, and quite the step up from the generic CGI from most of Blue Sky Studios' productions. The storyline isn't overly risk-taking, aside from Charlie Brown actually getting a happy ending for once, but works as a semi-modern Peanuts story nonetheless. The writing has humor that represents all of the traits of the characters present. One of the best quotes is when Sally is happy to be at the end of the school year, thinking that after the end of this day, she'll never have to go back to school ever again, but Charlie Brown reminds her that they still have six more years of grammar school, then four more years of high school, then four more years of college (even though there are younger and older siblings, everyone's in the same grade for simplicity's sake). Because of Sally's poor math skills, after adding all of those up, she says, "Oh no! That's thirty-seven more years of school!" Technically, she's close to right, seeing as how the Peanuts gang never ages in their official media, so therefore, they'll be in elementary school forever. The music, while it may have been oversaturated with pop music that seems out-of-place for Peanuts, and by Meghan Trainor, no less, whose musical style in most of her music that's not in this movie is more than a little annoying, still sounds much better than some may have thought, and actually works well alongside Vince Guaraldi's classic jazz soundtrack from the old specials.
While I doubt it will receive the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, which will probably go to Disney/Pixar's Inside Out (if you've seen Inside Out, you'd know why it will win that award), at least from a perspective of personal enjoyment and nostalgia, it was my favorite movie of the year, animated or otherwise, and shows that, when the right people are working on their movies, Blue Sky Studios can reach similar levels of storytelling quality to Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DreamWorks Animation. So what's next for the Peanuts gang? Will Blue Sky make more movies about them? Will they work on any future TV specials for the characters? Only time will tell, but for now, it's good to have the characters back in a major capacity such as this. 9.7/10. Thanks for reading this blog, and I'll be back next week with probably a review of Spectre, the newest James Bond film.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Neil Rush CMT Blog- November 3, 2015- Gravity Falls Reviews, Speculation, and Analysis- "Weirdmageddon Part 1"
November 3, 2015
Hello blog readers, it's Neil. This is a review that I've been waiting to do for quite a while now- Part 1 of the Weirdmageddon trilogy, the three-part Season 2 and/or series finale to Gravity Falls, the Disney Channel/Disney XD cartoon that has, in only a few months, gone from, in my mind, "that Disney show with an oxymoron for a title and allegedly Slenderman in the background" to "one of the most creative and addictive stories ever put to animation and my seventeenth favorite TV show of all time." This episode has completely changed what episodes are on my list of favorite episodes of the show, pushing everything up one on the list from the previous installment except for "Fight Fighters" and removing "Not What He Seems" from the list. This episode is my new favorite episode of Gravity Falls, as it is with many other fans, and because I usually like to make multi-parters count as one episode, I believe that I will add the next two parts to the title of my favorite episode of the show as well.
This episode begins where "Dipper And Mabel Vs. The Future" left off. After Mabel gave Bill, who was possessing Blendin, the interdimensional rift, he used it to unleash "Weirdmageddon", Alex Hirsch's idea for an apocalypse not based in the Book of Revelations, but rather on his own warped imagination, on the world. Now, as Weirdmageddon begins, and Bill enters the physical world, he gives himself layers of skin made of flesh and metal as his physical form, and brings his "friends", an assortment of various random monsters, such as 8-Ball, a Creature-From-The-Black-Lagoon-type monster with magic 8-balls for eyes, Teeth, an anthropomorphic pair of dentures, a Cthulu-type monster, The Horrifying Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity (guest voiced by Louis C. K.), a giant disembodied head with an arm on top of it that is constantly crawling around trying to eat people and actually gets really sad when people are afraid of him (who else but Louis C. K. would make a carnivorous monster sad and pitiful?), eye-bats that turn people into statues, and many others, to Gravity Falls, along with creating a giant black pyramid called the Fearamid in the sky above the town. The townspeople demand that Bill and his friends leave, though Preston Northwest (voiced by Nathan Fillion), Pacifica's dad and the stereotypical evil rich man of the show, offers to be one of his horsemen of the apocalypse and give him shelter in the Northwest Mansion in exchange for freedom from harm at the hands of Bill's monsters. Now that Pacifica is one of the "good guys", and may have a deeper connection to the overall mythos of the show than simply the "mean-girl-turned-nice", Pacifica yells at her dad for being so willing to sell out the townspeople in exchange for not getting harm inflicted on him, though I have a feeling that she might do this even without having turned good. Bill pretends to consider it, but because he wants to show that he is not so easily bought, he responds by doing possibly the grossest thing done to anyone on the show so far, and probably would've made the show TV-PG or higher if there was blood involved (or if Disney XD's Standards and Practices actually watched the shows being put on their network)- Bill rearranges the orifices on Preston's face, replacing his eyes with ears, nose with a mouth, mouth with a giant eyeball, and ears with nostrils. Preston may not be likable, but he didn't deserve that! After declaring that "time is dead and meaning has no meaning!" and trapping Mabel in a bubble with her symbol on the Bill Cipher Wheel, a shooting star, on it, Bill gets Weirdmageddon into full swing. After a twisted reimagining of the Gravity Falls intro, with Bill's friends replacing various characters, Bill whispering "I'm watching you, nerds!" backwards at the end, and saying that the show was created by Bill Cipher rather than Alex Hirsch, Bill sends a "weirdness wave" onto