If you’re new to the blog or just want to revisit from the beginning, click HERE to read the review for “Tourist Trapped”.
BE WARNED – THIS IS A MAJOR EPISODE AND THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.
Previously on Gravity Falls: Summer in Gravity Falls has gotten a bit more crazy ever since Grunkle Stan returned his twin brother and Journal Author Ford from another dimension. Though the brothers are still at odds over a decades-old dispute, this hasn’t stopped Dipper from trying to get to know the side of his family he shares his brains from. Mabel, on the other hand, fears that this sudden change may mean one day their bond could go south as Stan and Ford’s did, and all that time Dipper’s spending with the Author seems to be proving her right…
Dipper wakes up one morning to a terrifying sight, Mabel resurrecting an old character of hers from third grade “Mr. Upside-downington” to deliver an important message – that their thirteenth birthday is one week away! They’ll be officially considered teenagers, and it’ll be one short year until that shrieking hellhole of bullies and trigonometry magical place called high school. Very soon the future is coming for them, and they’re going to be ready for it.
Since their birthday falls on their last day in Gravity Falls, Mabel is determined to throw the biggest of bashes to close summer out on. She wants to invite everyone in town, but Stan refuses to let her throw another party in the house since the last one ended with a zombie apocalypse. Soos suggests renting the high school gym and they make plans to go there that day. Suddenly there’s a bang and Ford screams to Dipper to help him put out the fire on his face. It’s just a ruse to get Dipper to join him in the other room however (though Ford does set his face on fire to save time on shaving). Ford tells Dipper the two must go on a mission of utmost importance – the interdimensional rift that’s keeping Bill’s world from merging with ours is cracking.
If it breaks, the world is doomed. They can’t afford to let Bill get his hands on it, and he has every demonic means of doing so from trickery to possession. Ford has a way they could fix it, but it would mean leaving Mabel behind. Mabel pops up, and recognizing there’s some world saving shenanigans that need to be done, lets Dipper go. After all, they’ve got the rest of the week to work on birthday plans. She even packs a backpack for Dipper with a walkie-talkie to keep in touch.
Soos and Mabel go to the gym to find that the place is full of sullen teenagers. Wendy greets them and updates them on the situation – today’s high school registration. Mabel excitedly asks all about the high school experience since the poor deluded fool’s only knowledge of it comes from disgustingly pandering and poorly written tween tv musicals where the most simpleminded and pretty bland white teens sing about following dreams. Wendy clues her in on the truth – it’s a horror movie where your body rebels against you, the best of friends can suddenly hate each other, and classes are made to cram your head with difficult to comprehend and useless information. She begs her to run while she still can and never EVER grow up.
Distraught, Mabel wanders outside and tries to talk to Dipper over the walkie-talkie and relate her fears of growing up. But he’s getting bad reception and can barely talk back. He promises to talk when he returns to the Shack. Soos tries to cheer her up by taking her to deliver invitations, but they pass this ominous sign as they leave.
Ford takes Dipper to a hill overlooking the cliff side where he fought Gideon. What they’re looking for is an adhesive so strong that it’s not of this world, as Ford takes a moment to show.
According to Ford’s studies, much of Gravity Falls’ topography was formed by a crashed UFO over millions of years ago. Now it would be easy to blame every weird thing in Gravity Falls on aliens, but that would be too easy. According to the Journal, and even Ford’s own postulating, the Falls are, for whatever reason, a magnet for all things strange and unusual. Ford reveals they’re standing right on the downed alien craft and they’ll need to go inside it to fetch the adhesive. He’s been there multiple times to learn more about the extinct alien life and scavenge parts for the Portal so he’s no stranger to any possible dangers. He also gives Dipper a powerful magnet gun and they descend into the craft.
Mabel stops at Grenda’s place where she personally gives them their invitations to the party. Unfortunately Grenda’s made plans to visit her long-distance boyfriend Marius Von Hauser in Austria by then and Candy’s being packed off to spend the rest of the summer at music camp, meaning her best friends will miss her birthday AND won’t be there to say goodbye when she goes home. Mabel radios Dipper for emotional support but because he’s a hundred feet underground she can’t reach him.
