Sons of Mars

Synopsis
When Grob Gob Glob Grod comes to arrest Magic Man for his crimes, he switches bodies with Jake to escape his trials.

Plot
The episode starts with The Magic Man taunting the Stag and notices a star falling from the sky. He transforms the deer into a telescope to be able to see the star, revealed to be his older brother, Grob Gob Glob Grod. Grob Gob Glob Grod, intending to capture the Magic Man, activates a device that drains the Magic Man's magic juice in an attempt to slow him down. As Finn and Jake walk beside a train track, while carrying broken parts of a robot for an unknown reason, the Magic Man slams into them, knocking them to the ground. As Grob Gob Glob Grod closes in, Magic Man turns Jake into a duplicate of himself, and disguises himself as Jake. Grob Gob Glob Grod confronts Jake disguised as the Magic Man and takes him to Mars.

Finn is enraged at the Magic Man for framing Jake and demands that he should help him save Jake. Magic Man refuses to help him, explaining that his powers will remain in a drained state until Jake is executed on Mars. Finn attacks him, causing the Magic Man to change his mind and take Finn back to his house. Magic Man shows Finn around the trash of his house in order to find the teleporter to find Jake, though he tells Finn he will be unable to use it. They come across a Tiny Manticore that Magic Man trapped inside a bottle. They find a picture of the Magic Man's ex-girlfriend who mysteriously died. Magic Man then takes Finn downstairs to find the teleporter to Mars. Despite the Magic Man's claims of the teleporter's inoperable status, Finn thinks of Jake and is then teleported to the Martian City and attempts to get into the dome where Jake (mistaken for Magic Man) is put on court for the Magic Man's crimes against Mars and in the Land of Ooo. The King of Mars (Abraham Lincoln) gives him two choices of death (one by total annihilation, and the other by being turned into space dust) and is interrupted by Finn who attacks Grob Gob Glob Grod, which causes Lincoln to drop his staff on top of Jake, killing him. Finn is shocked at what happened and criticizes Lincoln for not listening to Jake, causing Lincoln to feel guilty and confront Death. He offers Death a dirty penny for Jake's soul, but Death chuckles and rejects the penny. Lincoln is then forced to sacrifice his immortality to save Jake (how he became immortal is unknown). After Jake is resurrected, Finn and Jake teleport back to Earth and attack the Magic Man. Finn then notices the tiny manticore calling him a coward and breaks the bottle telling him he is free. The manticore then flies off and begins a whole-hearted speech:


 * "I am the true coward. Hiding from sincere expressions like a vampire in the nude who hides from the light. Thank you, brave hero. I was freed from bottle jail, but my new prison is shame. My new prison is shame!"

His shouting causes Finn to ask what he was saying, to which Jake repeats the manticore's last sentence to Finn.

Characters

 * Finn
 * Jake
 * Grob Gob Glob Grod
 * Magic Man
 * Martians
 * Abraham Lincoln
 * Tiny Manticore
 * Death
 * Margles
 * Stag
 * Snail

Music

 * Memory song

Trivia

 * This is Abraham Lincoln's first time on the show to be seen talking since the "Animated Short," and he is also the King of Mars.
 * The penny Lincoln offers to Death had dirt on it, covering the G and O of the word "God" and the last two numbers of the year the penny was made, the corner of what looks to be a 4 is seen poking out of the smudge of dirt.
 * The Penny has a D on it just below the date indicating that it was minted in Denver, Colorado. It was minted sometime between 2040 and 2049 as the last two numbers are covered by dirt.
 * Death's rejection of the penny implies that Lincoln has made a deal with him before.
 * The Magic Man is shown to have been in a relationship that ended somehow. The promo art shows that his partner died by a fall from a cliff.
 * The tablet seen on the title card shows seven images connected by lines. The first image is a representation of the solar system with only the first five planets. There is a line drawn between Mars and an image of Magic Man and one between Earth and an image of Finn using the martian transporter. Under Magic Man and Finn is Jake meditating. To the right of Jake is the King of Mars. To the left of Jake is Grob Gob Glob Grod. The one on the bottom seems to be a hand, though this may be inaccurate.
 * After seeing Jake in his true (dog) form, Grob Gob Glob Grod says, "Look. It's the dog. The one you were prophesied to meet," implying that there is a prophecy involving The King of Mars and Jake.
 * Originally, Ghost Princess was set to appear in the episode, but was written out of the storyboard according to Jesse Moynihan.
 * When Death takes Abraham Lincoln's immortality a gunshot can be heard, it may be a reference of how he was assassinated.
 * The dome on Mars has Mars' astrological symbol ( ♂ ) written all over it.
 * When Grob Gob Glob Grod first abducts "Magic Man" (Jake) and brings him to Mars, he refers to the land as "Earth" instead of Ooo. This could be an error, or a hint that Grob Gob Glob Grod is older than the Great Mushroom War.

Cultural references

 * The rover depicted in the title card resembles NASA's Mars Exploration Rover, as the engraved tablet is a reference to the Pioneer plaque.
 * When Abraham Lincoln sacrifices his immortality to Death as a price for Jake's life, a gunshot can be heard. This references the actual death of Lincoln by his assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
 * The original storyboard itself features Death transporting Lincoln back to Ford's Theater in order to take away that immortality.
 * Coin offering is similar to how the dead were transported through the River Styx river in the underworld in Greek Mythology.
 * After Abraham Lincoln is gone, where he was sitting turned into a statue that resembles the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., USA.
 * The colored animated perspective behind Lincoln's head is a reference to similar shots in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
 * Olympus Mons (or Mount Olympus) is a dormant martian volcano.

Episode connections

 * The Magic Man returns in this episode for the first time since his debut in "Freak City."
 * The character, Death, returns in this episode for the first time since his debut in "Death in Bloom."
 * The Stag returns in this episode, in a brief scene, for the first time since his debut in "No One Can Hear You."
 * The food traveling in space is an allusion to "Too Young" and the prologue of "The Other Tarts."
 * This is the first episode for any of the Adventure Time characters to physically leave The Land of Ooo.
 * When Jake dies, Grob Gob Glob Grod says that Jake was prophesied to meet them. This could be a reference to "The New Frontier."
 * When Abraham Lincoln offers for Jake to have his consciousness spread throughout the universe, Jake showed that he was happy with this option just as Jake told Finn he was fine with a similar style of death in "The New Frontier."

Errors

 * The picture of Margles and Magic Man has an unusual dot in the background when Finn was holding the picture, but when Magic Man is looking at the picture at the end of the episode, the dot is gone.
 * When Finn and Jake are seen on the Martian transporter, ready to leave Mars, Abraham Lincoln can be seen in the Space Dome alive.

Storyline analysis

 * The King of Mars explains that Magic Man first changed when he went to Olympus Mons with Margles. Later in the episode, Magic Man reveals that Margles is the woman he was standing with in the picture. Their trip to Olympus Mons could either have the point when Magic Man turned evil, or where he gained his powers in the first place.

Videos
Adventure Time - Sons of Mars (long preview)|Long preview. "Sons of Mars" Animatic|An animatic.