Come Along With Me

Come Along With Me is the last episode and last LGBT-themed episode of Adventure Time. In the special, the duo must help their friend Princess Bubblegum battle Gumbald, her vengeful creation. When the antagonists realize that violent conflict is unnecessary, they team up to keep the malevolent deity GOLB from destroying their planet Ooo.

Plot
A thousand years in the future, the "King of Ooo", BMO, recounts to a cat-like being named Shermy and his friend Beth the story of the "Great Gum War" and the "end of the world": In the present day, Finn, Jake, and Bubblegum are preparing for war with Gumbald. Finn asks Bubblegum to parley with Gumbald before the fighting starts, and they go to meet him and Fern. After Jake activates a vial of "Nightmare Juice", the five are incapacitated and awaken in a nightmare world. While Bubblegum and Gumbald are forced to experience the other's misery (Bubblegum becomes a regular Candy Person, while Gumbald becomes the unhappy leader of the Candy Kingdom), Fern and Finn fight. Eventually, the latter two manage to kill the Grass Demon within Fern's psyche; this frees him from its negative influence but causes him to begin disintegrating. Soon after, the five reawaken, and Bubblegum offers peace to Gumbald; however, it is revealed he was planning on betraying Bubblegum, and he is permanently incapacitated. His helper Lolly then agrees on a peace treaty with Bubblegum.

Suddenly, the malevolent chaos deity GOLB appears. King Man sends Ice King to talk to his time-displaced fiancée Betty, who is communicating with GOLB. Ice King and Betty are eventually consumed by GOLB, as is Finn, who was trying to help them. GOLB then attacks Ooo by raising up a chaos creature. Bubblegum and her allies fight the creature, but it is too powerful, destroying Finn and Jake's treehouse and nearly crushing Bubblegum. Marceline sees this and smashes the creature in a rage, but Bubblegum recovers and the two embrace and kiss. Jake is despondent at the loss of his home, but BMO sings to him to calm him. It is revealed that the song's harmony weakens GOLB, and so Bubblegum encourages everyone to sing along, further weakening GOLB's power.

As the battle rages, Finn discovers himself with Ice King and Betty in GOLB's stomach—a small, shrinking room. As he is digested, Ice King reverts to Simon and recognizes Betty, who confesses that she summoned GOLB to save Simon from the curse of the ice crown. As the walls close in, Finn resigns himself to death, but BMO's song opens a hole leading outside. Finn and Simon escape, but Betty remains, using the crown to wish for a way to save Simon; this causes her to merge with GOLB. Gunter then puts on the crown and it reacts to his wish of being like Ice King, fusing with him and transforming him into the Ice Thing. Before Fern dies, he leaves Finn and Jake a seed resembling a hilt. The duo plant him among the remains of the treehouse, sprouting a tree with a new Finn Sword embedded in the highest branch.

Back in the future, Shermy and Beth ask what happened afterward, to which BMO replies that Finn, Jake, and their friends "kept on living their lives". Later, Shermy and Beth find the tree sprouted from Fern's seed. They climb to the top and pull the Finn Sword from the highest branch, assuming a pose similar to Finn and Jake in the show's title sequence.

Development
The special was written and storyboarded by Tom Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Hanna K. Nyström, Aleks Sennwald, and Sam Alden, and Graham Falk. The story was developed by Herpich, Wolfhard, Ashly Burch, showrunner Adam Muto, head writer Kent Osborne, Jack Pendarvis, Julia Pott, and series creator Pendleton Ward. Former head background designer Ghostshrimp returned after having officially left the series during the fourth season.

According to Osborne, Cartoon Network provided the writers with "an opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about the finale" before production ended. In an interview with TV Guide, Muto explained that the show's writers used many of the episodes preceding the finale to conclude minor character story arcs "so we wouldn't have to cram too much in at the very end here." This allowed the finale itself to be "less dense" by simply "hitting the big [beats] and then finding vignettes for all the characters ... so we could get snapshots of where they could end up."

Princess Bubblegum and Marceline kiss in one scene and are shown developing a romantic relationship in the special's epilogue. Muto said that the relationship was "an ongoing conversation... It certainly wasn’t in the show’s original pitch. It was a relationship that evolved over time." The outline of the episode merely called for the two characters to "have a moment"; Nyström, being responsible for the scene, was given creative control as to the nature of the "moment". Muto noted, "When Hanna boarded that, there was a little note in the margin that said 'Come on!' with a big exclamation point. That was the only note. I can’t argue with that."

According to Pendarvis, storyline writing for the series ended in mid-November 2016, with the last storyline meeting being held on November 21. A tweet by Osborne revealed that the series' final script was pitched to storyboarders, with Alden and Nyström in attendance, on November 28. This episode was then pitched to the show's producers during the third week of December 2016. Voice recording for the episode ended on January 31, 2017 as confirmed by a number of cast members, including Maria Bamford and Andy Milonakis.

Like miniseries Stakes, Islands, and Elements, Come Along with Me features a unique title sequence. The sequence was animated specifically for the episode by Masaaki Yuasa's company Science SARU and storyboarded by Wolfhard.