While searching around, he asks Dipper if he ever thought about the future. Dipper recounts his hopes to graduate with a high GPA and either move into animation at CalArts or start his own ghost hunting show. Ford likes that Dipper is so sure of what he wants out of life, and says he doesn’t have to waste time dealing with the drudgery of school when he could get a head start studying what he wants; he confesses that he’s getting too old to study and protect Gravity Falls on his own and thinks Dipper could be the perfect apprentice.
Wait, this is sounding familiar…
Well it’s been confirmed that Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty share the same multiverse; who’s to say Ford didn’t get the idea of dragging a teenage sidekick along for traumatizing shenanigans from Rick?
The thought of studying side-by-side with his idol and possibly changing the world is tempting, but Dipper has reservations, namely leaving Mabel behind in California and growing up without her. Ford insists that she’ll be fine on her own since she has such a magnetic personality, and besides, being stuck with a sibling who doesn’t think on the same level does nothing but hold you back.
Um, Ford, I have the number of a good therapist on standby, if you’d like to give them a call, maybe see if you can sort through any lingering sibling issues – what? No? Well, if you’re sure…
The conversation is interrupted when the security system, which Ford believed was defunct, is accidentally reactivated. Ford tells Dipper that it attacks based on the adrenaline level in the living beings the giant spheres scan; if its targets are calm and collected then it passes them by, but if it senses fear then it will trap them to ensure they will never train to become a Jedi and risk joining the dark side. Unfortunately since Dipper can’t stop panicking in time, the spheres attack. Ford saves Dipper but at the cost of his capture. He’s able to give him the rift and says it’s up to him to save the world now. But Dipper won’t leave Ford behind, even as the droid prepares to blast Ford into another galaxy. What follows is an intense chase of sorts as Dipper grapples his way on to the droid with the magnet gun and manages to steer it back to Earth and crash it while being pursued by the other droid. Dipper emerges unharmed though Ford is knocked unconscious and the second sphere catches up. It prepares to open fire, but Dipper stares it down declaring nothing’s going to take him from his great-uncle. The lack of fear deactivates the orb. Ford declares he’s proud of Dipper for doing something an ordinary twelve year-old could never do, further reinforcing the notion that Dipper is meant for greater things.
Mabel receives equally encouraging words from Stan when he finds her morosely revisiting happier times in her scrapbook, reminding her that growing up doesn’t mean losing sight of who she is and that she’ll still have her brother with her when it’s time to leave Gravity Falls. But at the worst possible time, she overhears Dipper accepting Ford’s offer of apprenticeship through the walkie-talkie.
Dipper strolls in having had the best day of his life while Mabel’s had her worst. She confronts Dipper about leaving her behind without even thinking about how she feels. When she turns thirteen, she’ll officially be all alone. Dipper insists that he can’t turn down this opportunity and they can make it work, but Mabel’s too hurt to listen. She snatches her backpack and runs into the woods in tears.
Heartbroken and lost in sweater town, Mabel goes to help herself with some chocolate from her bag but finds she picked up Dipper’s by mistake. She wishes summer could last forever, and her wish is overheard by an unlikely friend – Blendin Blandin, the time traveler she and Dipper have met before on several occasions. Since she’s helped him out once, Blendin offers her a favor in return; he’ll create a time bubble, forever encasing Gravity Falls in summer. That way she’ll never have to grow up or lose her brother. The one thing he needs to make it work is a little something from her uncle that he won’t even miss – the rift.
Dipper confesses to Ford that based on Mabel’s reaction he thinks he might be making a mistake. Ford insists they need to focus on the mission, and since they found the glue on the ship, all they have to do is spread it on the rift. Dipper searches through the bag and discovers he and Mabel switched them on accident, meaning the rift is –
Mabel has no idea what the rift is, but Blendin is eager to have it, even playing her own fears of what the end of summer holds against her. Against her better judgement, Mabel hands him the rift.
And he promptly smashes it.
Fuck…
Fuuck….
Fuuuuuck…
FUUUUUUUUUUCK…
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!
…fuck.