the town, bringing various things to life, turning Soos' grandma into a chair, and making Gompers the Goat giant and leading him to destroy the town. Dipper and Ford have one shot to stop Bill- literally, as Ford has made a cannon that, if shot at Bill, will send him back to the Nightmare Realm. Unfortunately, the bell of the church steeple that Ford was perched at for his shot at Bill came to life just as he had the shot, causing the cannon blast to miss and go through Bill's hat, which is revealed to be part of his body. After the hat regenerates, Bill comes up to the two at the church before Ford can tell Dipper Bill's other weakness and takes Ford prisoner, sarcastically thanking him for making Weirdmageddon possible because of how he was the one who built the original portal. If you are of the camp that actually believes that the apocalypse is Ford's fault for either that reason above or because you believe he tried to take Dipper away from Mabel with his offer of apprenticeship and that it sent Mabel over the despair event horizon, this may be satisfying in a cathartic sense. I, for one, am not of that mindset, and think that no one is entirely wrong or right in the case of the problems with the Pines family, I'm just throwing it out there because of the large amount of Gravity Falls fans that are. Bill even allows Ford to join his army, saying that with his six fingers, he'd fit right in among his freaks, but Ford says he'd die before ever joining Bill and still knows his weaknesses. Bill responds by subtly tricking Ford into holding his hands up like claws, then freezing him into a statue, saying that he needed a new backscratcher. Furious and horrified that his great-uncle is being used like a toy for his arch-enemy, Dipper attempts to take Bill on single-handedly. In a jump-scare moment, Bill responds by, when far away, saying, "Well, isn't this-" then turning into a giant and taking only one second to fly up into Dipper's face screaming, in a demonic voice- "INTERESTING!" Dipper tries to find something in the journals to help him defeat Bill in physical form, but Bill mocks Dipper's stammering and sarcastically tells him to show off a skill before he gets bored and leaves. Dipper tries to jump forward and punch Bill in the eye, but Bill shoots a laser from that eye of his that sends Dipper flying into a tree, and even burns the three journals, telling Dipper not to be a hero, and that what Bill did to Ford is what happens to heroes in Bill's world. Not much hope seems left without the journals, though some may think that it's OK because of the belief held by a portion of the fandom that, in a metaphysical sense, the journals were the real villains of the show, as Journal 1 caused a rift between Stan and Ford, Journal 2 caused a rift between Gideon and his dad, and Journal 3 caused a rift between Dipper and Mabel. Bill rewards 8-Ball and Teeth for their service to him by telling them that they can have Dipper for a snack, and saying that they should come to the Fearamid for a party he's throwing there later. Bill turns a nearby car into a demonically-pimped-out ride to drive up to the Fearamid in with the other monsters. Dipper manages to escape 8-Ball and Teeth and avoid capture by the eye-bats for three days (wait, isn't time supposed to have stopped? Eh, it's Bill, and nothing makes sense with him. Also, I feel that the only way Dipper managed to survive that long is because Bill needs him alive for his plans later on down the road, so Bill is letting Dipper live.). Dipper has constantly been contacting Mabel over those three days to no avail, unaware that she's in a state of stasis. He seeks out help in the Gravity Falls Mall, narrowly avoiding being asked politely by The Horrifying Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity to get in its mouth, and falls for a nacho-based booby trap. Because of an Internet meme associating Bill with nachos as a result of the triangular shape that they share, I thought that would be a trap set by Bill. Of course, Bill doesn't use such primitive traps. It was one set by Wendy, who reveals herself by coming out of a bush, shares that she and her family always prepared for the apocalypse each year rather than celebrate Christmas, and gets Dipper down from the trap. Dipper and Wendy hug, happy to have someone else to count on after three days alone in the end of the world, and a reminder that, while not romantically as Dipper once wanted, Wendy does love Dipper, but more like a little brother/really good friend, and now Dipper is OK with loving Wendy as just a big sister/really good friend/first crush that you naturally move on from but never truly outgrow. Meanwhile, Bill and his monster friends are throwing a demonic rave in the Fearamid, where Bill says that Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon will begin after the party, only for the party to be crashed by the arrival of the Time Police. Bill tells the other monsters "Play it cool, guys. I'll do the talking. Hide the Time Punch!", which seems to be a hint at an origin story for Bill to be revealed in the next few episodes that as messed up as Bill is, mentally, he's not much more than an angsty teenager that doesn't want to live by anyone's rules other than himself, a message that Alex Hirsch talked about in an interview meant to be a first look at the Weirdmageddon saga and how one of the messages that may be conveyed through these next few episodes is how absolute chaos is not good for anyone (something that seems to be in direct contrast with his promotion of relative morality, which, unfortunately, is something that, if you have enough success and, by natural extension, an ego, you might end up using something like the "morality is relative" argument to justify your own bad behavior while having your own ideas of morality and not even considering that you might be in the wrong. Hey, nobody's perfect, even when they make good TV). The Time Police say that Bill is under arrest for crimes against space-time and possessing the body of a Time Anomaly Removal Crew agent. Blendin says "My body is a temple! How dare you!" The Time Baby, the most powerful member of the Time Police, and a super-being with a very deep voice and physical resemblance to a giant baby, tells Bill that if his rift in this dimension continues, it will destroy the fabric of existence, then says "Surrender now or face my tantrum!" Bill is old enemies with