The Hardest Thing
Saying Goodbye to a Remarkable Era of Cartoons
“Hey, at least I’m all not keyed up to watch a kid’s show!”
“I’ll have you know that Ducktective has a BIG mystery element and a lot of humor that goes over kids’ heads!” — Gravity Falls
Spoilers for: Gravity Falls, Amphibia, The Owl House, and Craig of the Creek
A lot of us grew up in front of screens and we know how important what we watched was to our development into the people we are now. Children’s entertainment, from Sesame Street to Pixar, is a tricky art form balancing the educational, the entertaining, and the enriching all at once. Not every show or movie can succeed at all three, but there have been shows that have managed to be incredible pieces of art aimed at younger audiences.
The output of great children’s cartoons has never really stopped, it’s only grown. Cartoons are getting better, but this latest era is coming to a close. We’re losing something really special. An era that was heralded by these weird and imaginative creators who still listen to the kids they once were going out on a short, but bittersweet high. The way television is consumed has shifted so radically over the last few decades that the world of television we once knew is gone. I will not wallow in grief but instead, celebrate and explore what made these shows so special.
The cascading of shows makes set era start and end dates a little hard to discern, but the show that heralded this era is clear. Gravity Falls was the cusp cartoon that passed the baton on to the next generation. Created by Alex Hirsch, it started at the height of other shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Steven Universe and ended right as its successors Craig of the Creek, Owl House, and Amphibia began. It was weird and funny with an overarching mystery that didn’t talk down to its audience thanks to its enthusiasm for hidden details and clues.
While a spooky and bizarre world, Gravity Falls manages to be a beautiful story about family, childhood, and embracing who you are. On top of having a talking one-eye triangle in a top hat as its big bad. It’s telling that the show takes place over the summer, a time when the pressures of school are off and kids have more reign to enjoy themselves and explore who they might want to become.
A lot of these shows’ protagonists aren’t just kids, but preteens. That’s not a coincidence. Hitting the double digits is a weird transitionary period where you’re trying on all these different identities to see what fits us. Learning what we want to do with the rest of our lives. Falling in love for the first time. Navigating the social pressures of high school. A lot of the characters in these shows are grappling with and often avoiding these things.
We feel the need to protect the young from the horrors and pains of life. But that shielding can often make them feel even more unprepared for when these things inevitably happen. Processing through art has always been an immensely satisfying and often important experience. Behind all the jokes or silliness, there are wonderful little nuggets of wisdom hidden for kids to learn when the time is right. Cartoons can balance the inane and the serious quite well, but sometimes that doesn’t always mean it will be appreciated as it should.
Owen Dennis’s Infinity Train decided to do something much darker for kids. It set itself on a seemingly endless train in a vast, deserted wasteland. Its passengers on a quest to sort out their issues before they are allowed to leave. Working through an anthology format, Infinity Train was able to tell complete and concrete stories throughout single seasons, while gradually building the world and history of its titular train. It discussed things like grief, peer pressure, and open communication.
Infinity Train is on the darker side of kid’s shows, straddling the line between Cartoon Network proper and Adult Swim. But Infinity Train’s overall brilliance lies in the fact that it does focus on the hard lessons kids should learn. However, its tone put it in a weird middle spot: too serious for kids, but not dark enough for adults. Its narrative ambitions were too unique to be handled properly.
Serialized narrative has taken over television, but always seemed like it never got its foothold in the animation world. Or rather, the studios wouldn’t allow them to. Disney seemed to have a hard time grasping that. When The Owl House concluded, so with it was over a decade of serialized shows that Gravity Falls had kicked off. Which is a shame because Gravity Falls, Amphibia, and The Owl House are the best thing the studio’s done in the last decade. They’ve focused all their attention on the big screen, they neglected to see the treasures they had on the small one.
Nickelodeon also had this issue. Avatar: The Last Airbender’s influence is steeped over the world of Western cartoons. It dared to have its story told over one long arc, something fairly revolutionary back in 2003. Nickelodeon didn’t have nearly as much faith in The Legend of Korra, much to the show’s detriment. Its creators struggled to tell their story properly because it seemed like Nickelodeon didn’t know if they wanted to keep it.
Networks never seem to fully know what to do with serialized shows. Broadcast consistency was never something that seemed to be prioritized. Gravity Falls, which was 2 seasons of 20 episodes each, took a grand total of 4 years to fully broadcast its story. The Legend of Korra got kneecapped similarly by Nick never properly advertising it and then watching the low ratings come in. The Owl House, when facing its final season, only got three extended episodes to fully conclude its story. While grateful that Disney provided that closure, it reeks of corporate interference.
Gravity Falls and The Legend of Korra aired in an era of transition for television. Streaming was rising fast and networks were still judging based on Nielsen ratings instead of a hybrid approach. It resulted in so many great shows being left to the wayside despite having ardent fanbases and critical acclaim. Networks also tried to have their own streaming services and never kept things consistent in terms of release, shooting themselves in the foot and blaming the audience for it.
At this era’s end, priorities to streaming have now pivoted TOO hard. Streamers and studios would rather mine their existing IP in gaining easy viewers instead of promoting new voices or at least the new ones would not get the attention they deserved. Infinity Train was not only canceled, but removed from HBO Max completely as a cost-cutting measure. The traditional forms of watching content are disappearing and stalwarts of the industry have dissolved. However, some shows are making their last stand.
