Adventure Time ends again as Netflix’s Q-Force debuts

Plus, Brooklyn Nine-Nine continues to double up on episodes

By Sulagna Misra, William Hughes | September 2, 2021 | 5:00am

TV Lists Adventure Time

Adventure Time ends again as Netflix’s Q-Force debuts

Image: HBO Max

Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, September 2. All times are Eastern.

Top pick

Adventure Time: Distant Lands—Wizard City (HBO Max, 3:01 a.m.):
Having already given a fond and final farewell to Finn, Jake, Marceline, PB, and BMO with its three previous Distant Lands specials on HBO Max, Adventure Time now prepares to say goodbye to… itself. On the surface, Wizard City is a far less fitting finale for this series of animated epilogues than May’s grand and ambitious Together Again, forgoing big plot revelations or moving emotional growth in favor of tossing several of the show’s most minor characters (most notably Pep, a de-aged version of running joke character Peppermint Butler) into a distant, Hogwarts-riffing setting and letting them all be magical jerks to each other. But it’s also funny, quick-moving, and filled with weird and amazing new characters, underlaid with just enough heart to keep the whole thing from collapsing into nihilism. In that sense, it’s a perfect finish for a show that never stopped pushing on its borders, or losing touch with the fact that beloved heroes might come and go, but the adventure always continues. Also: Bill Hader plays a cranky frog wizard. Hard to say no to that. [William Hughes]

Regular coverage

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (NBC, 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.): NBC has been doubling up on episodes, but Vikram Murthi will continue to cover in a single recap.
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars (Paramount+, 3:01 a.m.): A quick reminder that coverage on this All Stars season is embargoed until 9:15 p.m., so look for our recap then.

Wild card

Q-Force (Netflix, 3:01 a.m.): Unfortunately, this show suggests that queer superspies have pretty far to go for proper representation. As Juan Barquin writes, “To watch Q-Force, Netflix’s latest adult animated series, is to sit through 10 episodes of scripted material at the same level of quality as RuPaul’s Drag Race’s acting challenges, where talented performers try to bring to life a script with no actual jokes, just cultural references. It’s like scrolling through the drafted tweets of Gay Twitter Comedians or sifting through the outtakes for a gay podcast, where every other sentence in a conversation involves a name-drop of a pop star or actress and a catty observation about them.” Still, the animated series boasts a stacked voice cast, with co-creator Sean Hayes as the leader of the group (Steve Maryweather, a.k.a. Mary), along with Patti Harrison, Wanda Sykes, Matt Rogers, David Harbour, Laurie Metcalf, and Gary Cole.