Time Baby, and thinks he's a pushover, so he sarcastically says "Oh no, a tantrum! Whatever shall I do about that- HOW ABOUT THIS!" and shoots a disintegration beam out of his finger, killing Time Baby and all of the Time Police agents in one fail swoop. Even though Time Baby isn't actually a baby, this shows that Bill has no limits. He just killed a baby in cold blood. Even creepier, his eye briefly turns into a mouth to blow smoke off of his finger. Once the monsters go back to partying, Blendin, who miraculously avoided the disintegration beam, teleports to an unknown period in time, which will be revealed in the next episode (at the soonest, because this show can drag certain things out at times). Back with the good guys, Dipper, Wendy, and Toby Determined (voiced by Gregg Turkington), the wet-blanket journalist from earlier episodes that became Wendy's traveling partner (not by her choice, as she and pretty much everyone else in town finds him to be very, very lame), are hiding out in the store Edgy On Purpose, the show's parody of emo-goth-vamp-otaku-teen geek clothing stores like Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts, which Wendy has converted into a shelter of sorts against the demons. Wendy shares how she, Robbie, Tambry, Lee, Nate, and Thompson were in the cemetery playing Truth-Or-Dare when Weirdmageddon began, and how all of them were kidnapped except for Wendy (Robbie almost got away but just had to take a selfie with the giant cross in the sky). Dipper, on the verge of tears, says that he and Mabel were in a fight over whether or not Dipper should stay behind and be Ford's apprentice at the end of the summer or go back home with Mabel when it began, and that Mabel wouldn't even look him in the eye when she ran out. Dipper is clearly unaware that Mabel caused Weirdmageddon by giving Bill the rift and must believe that it just broke in his backpack as she ran out with it. Dipper and Wendy go outside for some air, and Dipper expresses hopelessness about the situation, with the journals destroyed, Ford as Bill's backscratcher, and Stan nowhere to be found. Wendy restores Dipper's hope by saying that they go find Mabel, because the twins can do anything, even beat Bill, if they do it together. Dipper and Wendy see a giant bubble in the distance with Mabel's shooting star, the symbol that represents her on the Bill Cipher Wheel, and have intuition that Mabel is inside, so they go to a nearby abandoned car dealership to drive over there. The car dealership turns out to be a trap laid by Gideon and his prison friends, all driving Mad Max-style armored cars. Toby is knocked out with blowdarts, but Wendy doesn't seem to care much, even accidentally calling him "Tony". Gideon says that he's been assigned the task of keeping anyone from getting into Mabel's bubble, and has the mystical key to open it. Gideon boasts "Bill explained it to me nice and simple: she was always destined to be mine! And now that I have her in a cage, she'll learn to love me! I have an eternity to wait!" When Ghost-Eyes, Gideon's right-hand man in his gang, a large bearded man lacking irises, hence his nickname, picks Dipper and Wendy up, Wendy threatens Gideon by saying "After I break Ghost-Eyes' arm and steal that key from your neck, I'm going to wear your butt on my foot like a rhinestone slipper!" "And what makes you think you can do that?" Gideon arrogantly responds." Wendy simply says "BECAUSE I'M A FLIPPIN' CORDUROY!", (the minced-oath-to-disturbing-image ratio in this show is pretty bizarre), dislocates Ghost-Eyes' arm, takes Mabel's prison-key, grabs Gideon, drop-kicks him into the other prisoners, and steals one of the cars from the junkyard. Dipper, once more reminded of why he had (and still has, but has accepted that it won't work out in real life) his crush on Wendy by her epic takedown of Gideon and his gang, says, in a slightly quivering voice because of just how enamored he is "Wendy, you are the coolest person I know." "I know, dude. Tell me about it later," she responds. Gideon and his gang give chase in their cars, and Ghost-Eyes asks Gideon why he's keeping his girlfriend is a prison bubble, feeling that, having been oppressed by prison before, they shouldn't be imprisoning anyone else. Gideon, being very insecure about this sort of thing, says "SHE LOVES ME! She just doesn't know it yet". Dipper, Wendy, Gideon, and the prison gang come across a field of "weirdness bubbles", which, as it turns out, don't do you harm when you go through them, they just put you in different animation styles. Dipper and Wendy are briefly turned into birds, anime characters, living meat, and live-action versions of themselves (played by their voice actors, Jason Ritter and Linda Cardellini, in costume as Dipper and Wendy), and Gideon and Ghost-Eyes are turned into CGI block characters, women, and 1920s Steamboat Willie-style cartoons, and when they pass through that bubble, rather than scream, they simply sit in their car with their mouths open as if they were screaming, followed by a black text image that reads "Aaauuuggghhh!!!" Dipper and Wendy crash-land on the other side of the cliff that separates them from Mabel's bubble, and as they get out, almost where they need to be, they are approached by a mysterious person in a cloak. If you were younger, you might be lead into thinking that this was another potential enemy, but most of us could tell that because of the round shape of the man in the cloak and how he reaches out a hand to help Dipper up off the ground, this was none other than Soos, who has spent the past three days as a hooded drifter helping those in need, and even off-handedly mentioning that people have written folk songs about him. Dipper, Soos, and Wendy are surrounded by Gideon and his gang shortly thereafter. Gideon boasts that he has won, that Bill's hench-bats are on their way to take the three into custody, and that Mabel is finally all his. Dipper intelligently responds "Is she? Is she really?" Gideon says "Well, yeah, I have her trapped, ergo, Mabel is MINE!" Dipper, while looking back at Wendy with regret for having done some questionable things in order to try to get her to like him the same way he liked her, and also probably remembering how he and Mabel used a love potion to make Robbie and Tambry fall in love only for that to cause some problems in "The Love God" and trying to be more confident around girls and get the e-mail