While I can’t say “Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future” is a bad episode, it’s among my least favorites. The animation is fine, the shadowing and colors in the last act are strong and there’s good action, but it’s just so depressing to see Mabel treated as she is and how they build up the crushing truth she, and we as the audience must face – that summer won’t last forever. Yet it doesn’t wrap up with her finding some kind of silver lining in her usual way. I expect this is because they really want to drive the lesson home in the series finale as well as the hopelessness in the ending of this episode. I also can’t stand the fact that fans still blame Mabel for causing the end of the world due to her “selfishness”. For starters, anyone who’s had a very rough day can understand how one thing can push them to do something with drastic consequences (just ask the Joker). Second, Mabel was purposefully left in the dark about the rift so she didn’t know its role in releasing Bill Cipher. This wouldn’t have happened if Ford had more faith in her. Again, it all goes back to how Ford believed that he was stronger apart from his twin and how he’s been trying to enforce that belief on Dipper. And like what happened to him earlier, that’s what sends everything up shit creek. Also if you still think Mabel’s being selfish for trying to keep Dipper with her, remember that he never thought to even ask her first, plus there couldn’t even be a worse time to do that after the day she’s had. That’s why, though Gravity Falls works as two seasons, I wish there was more time for Mabel to forge a more meaningful connection to Ford so he sees her as more than a young girl version of Stan and wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss her feelings. Does that mean we should blame Ford and Dipper for unleashing hell? It’s not entirely fair to say yes, but there’s still some blame to go around. Ford manifested his own hangups with his sibling on to Dipper and Mabel’s relationship, and obviously that backfired big time. And if Dipper had truly trusted his sister to tell her about the rift, there’s a greater chance they could have avoided all of this. And why couldn’t Stan and Ford have agreed to keep Mabel in Gravity Falls as well as Dipper, maybe have her attend high school with her friends, or even better, have Ford educate her alongside Dipper since she’s proven she was capable of handling herself in “The Last Mabelcorn” among other standout moments? But in the end, it all comes down to one person – Bill. We all know he’s been manipulating people and events from the very beginning in ways that not even Ford could have prevented. Bill himself declared upon being freed from his dimension that his coming was prophesied centuries ago, and you can’t escape prophecies. I’d say watch this just to get an idea of character progression and how the next episode begins with that terrifying as hell ending. Otherwise, it’s one I’m not afraid to skip.
And the Internet Went:
End Credits Craziness: An abandoned flyer for Dipper and Mabel’s birthday bash fluttering in the wind while there are thunderclaps, sirens and screams of terror in the distance.
Callbacks: Grenda’s pet iguana makes it first appearance since “Double Dipper”. Grenda’s also in a relationship with Marius after the events of “Northwest Mansion Mystery”. Mabel’s scrapbook photos include moments from “Legend of the Gobblewonker” – Mabel’s fishing hat from the same episode can be seen on her bedpost – and the petting zoo short. Several chewed pens are in Dipper’s backpack, alluding to his habit from “Society of the Blind Eye”. Dipper references his possession by Bill and being wrong about Stan’s portal when admitting his past mistakes. Mabel is still holding on to one of Mermando’s messages in a bottle and a Sev’ral Timez banner she has draped around her model of the Mystery Shack. There’s a picture of Mabel and Waddles from “The Land Before Swine” in their room. The UFO keychain from “Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons” and the Hide-Behind short makes a reappearance. Blendin was one of Bill’s choices for possession as seen in the credits of “The Last Mabelcorn”.
Crowning Line of Hilawesomeness:
Mabel SWatch (Sweater Watch): Salmon with a birthday cupcake and sprinkles on the sleeves.
Dear Princess Celestabelleabethabelle:
Where’s that wacky triangle at?
BILL IS LOOSE, REPEAT, BILL IS LOOSE! ALL HOPE IS LOST, WE’RE ALL DOOMED!!
Well, Weirdmageddon is upon us, but that’s not stopping me from doing what I set out to do. Join me in February when I take a break from Gravity Falls to prepare for the end times and go back to doing movie reviews, starting with one that’s a year overdue –
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing, Shelf?!”
I was – BILL?!
“Who’d you expect, Mickey Mouse?”
B-but I’ve been working on the movie reviews I missed back in ’16 this whole time! They’re practically ready to go up right now! I can still publish them!!
“Sorry, too late for that! Or have you forgotten about our little deal we made back when you started this blog?”
