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nexstage · 8 months

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What happened to Marceline in Winter King’s world?

That's a question everyone has been asking themselves since the airing of that episode and even after the finale of Fionna and Cake. Honestly, the contrast between what would've been of Marcy without Simon and Simon without Marcy is really telling of the effect both have on each other’s lives. Despite the tragedy surrounding the crown which destroyed Simon’s mind and forced him to leave Marcy, both saved each other from becoming the worst versions of themselves. But I’m going on tangents, the real focus is Marcy’s fate in the messed-up world of the Winter King.

Now, while we might never have an explicit answer, I think I came close to, in my opinion, the best one, based on information from the show -Marceline and Bubblegum’s story, the Stakes mini-series-, Marcy’s Super Secret Scrapbook, and even The Winter King episode. And some key elements draw a bigger, clearer picture:

SPOILER WARNING FOR MARCY’S SUPER SECRET SCRAPBOOK.

1. Marcy’s vampire hunt arc

2. Marcy’s relationship with the human survivors in her vampire hunt

3. The mentioned-only-once-and-never-addressed lore of the Ice King being The Empress’ slave

4. The Vampire King’s power and army

5. Princess Bubblegum’s role

Alright! Let’s start with some obvious context. So, as we know, there are two clashing concepts in this image:

According to the Scrapbook, when Marcy was older, she got the Abadeer axe from his father and she kept it with her which, if you ask me, is both a pragmatic choice due to the dangers of a post-apocalyptic world and an emotional/conflictive one because of her rocky relationship with Hunson Abadeer. Much more important is that in Marcy’s flashbacks on the Stakes mini-series, she was shown with her axe turned into a bass already, playing a song for the human tribe.

Now the question is how it got into the hands of the Ice King if Simon had left her. Well, browsing through YouTube I’ve found a video with a fan’s headcanon* about Marcy’s fate showing Hunson Abadeer giving him the axe and explaining what happened to her. But that comes with more questions: how could Hunson and Ice King have interacted if Ice King forgot about him due to the crown’s madness? What could’ve compelled Hunson or Ice King to talk with each other? After all, in the letter Simon left to Marcy after leaving her, their only interaction was watching each other after he opened the portal to the Nightosphere.

Simon even mentioned in said letter this: “After I completed the binding spell on your dad the portal closed and everything went dark. God knows what I did.” It didn’t mention anything about Hunson attacking him for entering his realm, or stopping him from executing the binding spell; therefore, the chances of an interaction between them are slim next to nonexistent. Of course, we also have this scene:

Here Hunson enters unapologetically and pretty violently into Marcy’s crafted little house and then points at something in particular that was on the wall whether it is the portraits of Simon Marcy had drawn or Hambo, my far-fetched theory is that he wondered about the guy on those portraits but again, this is far-fetched so it doesn't have a solid base to keep going.

What's next? Oh yes, Simon and The Empress’ abusive* past relationship. Why past relationship? Because of this line: “Hello, Simon. (…) Wait, you don't remember me?”. Most importantly, maybe this was the first and only time when Marcy and Simon met again after the heartbreaking departure and she had to confront him in his almost-complete Ice King transformation while saving him from The Empress’ hypnosis. Why almost-complete transformation? Because of this piece of dialogue from the Empress: “He used to have more of a silver fox thing going on, with the hair and those cute glasses.” This can mean two things: one, that Simon still was himself but in tiny bits and pieces both in personality and appearance and a characteristic item of his past self are the glasses. Two, those ‘cute glasses’ might signify something ridiculous and humiliating the Empress manipulated Simon into using while he was still her servant.

Now, it's hard to pinpoint how much time had passed between Marceline and Simon’s separation and their encounter when he was serving the Empress due to the unstable count of time on the Scrapbook but, in my opinion, it must have been like several weeks or a few months. With that in mind, perhaps Simon still remembered Marceline albeit in fragments that came and went which was too painful for her to deal with; for that reason, after she saved him from the Empress, she left.

But after that what was next? Well, the last enemy Marcy must kill to ensure humanity’s survival was the Vampire King, and knowing Finn didn't exist in the Winter King’s universe leaves two possibilities: Marceline dies fighting the Vampire King but is unsuccessful in killing him which leads to him rebuilding his army and slaughtering the survivors. However, how could the vampires still thrive in a world where there were no more humans, only penguins and ice creations from Winter King and the candy people from Bubblegum? That would mean extinction for them unless the Vampire king had led his army to search for more scattered tribes. Going further, with Marcy and all her human friends gone, who could be there to give Ice King the axe bass? I doubt even Hunson could sense something this terrible had happened to Marcy.

The second possibility has a few changes although makes more sense. Marcy manages to kill the Vampire King but dies due to her injuries or because he sets her a trap right before he perishes to get revenge. Then after the whole mess is over, the human tribe she had befriended finds what is left of her: the destroyed axe bass and her stake.