addresses of a bunch of them while on a road trip only for a few of them to all show up at the same location on the road trip and think that he was trying to lead them all on in "Roadside Attraction", tells Gideon "If I've learned anything this summer, it's that you can't force someone to love you. The best you can do is strive to be someone worthy of loving." Gideon indignantly responds, "Oh, I'm worthy o' lovin! These prisoners love me!" Dipper-"But Mabel doesn't, because you're selfish (among other things, if I might add, Dipper). But you can change! Bill thinks that there's no heroes in this world, but if we work together and fight back, we can defeat him. You want to be Mabel's hero? Stand up to Bill, and let us save her!" Gideon- "That's crazy! You know what Bill would do to me if that happens?" Ghost-Eyes- "What, you're scared of Bill?" Gideon- "No, I ju... It's a complicated situation." Dipper- "Look inside, Gideon. If this is all for Mabel, then ask yourself what Mabel would want you to do." Gideon looks at an old newspaper article from the Season 1 episode "The Hand That Rocks The Mabel", when Mabel dated Gideon just to keep the town happy even though she was disgusted by him, and the pictures in the newspaper article show Gideon looking very happy but Mabel looking beyond uncomfortable, and asks Dipper to tell Mabel what he did, which Dipper says he'll definitely do. Gideon and his prison gang drive off to fight Bill, and Dipper, Soos, and Wendy take the key, unlock the prison bubble, and unite for Mabel. Dipper takes Soos and Wendy's hands and walks with them into the prison bubble, leading the screen to fade to white with a "To Be Continued..." at the bottom. The scene that plays during the credits is of The Horrifyingly Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity trying to get more people to be his food, but when everyone runs away, he becomes resigned to a fate of starvation and tries to call his mother, crawling off-screen sadly.
Like I said, this episode was probably the best of the series so far. It had creative ways of playing with the animation, Louis C. K. guest-starring as a character tailor-made for him, and some of the best character and story developments to happen in the story yet. No one knows what will happen in the next episode, "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality", scheduled to air Monday, November 23 at 8pm on Disney XD, though that won't stop anyone from guessing. The basic synopsis says that Dipper, Soos, and Wendy travel through a bizarre alternate universe to get Mabel back while Bill prepares Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon. So what is in Mabel's bubble anyway? My guess is that because Mabel essentially made a deal with Bill offering the bubble in exchange for an eternal summer when Bill tricked her at the end of "Dipper And Mabel Vs. The Future", she is having the illusion of a perfect day inside the bubble, in which summer never ends and she doesn't have to grow up. In the illusion world, I think that everyone in Gravity Falls is reimagined to meet Mabel's ideals of perfection for them. Everyone would be a girlier version of themselves, Wendy and her friends would be her age, Candy would never go to music camp, Grenda would never have started dating her clingy Austrian boyfriend Marius, Gideon would never have been born (she does not yet know of his desire to perform a heroic sacrifice for her), Pacifica would be a nice girl and one of her best friends, Dipper would be unable to do or say anything she doesn't approve of, and Mabel would've never opened the portal that brought Ford into Dimension 46'\. The real Dipper, Soos, and Wendy would have to convince Mabel that none of this is real, which will be near-impossible. Dipper will also learn that Mabel gave Bill the rift so that this would be possible, which may put a greater strain on their relationship. I also feel that Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon involves Bill gathering the people that have symbols representing them on the Bill Cipher Wheel and preparing to kill them, as they are the only people that can stop him. He will try to seek out Stitched Heart, Cracked Glasses, Question Mark, Ice Bag, Mackerel Fish, Pine Tree, Cyclops Star, Six-Fingered Hand, Backwards Llama, and Shooting Star. Stitched Heart is Robbie, Question Mark is Soos, Mackerel Fish is Stan, Pine Tree is Dipper, Cyclops Star is Gideon, Six-Fingered Hand is Ford, and Shooting Star is Mabel. Cracked Glasses, Ice Bag, and Reverse Llama are still up in the air. Most people think that Old Man McGucket is Cracked Glasses, either Wendy or Blendin is Ice Bag (leaning more towards Wendy), and Pacifica is Reverse Llama. Season 2 will last anywhere from twenty to twenty-two episodes, and the rest of the episodes after the next one will probably involve a situation in which Robbie, McGucket, Soos, Wendy, Stan, Dipper, Gideon, Ford, Pacifica, and Mabel will somehow unite and prepare for a final showdown with Bill and his monster friends (final if this is the series finale). I think that the Northwest Mansion may be turned into a shelter against the destruction in the town, and that Pacifica will leave her parents to find Dipper and Mabel and see if they're safe, now valuing them as friends and possibly having a crush on Dipper. Robbie and Ford will be unfrozen from their statue forms, Stan's hiding place will be discovered, and Gideon's gang will go to fight Bill, but because Bill knows everything that's going to happen, he knows that Gideon will do this and have a trap for him. It will also be revealed where and when Blendin went. I think he traveled a thousand years in the future because it takes a thousand years for the Time Baby to regenerate, and he hopes to bring Time Baby back with him to defeat Bill, as he is one of the few beings in the Gravity Falls world that is more powerful than Bill and could defeat him with relative ease. Those are all of the things that I think will happen over the course of the next two-to-four episodes. I don't know if any of this will happen for sure, but who does? Alex Hirsch is an enigma that drinks the tears of his fans. I give Weirdmageddon Part 1 a 9.8/10. Thank you for reading, and see you next week with a post about something else, seeing as how there will be no new Gravity Falls until the end of the month. And as Bill says, "Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold! Bye!"