Craig of the Creek, a story of its titular hero and his friends exploring the vast utopia of their town’s creek is Cartoon Network’s last hurrah. Craig of the Creek thrived because it not only acknowledged the thrill of imagination, it reveled and indulged in it. Always showing the reality through the kid’s eyes and never daring to betray that trust. Craig and his friends are an eclectic and unique bunch and there’s always something new to discover. The world of the Creek is a vast and rich one.
Craig of the Creek, with its expansive world, showcases how this was an era of cartoons where identity and diversity flourished. While initially LGBTQ+ representation was hampered by Disney (as Alex Hirsch deftly pointed out one Pride Month), but eventually by the end of the decade, queer relationships were normalized and celebrated. Some were front and center (The Owl House) while others were smoothly integrated into the background (Amphibia), never the focus of our main characters, but nonetheless present and special. The wide spectrum of identities and sexualities are dealt with with such deft hands that it presents a world where kids can feel safe and proud to be who they are.
These shows also showcased a menagerie of cultural education. In Craig of the Creek, there are many instances where Craig visits his fellow Creek dwellers outside of the Creek in their homes. Engaging and learning about their beautiful cultures. A major theme throughout Amphibia’s run focuses on the nature and power of community. From the denizens of Wartwood to the Thai community of Los Angeles, there is strength in a shared sense of kinship. These are shows that managed to demonstrate not only respect for people’s cultures, but approach them with curiosity and wonder. It’s an exemplary way to remind its audience about how the melding of different cultures leads to its own unique and beautiful melting pot.
Craig of the Creek tackled classic kid issues like jealousy, sharing, and not fitting in while also dealing with even larger themes like class disparity, redemption, and change. In a later episode, Craig has a vision of the future where while he and his friends are still friendly as teens, they don’t hang out like they used to. Burnett and Levin show what can be a hard truth about growing up and reinforce that by peering into the future by harkening back at the past.
At the beginning of Craig Before the Creek, the feature-length origin story, we discover Craig wasn’t originally from Herkleton. He was a city kid upset to be living in the suburbs. He has serious trouble adjusting to this new phase until he discovers the Creek that will become his playground and meets his closest friends. His journey never stopped, it just moved on to the next chapter. We are all novels on the shelves of life’s library and as such our lives shift from chapter to chapter. It’s never easy when the chapter closes, but it does add an air of excitement at the potential of the next one.
Craig of the Creek has yet to end its run, but it’s coming. Cartoon Network has been holding on to those last batch of episodes, holding closure hostage. When it comes, it will truly be the end of what was a beautiful run of cartoons. Of course, these shows aren’t going anywhere anytime soon unless they all get Infinity Train’d. That doesn’t make the end of this era sting less, but one of these shows’ finales offers that glimmer of hope.
Amphibia’s power came from a lot of things: a rich world, beloved characters with incredible arcs, and a sense of adventure. Most importantly its ending, a definitive one at that, is astounding. Amphibia concludes with our heroes returning home after a long journey, but it doesn’t mean happily ever after. Despite the girls making it back home and being stronger for it, it doesn’t stop them from growing apart. It’s all in service of their growth. We see them reunite 10 years later, adults in the world now. They may not be as close as they were, but some bonds can never be broken.
Amphibia gifts us a perfect ending, but not necessarily an easy one to take. Gravity Falls implies that this won’t necessarily be the last summer the Pines Twins have in Gravity Falls. The Owl House manages to have its cake and eat it too: having Luz return home AND still be able to return to the Boiling Isles whenever she pleases. Amphibia doesn’t give us the easy out. Our characters all say goodbye to each other and they mean it. It’s bittersweet, but that’s part of its power. Instead of having our characters wallow in sadness, it shows how they’ve grown since being apart. Not because they’re better off without them, but because of who they became when they were with them.
Change is a painful, but inevitable part of life. Amphibia’s biggest theme is the nature of change. The entire show is caused by one of its characters’ resistance to change. However, its characters must confront what is shifting within themselves to grow. As we tend to grow into ourselves, that can mean that we no longer have space for whatever we once did.
The hardest thing most people, let alone kids, deal with is change. The idea that things are outside of our control. It’s all in the service of growth. We can’t stay the same forever, or at least we shouldn’t. One of the many lessons we should impart to kids is that change is hard, it’s terrifying. But as Anne tells us herself in Amphibia’s final lines:
“Change can be difficult, but it’s how we grow. It can be the hardest thing to realize you can’t hold onto something forever. Sometimes… you have to let it go. But of the things you let go… You’d be surprised what makes its way back to you.”
I wept during the finales of these shows. I will weep when Craig of the Creek ends. However, I take comfort in the fact that these shows did exist, pushing the standard forward for a whole new generation. That there are still talented and brilliant people weaving these beautiful worlds and stories that are also fit for young people to learn and understand the world around them, as confusing or hard as it may be. Hiding a serialized story in an episodic format made for enriching television that was more than just some weekly adventure. It was a journey. But all journeys must end at some point. It’s hard to let them go, but it’s okay because it means that we have become better for it. And before we know it, the next adventure will be just around the corner.