WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Adventure Time: Distant Lands - BMO, now streaming on HBO Max.

The first special in the Adventure Time: Distant Lands series is entitled "BMO," and features the eponymous robot as they crash-land on a distant alien space station. The station, called The Drift, is slowly breaking down, and BMO is brought to it by a maintenance robot (that BMO dubs "Olive") to try to fix things. Soon after arriving on The Drift, BMO runs into Hugo, the head of an Amazon-like corporation that spans all of the space station.

Hugo comes off as a personable inventor/leader, a futurist reminiscent of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. This illusion is bolstered by his voice actor, Randall Park, who is well-known for playing cheery and likeable roles. Further reflecting the nature of Hugo's futurist endeavors is a strange machine called the "Utopia Pod," which turns out to be a device that will allow him to escape the dying station while stranding everyone else. He built this machine by taking resources from other parts of The Drift, causing them to collapse as they lost vital components.

Hugo's actions are a clear satire of modern-day corporations and capitalists, as the inventor destroys the local "environment" in order to make a profit. This metaphor is further enhanced by the Hugomats, which secretly surveil their local environment for parts. Given that one of Silicon Valley's biggest ethical problems is the monetization of its customers' data, it seems all-too fitting that Hugo would be doing the same.

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Hugo, the villain from Adventure Time Distant Lands: BMO

What's more, it turns out Hugo has a closer tie to Earth than simple metaphor -- towards the end of the special, he's revealed to be a human from Earth who modified himself and other escapees through "biohacking." But it's also shown that this process resulted in a disease that killed the aliens of the first site he landed on before he was brought to The Drift by Olive. In this way Hugo is not only a stand-in for capitalism but for colonialism as well; he plunders the worlds he arrives on for their available resources before leaving for the next one.

There's also a clear contrast between BMO and Hugo. Both are brought to the Drift by Olive in hopes they might save it. After all, Hugo is a talented inventor, and it might have been possible for him to improve the lot of the failing station. But instead he decides to strip the station for parts, all the while nickel-and-diming the natives for the materials they need to survive as the environment gets worse and worse. Meanwhile, only moments after arriving and running into a local named Y5, BMO decides to fix things. They proclaim themselves "sheriff" and immediately go about helping, saving a space lard from being eaten and several other inhabitants from drowning.

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While "BMO" is a great addition to the Adventure Time canon, it's also a fairly simple morality tale. Hugo is a clear villain, a capitalist who destroys the world around him with no motive other than plundering its wealth. And just as the special has a clear villain, it has a clear solution: socialism. While it might sound ridiculous to say a children's cartoon is advocating for a different form of societal organization, Adventure Time is a show that's never been subtle with its allegory. After all, the land of Ooo is part of a post-apocalyptic Earth ravaged by nuclear war. The embodiment of that war, The Lich, is a terrifying figure obsessed with bringing about the death of all things.

So it almost makes sense that "BMO" presents such a clear solution. While Hugo's scheme to destroy The Drift is insidious, it's also preventable. All the people of the station have to do is utilize their greater numbers and, through force, remove Hugo from power (although in this case they "remove power" from the Utopia Pod before ejecting him into space). And the special also makes clear what the aftermath of that revolution will be like: Y5 is immediately shown advocating for a system in which the inhabitants of The Drift care first and foremost for each other rather than operating selfishly.

Adventure Time: Distant Lands - BMO isn't especially nuanced, but that doesn't lessen its impact. It presents a paradigm not all-too-different from our modern society, and shows us an alternative. Whether that message resonates with viewers remains to be seen, but its presence is undeniable.

Created by Pendleton Ward, Adventure Time: Distant Lands is available exclusively on HBO Max.

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