Hello blog readers, it's Neil. This is a review that I've been waiting to do for quite a while now- Part 1 of the Weirdmageddon trilogy, the three-part Season 2 and/or series finale to Gravity Falls, the Disney Channel/Disney XD cartoon that has, in only a few months, gone from, in my mind, "that Disney show with an oxymoron for a title and allegedly Slenderman in the background" to "one of the most creative and addictive stories ever put to animation and my seventeenth favorite TV show of all time." This episode has completely changed what episodes are on my list of favorite episodes of the show, pushing everything up one on the list from the previous installment except for "Fight Fighters" and removing "Not What He Seems" from the list. This episode is my new favorite episode of Gravity Falls, as it is with many other fans, and because I usually like to make multi-parters count as one episode, I believe that I will add the next two parts to the title of my favorite episode of the show as well.
This episode begins where "Dipper And Mabel Vs. The Future" left off. After Mabel gave Bill, who was possessing Blendin, the interdimensional rift, he used it to unleash "Weirdmageddon", Alex Hirsch's idea for an apocalypse not based in the Book of Revelations, but rather on his own warped imagination, on the world. Now, as Weirdmageddon begins, and Bill enters the physical world, he gives himself layers of skin made of flesh and metal as his physical form, and brings his "friends", an assortment of various random monsters, such as 8-Ball, a Creature-From-The-Black-Lagoon-type monster with magic 8-balls for eyes, Teeth, an anthropomorphic pair of dentures, a Cthulu-type monster, The Horrifying Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity (guest voiced by Louis C. K.), a giant disembodied head with an arm on top of it that is constantly crawling around trying to eat people and actually gets really sad when people are afraid of him (who else but Louis C. K. would make a carnivorous monster sad and pitiful?), eye-bats that turn people into statues, and many others, to Gravity Falls, along with creating a giant black pyramid called the Fearamid in the sky above the town. The townspeople demand that Bill and his friends leave, though Preston Northwest (voiced by Nathan Fillion), Pacifica's dad and the stereotypical evil rich man of the show, offers to be one of his horsemen of the apocalypse and give him shelter in the Northwest Mansion in exchange for freedom from harm at the hands of Bill's monsters. Now that Pacifica is one of the "good guys", and may have a deeper connection to the overall mythos of the show than simply the "mean-girl-turned-nice", Pacifica yells at her dad for being so willing to sell out the townspeople in exchange for not getting harm inflicted on him, though I have a feeling that she might do this even without having turned good. Bill pretends to consider it, but because he wants to show that he is not so easily bought, he responds by doing possibly the grossest thing done to anyone on the show so far, and probably would've made the show TV-PG or higher if there was blood involved (or if Disney XD's Standards and Practices actually watched the shows being put on their network)- Bill rearranges the orifices on Preston's face, replacing his eyes with ears, nose with a mouth, mouth with a giant eyeball, and ears with nostrils. Preston may not be likable, but he didn't deserve that! After declaring that "time is dead and meaning has no meaning!" and trapping Mabel in a bubble with her symbol on the Bill Cipher Wheel, a shooting star, on it, Bill gets Weirdmageddon into full swing. After a twisted reimagining of the Gravity Falls intro, with Bill's friends replacing various characters, Bill whispering "I'm watching you, nerds!" backwards at the end, and saying that the show was created by Bill Cipher rather than Alex Hirsch, Bill sends a "weirdness wave" onto the town, bringing various things to life, turning Soos' grandma into a chair, and making Gompers the Goat giant and leading him to destroy the town. Dipper and Ford have one shot to stop Bill- literally, as Ford has made a cannon that, if shot at Bill, will send him back to the Nightmare Realm. Unfortunately, the bell of the church steeple that Ford was perched at for his shot at Bill came to life just as he had the shot, causing the cannon blast to miss and go through Bill's hat, which is revealed to be part of his body. After the hat regenerates, Bill comes up to the two at the church before Ford can tell Dipper Bill's other weakness and takes Ford prisoner, sarcastically thanking him for making Weirdmageddon possible because of how he was the one who built the original portal. If you are of the camp that actually believes that the apocalypse is Ford's fault for either that reason above or because you believe he tried to take Dipper away from Mabel with his offer of apprenticeship and that it sent Mabel over the despair event horizon, this may be satisfying in a cathartic sense. I, for one, am not of that mindset, and think that no one is entirely wrong or right in the case of the problems with the Pines family, I'm just throwing it out there because of the large amount of Gravity Falls fans that are. Bill even allows Ford to join his army, saying that with his six fingers, he'd fit right in among his freaks, but Ford says he'd die before ever joining Bill and still knows his weaknesses. Bill responds by subtly tricking Ford into holding his hands up like claws, then freezing him into a statue, saying that he needed a new backscratcher. Furious and horrified that his great-uncle is being used like a toy for his arch-enemy, Dipper attempts to take Bill on single-handedly. In a jump-scare moment, Bill responds by, when far away, saying, "Well, isn't this-" then turning into a giant and taking only one second to fly up into Dipper's face screaming, in a demonic voice- "INTERESTING!" Dipper tries to find something in the journals to help him defeat Bill in physical form, but Bill mocks Dipper's stammering and sarcastically tells him to show off a skill before he gets bored and leaves. Dipper tries to jump forward and punch Bill in the eye, but Bill shoots a laser from that eye of his that sends