Mourning her, they later find Hambo, Schwabl, and her diary. By reading it, they discover two family members of hers are still alive: Hunson and Simon. Obviously, after suffering attack by attack from the vampires, summoning the “Nameless One” would be the last thing the tribe would do. That and according to her diary, Marcy was mad at Hunson for killing the werewolves and eating her fries. The other option is Simon and that is where it gets interesting. If they believe it’s true that Simon has lost his sanity and memories because of the crown, then trying to find him and tell him what happened to Marcy might be a waste of time and a double tragedy. Also, they don’t know what kind of north Simon had gone to exactly, so trying to find him could take them a lot of time they need to escape the next disaster.

That leaves another two possibilities: the first one I have some doubts about because what if Simon, in his bits of memory and old self, is looking for Marcy and finds out what happened to her? But knowing the crown’s madness is leading him to build an ice kingdom, that is again a farfetched theory. The other one that is riskier but makes more sense to me is that, despite the dangers and the time spent, the human tribe travels to find Simon as a way to honor Marcy’s memory and sacrifice. Once they find him, they tell him what she did for them and give him her axe bass. Despite losing his memories and the crown’s madness, a tiny part of his old self reacts strongly to the news.

It’s unknown what happened to her dog Schwabl and Hambo, maybe they were passed on to Ice Marcy and Schwabl died of old age, or both were taken care of by the child of the human tribe Marcy had befriended to honor her memory. Going into tangents again, about the humans, another reason Finn might not be in this world is because either he wasn’t born in the Winter King’s dimension or he was born but never left the island.

Coming back to where I left it, Ice King transformed due to the most important aspect of the crown: the heart’s deepest truest wish. In the show, his obsession with princesses was due to his desire to be with Betty again and be loved by her, although his wish wasn’t taken that far except for the episode where he stole a piece of each princess’ body to create a Frankenstein-like princess. However, Marcy’s death might have caused his grief to be so strong to battle the madness of the crown and regain some of his memories that were related to when he met and raised her.

Because of that, his biggest wish turned from having Betty again to bringing Marcy back and kind of absolving himself from the guilt of not being there to save her. This is connected to another character’s fate: Princess Bubblegum and the fall of her kingdom. As is shown in The Winter King episode she was turned from this:

To this

Winter King had sang to Simon that thanks to his sheer force of will he had overcome the crown’s influence which in this theory of mine is half-true as his grief had its own sheer force of will that resisted the ice power and madness until Ice King found a way to have Marcy back. Of course, we all know he was unsuccessful, he might have found a way to transfer the madness to Bubblegum, condemning her people to the whims and brutality of an insane ruler, but reviving the dead was impossible. It was even established in the show because neither Margles (Magic Man’s wife) nor Betty (fused with Golb) could come back despite Prismos’ efforts.

Still, it didn’t stop Winter King from trying. I think that after he created Ice Marcy, his denial skyrocketed. Deep down, he knew Marceline was gone and in front of him was just a copy of her when she was a child but he couldn’t accept that leaving her behind to protect her from himself led to her death. He couldn’t accept that despite his best efforts: spell-binding Hunson, the ritual to the Nightosphere, believing she could be strong enough to survive, he would find out time later that she had been taken away from him.

And despite this, he doubled down as he “raised” -if you could call it that- Ice Marcy but also kept her isolated as a way to protect her from the outside world. In many ways, Winter King is what Magic Man would’ve become if he had let his grief overtake him to a new level. His madness indeed came from the loss of his wife and his obsession for bringing her back but after too many failures his efforts focused more on making everyone miserable maybe as a coping mechanism. Not so different from Winter King as he let the Candy Kingdom fall into chaos after transferring the crown’s madness to Bubblegum.

As a last detail in this extensive theory, why Princess Bubblegum? Why not someone else? It could be because Ice King’s former obsession with princesses was still alive and it became more of a means to an end than his feelings for Betty twisted by the crown. And maybe that’s also why Ice King is callous about Betty’s memory and calls her “the dead one”.

*Link to the video I was talking about and that inspired me to write this:

https://youtu.be/k2zJKsABi0A?si=em0JMNQYGsA4LPG0

*Yes, the past relationship between Simon and The Empress was abusive as she had tried to hypnotize him to have him as a servant, took advantage of his crumbling mental state to make him do things that might be against his wishes or moral code (for example, killing Marceline in the miniseries), was delighted in how pitiful his madness made him look, and insulted him when he defied her orders

#Fionna and Cake #Adventure Time #Meta and theories #The Winter King #Marcy’s Super Secret Scrapbook #This is like a super dark theory of mine yeeesh #Winter King world is like seeing the worst Au but covered in shiny glitter

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