Heads up — before we delve into this review of the season premiere of Gravity Falls, I’m going to get into some really mild spoilers. If you haven’t watched the first season of Gravity Falls then… what’s your damage, bruh?
Also, even though the first episode premiered last Friday and tonight’s “Into the Bunker” has been leaked through On Demand services and the like, both episodes technically “debut” on Disney XD tonight like it’s the premiere. Then the new episodes will just air on Disney XD so life can stop being so confusing. Disney XD? More like Disney DX.
Let’s start the review.
I knew I was going to be hooked on Gravity Falls right after I watched the opening. It wasn’t the theme song itself that got me addicted to Alex Hirsch’s cartoon about twelve-year old twins visiting their con artist great uncle at his “Mystery Shack” museum in the town of Gravity Falls, an Oregon community similar to Twin Peaks if everyone replaced their coffee with pure cups of sugar and Dale Cooper was a hyperactive preteen. Sure, the opening is pretty cool on its own, but if you listen closely to the moment when the title card arrives you can hear some whispering. Play the song backwards and you can clearly hear what the whisper had to say: “Three letters back”, the initial cipher to Gravity Falls’ hidden codes that would turn out to either be funny messages (“ICE ICE BABY”) or cryptic foreshadowing (“I WAS SO BLIND! HE LIED TO ME! THE DARKNESS IS NEAR!”). With this now well-known piece of trivia, Gravity Falls went from a pretty good Disney Channel show to an intense mystery begging to be solved.
These hidden cryptograms cultivated a dedicated cult following for Gravity Falls that searched diligently for any clues that could unravel the mysteries that enveloped the Pines Family. Small clues were scattered throughout the first season which eventually shied away from the mystery to focus more on excellent character development and world building. Still, even with the fandom exploding after each mini-revelation it could rip out of the show, Gravity Falls would keep things pretty mild with humorous episodes revolving around topics like pterodactyls, bottomless pits, and the 8 1/2th President of the United States. At least, until the final two episodes when Bill Cipher arrived after being a background symbol since the pilot, Gideon’s full power was realized, and the owner of the final journal that had been fueling the series’s mysteries was revealed.
Unlike the first season, season two of Gravity Falls doesn’t seem intent on leaving its mysteries to hang in the background until the very end. Just like last time, there’s still a whispered message right before the title card, only this time the message isn’t backwards. Instead, the voice flat out offers the name of this season’s code, the Vigenère cipher: a much more advanced code than last season’s Atbash and Caesar ciphers that requires a keyword hidden within the episode (“Widdle” for “Scary-oke”, “Shifter” for “Into the Bunker”). Not only are we given a more advanced code, but we’re given even more cryptograms with a page of the ominous journal now flashed for a second during the end credits which already has a cryptogram of their own.
With the abundance of new hidden messages and even more advanced ciphers, the message delivered by Hirsch and his team to their fans is clear: “Step up your mystery game, because we sure as hell are stepping up ours.”
The first episode of the second season, “Scary-oke” picks up right after the (potentially) world-shattering final moment of “Gideon Rises”. Well, they haven’t shattered the world yet. In fact, the final scene isn’t really elaborated on at all but it’s not like Gravity Falls was going to explain its main mystery in the first episode back. Still, that doesn’t stop two federal agents (one of whom is voiced by a humorously stern Nick Offerman) from investigating the recent energy surges emanating from the town. Dipper, as usual, gets overexcited by the prospect of having new resources and predictably messes up. With zombies.
The plots revolving around Stan’s basement and the zombies do feel rushed, either being thrown under the carpet for future episodes or solved with an incredibly obvious solution respectively, but that hardly hurts the show’s charm. Everything revolving around Stan’s basement is interesting, yes, but it exists on its own in some weird bubble where Stan’s probably evil. It’s an issue that deserves at least an episode’s worth of air-time, but what we do see of the basement here at least reminds us viewers that Gravity Falls won’t bury that plot until the finale like they did last episode, setting up a status quo that promises a more unified narrative. Instead of prematurely tackling that implication-heavy plot point, much of the attention is directed towards a party the Pines are throwing to simultaneously celebrate defeating Gideon and reintroduce everyone to the large ensemble cast the show’s grown over the last season.
Continued belowAnd here’s where Gravity Falls finds its greatest strength, moreso than the paranoia-fueled plot that initially reeled me in. It’s the endearing townspeople who’ve made Gravity Falls one of the most lovable towns in fiction. They only really show up to say their character beats and leave, but that doesn’t stop some characters from enjoying their brief time in the spotlight: Wendy’s teenage friends show up, including the tragically eager-to-please Thompson; Gideon’s shown as a still present threat, and Tyler the Biker arrives with a solution to his greatest dilemma. That last bit is a great example of the visual gags Gravity Falls leaves lying around for viewers to pick around for, though to be fair, it’s not a joke that any new viewers would likely miss. There’s a ton of parallels and bits the first-time audience may not pick up on (the first episode of season one had fake gnome zombies and now we’ve got actual zombies, another example of the show stepping up its game). It’s still a funny show without any prior knowledge, but a much more rewarding experience when you know the history of the town and characters.
The same might not be said for the second episode, “Into the Bunker”, which is absolutely not for first-time audiences. Aside from tackling the major question of who wrote the journals, it’s full of truly grotesque body horror and, yes, more visual references, gags, and callbacks. After finding out about a bunker in the previous episode, Dipper, Mabel, lovable handyman Soos, and Dipper’s older crush/Mystery Shack employee Wendy venture downwards to find whoever wrote the big book regarding the town’s mysteries. Again, the episode doesn’t offer answers so much as it does some great character moments, especially for Wendy who was really in danger last season of being solely defined by Dipper’s unrequited affection for her. Though they never addressed how Dipper acted like a sociopath in “Boyz Crazy”, the relationship evolves into a more even footing for the both of them. It evolves into less of an unrequited friend zone and more of a respectable friendship, which is something both characters definitely needed.
Watching the focus move from the mystery of the bunker to Wendy and Dipper might seem like a rug-pull on the creators’ part, but really it’s to be expected. I’ve gone on and on about how intriguing the greater mystery of Gravity Falls is, but really the show’s strength that carried it through a year of unexpected delays and hiatuses in its first season was its dedication to the characters and their interactions with each other. In a pop culture climate where sitcoms swing from obnoxiously cynical to disgustingly optimistic, Gravity Falls found a perfect balance between smart aleck one-liners, crafty almost immoral characters, horrific monsters, and a loving environment for its characters to thrive in. Monsters like zombies and Summerween tricksters are memorable, but they’re not as lasting as a family engaging in an awful round of karaoke or the conversations on a log between a girl and the younger boy who’ll only be there for the summer.
Gravity Falls is a lot of things: scary, funny, a hidden message left to us by the Illuminati. Still, more important than the mysteries is the sincere love the characters share for each other — but those relationships were built in the relatively safer and more relaxed season one. In a move startlingly similar to my other great love, Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated, the mysteries that’ve been slowly brewing in the town are coming to a boil and that may not bode well for the love that’s been so carefully built among the cast.
But, hey, if you’re not into all the mushy stuff, a thirteen year old boy accidentally resurrects an army of zombies because he wanted to impress FBI Agent Burt Macklin Ron Swanson.
This is a really hard show to dislike and its second season promises to step up its game on all counts, not just with its mysteries. Honestly, it’s just so refreshing to finally be able to say ZHOFRPH EDFN, JUDYLWB IDOOV!
Now go watch Gravity Falls so we can start a spoiler-filled column about the show!