Dipper flying into a tree, and even burns the three journals, telling Dipper not to be a hero, and that what Bill did to Ford is what happens to heroes in Bill's world. Not much hope seems left without the journals, though some may think that it's OK because of the belief held by a portion of the fandom that, in a metaphysical sense, the journals were the real villains of the show, as Journal 1 caused a rift between Stan and Ford, Journal 2 caused a rift between Gideon and his dad, and Journal 3 caused a rift between Dipper and Mabel. Bill rewards 8-Ball and Teeth for their service to him by telling them that they can have Dipper for a snack, and saying that they should come to the Fearamid for a party he's throwing there later. Bill turns a nearby car into a demonically-pimped-out ride to drive up to the Fearamid in with the other monsters. Dipper manages to escape 8-Ball and Teeth and avoid capture by the eye-bats for three days (wait, isn't time supposed to have stopped? Eh, it's Bill, and nothing makes sense with him. Also, I feel that the only way Dipper managed to survive that long is because Bill needs him alive for his plans later on down the road, so Bill is letting Dipper live.). Dipper has constantly been contacting Mabel over those three days to no avail, unaware that she's in a state of stasis. He seeks out help in the Gravity Falls Mall, narrowly avoiding being asked politely by The Horrifying Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity to get in its mouth, and falls for a nacho-based booby trap. Because of an Internet meme associating Bill with nachos as a result of the triangular shape that they share, I thought that would be a trap set by Bill. Of course, Bill doesn't use such primitive traps. It was one set by Wendy, who reveals herself by coming out of a bush, shares that she and her family always prepared for the apocalypse each year rather than celebrate Christmas, and gets Dipper down from the trap. Dipper and Wendy hug, happy to have someone else to count on after three days alone in the end of the world, and a reminder that, while not romantically as Dipper once wanted, Wendy does love Dipper, but more like a little brother/really good friend, and now Dipper is OK with loving Wendy as just a big sister/really good friend/first crush that you naturally move on from but never truly outgrow. Meanwhile, Bill and his monster friends are throwing a demonic rave in the Fearamid, where Bill says that Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon will begin after the party, only for the party to be crashed by the arrival of the Time Police. Bill tells the other monsters "Play it cool, guys. I'll do the talking. Hide the Time Punch!", which seems to be a hint at an origin story for Bill to be revealed in the next few episodes that as messed up as Bill is, mentally, he's not much more than an angsty teenager that doesn't want to live by anyone's rules other than himself, a message that Alex Hirsch talked about in an interview meant to be a first look at the Weirdmageddon saga and how one of the messages that may be conveyed through these next few episodes is how absolute chaos is not good for anyone (something that seems to be in direct contrast with his promotion of relative morality, which, unfortunately, is something that, if you have enough success and, by natural extension, an ego, you might end up using something like the "morality is relative" argument to justify your own bad behavior while having your own ideas of morality and not even considering that you might be in the wrong. Hey, nobody's perfect, even when they make good TV). The Time Police say that Bill is under arrest for crimes against space-time and possessing the body of a Time Anomaly Removal Crew agent. Blendin says "My body is a temple! How dare you!" The Time Baby, the most powerful member of the Time Police, and a super-being with a very deep voice and physical resemblance to a giant baby, tells Bill that if his rift in this dimension continues, it will destroy the fabric of existence, then says "Surrender now or face my tantrum!" Bill is old enemies with Time Baby, and thinks he's a pushover, so he sarcastically says "Oh no, a tantrum! Whatever shall I do about that- HOW ABOUT THIS!" and shoots a disintegration beam out of his finger, killing Time Baby and all of the Time Police agents in one fail swoop. Even though Time Baby isn't actually a baby, this shows that Bill has no limits. He just killed a baby in cold blood. Even creepier, his eye briefly turns into a mouth to blow smoke off of his finger. Once the monsters go back to partying, Blendin, who miraculously avoided the disintegration beam, teleports to an unknown period in time, which will be revealed in the next episode (at the soonest, because this show can drag certain things out at times). Back with the good guys, Dipper, Wendy, and Toby Determined (voiced by Gregg Turkington), the wet-blanket journalist from earlier episodes that became Wendy's traveling partner (not by her choice, as she and pretty much everyone else in town finds him to be very, very lame), are hiding out in the store Edgy On Purpose, the show's parody of emo-goth-vamp-otaku-teen geek clothing stores like Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts, which Wendy has converted into a shelter of sorts against the demons. Wendy shares how she, Robbie, Tambry, Lee, Nate, and Thompson were in the cemetery playing Truth-Or-Dare when Weirdmageddon began, and how all of them were kidnapped except for Wendy (Robbie almost got away but just had to take a selfie with the giant cross in the sky). Dipper, on the verge of tears, says that he and Mabel were in a fight over whether or not Dipper should stay behind and be Ford's apprentice at the end of the summer or go back home with Mabel when it began, and that Mabel wouldn't even look him in the eye when she ran out. Dipper is clearly unaware that Mabel caused Weirdmageddon by giving Bill the rift and must believe that it just broke in his backpack as she ran out with it. Dipper and Wendy go outside for some air, and Dipper expresses hopelessness about the situation, with the journals destroyed, Ford as Bill's backscratcher, and Stan nowhere to be found. Wendy restores Dipper's hope