Deal? We never made a deal!
“That’s what everyone who doesn’t read the site guidelines says! When a publisher misses their routine, they answer to ME! You wanted a way to write reviews without showing your face. If you missed three, I’m free! Those are the rules, babe!”
You control WordPress? Huh, I took you for more of a Twitter or Deviantart kind of demon.
“Toots, those places were messed up long before I got there! Prepare to be – “
Wait a sec, you said you’re free if I miss three reviews. I only missed two!
“That’s where the Weirdmageddon Clause comes in: when it rolls around, ANYTHING GOES!!”
No, no!! Up is down! Black is white! Plants are eating animals! The Youtube comments section is a source of reasonable discourse! HELP!!
“Aw, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, Shelf! I’ve noticed throughout these reviews how much you love Mabel. So here -“
“BE MABEL!!”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGJGFPIHSFPHEGPNGO”IHW{RIN W(RHW”HR )WRHWR(_EWRH OUGW3 Q*)t798 n012t3259y80egroutw9wrqoiHJBVIGWKUGDUIF –
L’P EDFN, DQG WKLV WLPH WKLQJV ZLOO EH GLIIHUHQW.
Up On The Shelf 
This is an intriguing review, even though I must respectfully disagree with your final assessment on this episode. Personally speaking, this episode is my favorite of the entire show – yes, I love it even more than “Not What He Seems” (although I will cede the two episodes are tied in quality).
As far as Mabel’s plot in this episode is concerned, I look at it less in the lens of summer and more in the broad lens of life. Her idealism has been chipped away over the course of the summer, and what happened in this episode was one last attempt to keep that blissful optimism alive… only for it to be rebutted at every turn. Her life is tearing at the seams, and her decision at the end of the episode is one last gamble. That it blew up in her face, to me, is the height of tragedy.
Meanwhile, Dipper himself was unaware of the day that Mabel had before breaking the news. And he does have this weirdness when it comes to trusting Mabel – I think it fits into his character quite well, as far as his own hang-ups regarding his twin and his lingering desire to strike out on his own rather than be joined at the hip. Ford, meanwhile, seemed to project his own hang-ups regarding Stan onto Dipper, and that may have very well swung his decision.
I think it all builds into the tragedy that while Bill was the mastermind behind the apocalypse at the end, nobody living within the Mystery Shack gets out without at least some blame. It was the perfect storm of playing on Dipper’s desire for maturity, Mabel’s desire for an endless childhood, Ford’s aloofness, and Stan’s brashness all coming together to play into a madman’s hands. That last shot, in particular, left my jaw agape the first time I saw it.
To me, “Dipper and Mabel Vs. The Future” encompasses everything I love about Gravity Falls, and is the culmination of every episode – yes, even “Not What He Seems” – that aired before it.
Of course, that’s just my personal take on the episode. And I will cede that maybe another half-season or season would’ve improved the (already phenomenal) character dynamics.
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This episode’s definitely a polarizing one, and I confess to mixed feelings, too.
The big problem, for me, is that it mostly exists as a lead-in for the finale, rather than something that stands on its own terms. The actual plot is forgettable: after interdimensional dream demons, jerk unicorns and Gremloblins, how interesting are aliens? Plus watching Mabel experience an endless, daylong parade of slights and traumas is not only painful to watch, but seems contrived to get her to a place where she might trade the world for a promise of happiness. Not that they hadn’t been hinting towards it since Ford’s return, but this still seemed rushed, like Hirsch tried cramming half a season worth of character development into one episode.
That said, the last five minutes are compelling and powerful as the different plot strands and character arcs culminate in tragedy. Mabel’s confrontation with Dipper, and her last scene with Bill, are heartbreaking stuff, and the ending is mesmerizing in its shocking horror. It’s also great to see Ford’s less-than-great character traits driving a wedge between the twins and leading to the world’s demise. (People who blame Mabel for what happened here are, I think, not good at paying attention.) Still, you have to get through fifteen minutes of meh to get there.
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So sorry, it took me this long to read this. This was a pretty good review. While I like the conflict in her, it is still sad seeing Mabel so depressed. But at least, it leads to one of the best finales ever.
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