by saying that they go find Mabel, because the twins can do anything, even beat Bill, if they do it together. Dipper and Wendy see a giant bubble in the distance with Mabel's shooting star, the symbol that represents her on the Bill Cipher Wheel, and have intuition that Mabel is inside, so they go to a nearby abandoned car dealership to drive over there. The car dealership turns out to be a trap laid by Gideon and his prison friends, all driving Mad Max-style armored cars. Toby is knocked out with blowdarts, but Wendy doesn't seem to care much, even accidentally calling him "Tony". Gideon says that he's been assigned the task of keeping anyone from getting into Mabel's bubble, and has the mystical key to open it. Gideon boasts "Bill explained it to me nice and simple: she was always destined to be mine! And now that I have her in a cage, she'll learn to love me! I have an eternity to wait!" When Ghost-Eyes, Gideon's right-hand man in his gang, a large bearded man lacking irises, hence his nickname, picks Dipper and Wendy up, Wendy threatens Gideon by saying "After I break Ghost-Eyes' arm and steal that key from your neck, I'm going to wear your butt on my foot like a rhinestone slipper!" "And what makes you think you can do that?" Gideon arrogantly responds." Wendy simply says "BECAUSE I'M A FLIPPIN' CORDUROY!", (the minced-oath-to-disturbing-image ratio in this show is pretty bizarre), dislocates Ghost-Eyes' arm, takes Mabel's prison-key, grabs Gideon, drop-kicks him into the other prisoners, and steals one of the cars from the junkyard. Dipper, once more reminded of why he had (and still has, but has accepted that it won't work out in real life) his crush on Wendy by her epic takedown of Gideon and his gang, says, in a slightly quivering voice because of just how enamored he is "Wendy, you are the coolest person I know." "I know, dude. Tell me about it later," she responds. Gideon and his gang give chase in their cars, and Ghost-Eyes asks Gideon why he's keeping his girlfriend is a prison bubble, feeling that, having been oppressed by prison before, they shouldn't be imprisoning anyone else. Gideon, being very insecure about this sort of thing, says "SHE LOVES ME! She just doesn't know it yet". Dipper, Wendy, Gideon, and the prison gang come across a field of "weirdness bubbles", which, as it turns out, don't do you harm when you go through them, they just put you in different animation styles. Dipper and Wendy are briefly turned into birds, anime characters, living meat, and live-action versions of themselves (played by their voice actors, Jason Ritter and Linda Cardellini, in costume as Dipper and Wendy), and Gideon and Ghost-Eyes are turned into CGI block characters, women, and 1920s Steamboat Willie-style cartoons, and when they pass through that bubble, rather than scream, they simply sit in their car with their mouths open as if they were screaming, followed by a black text image that reads "Aaauuuggghhh!!!" Dipper and Wendy crash-land on the other side of the cliff that separates them from Mabel's bubble, and as they get out, almost where they need to be, they are approached by a mysterious person in a cloak. If you were younger, you might be lead into thinking that this was another potential enemy, but most of us could tell that because of the round shape of the man in the cloak and how he reaches out a hand to help Dipper up off the ground, this was none other than Soos, who has spent the past three days as a hooded drifter helping those in need, and even off-handedly mentioning that people have written folk songs about him. Dipper, Soos, and Wendy are surrounded by Gideon and his gang shortly thereafter. Gideon boasts that he has won, that Bill's hench-bats are on their way to take the three into custody, and that Mabel is finally all his. Dipper intelligently responds "Is she? Is she really?" Gideon says "Well, yeah, I have her trapped, ergo, Mabel is MINE!" Dipper, while looking back at Wendy with regret for having done some questionable things in order to try to get her to like him the same way he liked her, and also probably remembering how he and Mabel used a love potion to make Robbie and Tambry fall in love only for that to cause some problems in "The Love God" and trying to be more confident around girls and get the e-mail addresses of a bunch of them while on a road trip only for a few of them to all show up at the same location on the road trip and think that he was trying to lead them all on in "Roadside Attraction", tells Gideon "If I've learned anything this summer, it's that you can't force someone to love you. The best you can do is strive to be someone worthy of loving." Gideon indignantly responds, "Oh, I'm worthy o' lovin! These prisoners love me!" Dipper-"But Mabel doesn't, because you're selfish (among other things, if I might add, Dipper). But you can change! Bill thinks that there's no heroes in this world, but if we work together and fight back, we can defeat him. You want to be Mabel's hero? Stand up to Bill, and let us save her!" Gideon- "That's crazy! You know what Bill would do to me if that happens?" Ghost-Eyes- "What, you're scared of Bill?" Gideon- "No, I ju... It's a complicated situation." Dipper- "Look inside, Gideon. If this is all for Mabel, then ask yourself what Mabel would want you to do." Gideon looks at an old newspaper article from the Season 1 episode "The Hand That Rocks The Mabel", when Mabel dated Gideon just to keep the town happy even though she was disgusted by him, and the pictures in the newspaper article show Gideon looking very happy but Mabel looking beyond uncomfortable, and asks Dipper to tell Mabel what he did, which Dipper says he'll definitely do. Gideon and his prison gang drive off to fight Bill, and Dipper, Soos, and Wendy take the key, unlock the prison bubble, and unite for Mabel. Dipper takes Soos and Wendy's hands and walks with them into the prison bubble, leading the screen to fade to white with a "To Be Continued..." at the bottom. The scene that plays during the credits is of The Horrifyingly Sweaty One-Armed Monstrosity trying to get more people to be his food, but when everyone runs away, he becomes resigned to a fate of starvation and tries to call his mother, crawling off-screen sadly.
Like I said, this episode was probably the best of the series so far. It had creative ways of playing with the animation, Louis C. K. guest-starring as a character tailor-made for him, and some of the best character and story developments to happen in the story yet. No one knows what will happen in the next episode, "Weirdmageddon 2: Escape From Reality", scheduled to air Monday, November 23 at 8pm on Disney XD, though that won't stop anyone from guessing. The basic synopsis says that Dipper, Soos, and Wendy travel through a bizarre alternate universe to get Mabel back while Bill prepares Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon. So what is in Mabel's bubble anyway? My guess is that because Mabel essentially made a deal with Bill offering the bubble in exchange for an eternal summer when Bill tricked her at the end of "Dipper And Mabel Vs. The Future", she is having the illusion of a perfect day inside the bubble, in which summer never ends and she doesn't have to grow up. In the illusion world, I think that everyone in Gravity Falls is reimagined to meet Mabel's ideals of perfection for them. Everyone would be a girlier version of themselves, Wendy and her friends would be her age, Candy would never go to music camp, Grenda would never have started dating her clingy Austrian boyfriend Marius, Gideon would never have been born (she does not yet know of his desire to perform a heroic sacrifice for her), Pacifica would be a nice girl and one of her best friends, Dipper would be unable to do or say anything she doesn't approve of, and Mabel would've never opened the portal that brought Ford into Dimension 46'\. The real Dipper, Soos, and Wendy would have to convince Mabel that none of this is real, which will be near-impossible. Dipper will also learn that Mabel gave Bill the rift so that this would be possible, which may put a greater strain on their relationship. I also feel that Phase 2 of Weirdmageddon involves Bill gathering the people that have symbols representing them on the Bill Cipher Wheel and preparing to kill them, as they are the only people that can stop him. He will try to seek out Stitched Heart, Cracked Glasses, Question Mark, Ice Bag, Mackerel Fish, Pine Tree, Cyclops Star, Six-Fingered Hand, Backwards Llama, and Shooting Star. Stitched Heart is Robbie, Question Mark is Soos, Mackerel Fish is Stan, Pine Tree is Dipper, Cyclops Star is Gideon, Six-Fingered Hand is Ford, and Shooting Star is Mabel. Cracked Glasses, Ice Bag, and Reverse Llama are still up in the air. Most people think that Old Man McGucket is Cracked Glasses, either Wendy or Blendin is Ice Bag (leaning more towards Wendy), and Pacifica is Reverse Llama. Season 2 will last anywhere from twenty to twenty-two episodes, and the rest of the episodes after the next one will probably involve a situation in which Robbie, McGucket, Soos, Wendy, Stan, Dipper, Gideon, Ford, Pacifica, and Mabel will somehow unite and prepare for a final showdown with Bill and his monster friends (final if this is the series finale). I think that the Northwest Mansion may be turned into a shelter against the destruction in the town, and that Pacifica will leave her parents to find Dipper and Mabel and see if they're safe, now valuing them as friends and possibly having a crush on Dipper. Robbie and Ford will be unfrozen from their statue forms, Stan's hiding place will be discovered, and Gideon's gang will go to fight Bill, but because Bill knows everything that's going to happen, he knows that Gideon will do this and have a trap for him. It will also be revealed where and when Blendin went. I think he traveled a thousand years in the future because it takes a thousand years for the Time Baby to regenerate, and he hopes to bring Time Baby back with him to defeat Bill, as he is one of the few beings in the Gravity Falls world that is more powerful than Bill and could defeat him with relative ease. Those are all of the things that I think will happen over the course of the next two-to-four episodes. I don't know if any of this will happen for sure, but who does? Alex Hirsch is an enigma that drinks the tears of his fans. I give Weirdmageddon Part 1 a 9.8/10. Thank you for reading, and see you next week with a post about something else, seeing as how there will be no new Gravity Falls until the end of the month. And as Bill says, "Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold! Bye!"
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