Gravity Falls (2012) - Weirdmageddon: Take Back the Falls (Season 2, Episode 20)

I'm Alex Hirsch, and this is the last commentary. I'm Rob Ranzetti. Yes, this is the last commentary. That's correct. I'm Jason Ritter, and this is the second commentary. No, it's the last commentary. It's the last episode, guys. I feel like, you know, people are going to miss these commentaries. They're going to be like, give us a third season of commentaries. Or what, a blank screen? If you've made it all the way through all of our anecdotes and rambling and patting ourselves on the back and complaining about how it was hard to write stuff. I applaud you. Thank you. Here's some more. For joining us. Here's 44 minutes more of it. Get ready for the longest one of them all. So, yeah, this is Weirdmageddon Part 3, Take Back the Falls. This episode was, as I often say, quite a challenge to write. I think, you know, I've said this before, but, you know, probably the hardest challenge in television is to write a pilot because you're convincing people to fall in love. And the second hardest challenge is to create a finale because you are trying to break up with the person that just fell in love with you. And you're trying to do it in a way that they don't completely hate you if possible. Yeah. Rob, what are your sort of memories of the early days of discussing the culmination of the story and the different directions we went? I remember we couldn't fit it into a normal episode. That was why it ended up being 44 minutes. I mostly remember the struggle between ending Weirdamageddon and then the issue of whether we were going to have an episode after that. That would include the kids leaving Gravity Falls because that was really the hardest thing to do was to come up on the episode, a storyline after this was over because this really is the end of the story. It culminates the emotional arcs of all the main characters. And that's accurate. There was originally we imagined that there was going to be, you know, because it's so hard to end something and because it's so hard to do it in a way that's satisfying. We thought, what are all the things we can do to be satisfying in this ending? Let's have it be a multi-part ending. Let's have it be a three-part ending. Let's have it be the biggest action and biggest weirdness we've ever seen. Let's bring back all the characters. Let's culminate the turns in the relationships between Dipper and Mabel and Stan and Ford. let's see Bill at his craziest let's make it the most comedy the weirdest action the most violent and one of the things we thought of was maybe one way to make it satisfying would be to have a real protracted denouement, right? Let's have a full episode's worth of just goodbyes essentially, and so we planned it was going to be weird one, weird two, weird three and then some kind of goodbye story and we didn't know what that story would be. I remember something vaguely about some sort of other time travel bringing Blenden back because we kind of just lost, you just kind of vamoosed in the middle of this big story. Well, yeah. The challenge was thinking about maybe going back to the first day there was that discussed, like time traveling back to the first day when the kids arrived. Yeah. Well, the challenge was thinking of a valuable arc, right? Yeah. So like each episode needs to have like a new problem and a new resolution. Right. And I was trying to brainstorm what's something that could feel valuable for like a final, final episode after the apocalypse, after Stan's mind has been erased and he's in the process of getting it back. And the thing, I remember I wrote one out. It was like, it's the last day of school. It's the last day of summer. Dipper and Mabel are packing. They're planning to go home. They're feeling like nostalgic, like they kind of don't want to leave. And Blendin shows up and he explains that there's all these time bubbles left over, these weird anomalies because of all the time business and what Bill has done. And just to watch out and be careful. And that Dipper and Mabel actually accidentally trip into one of these bubbles and are sent back to the very first episode. Or actually, an episode we haven't seen. Beyond the first episode. Their first day in Gravity Falls, and somehow this was meant – their character arc was to go from being a little sad about missing – that they're going to leave Gravity Falls to seeing what it was like on the first day when they were scared to be in Gravity Falls. The idea is their first day, they're like, oh, Uncle Stan, he's this weird old man, and we hate living in this house, and we miss our place of comfort back home, and this is a kind of scary new adventure that we don't like. and the kids see their own growth and realize like, oh, the way we felt about going to Gravity Falls, like we don't think we can handle it is how we feel about leaving. Like that feeling of going into a new experience means that something new and exciting is going to happen. You're going to grow. Like that was the broad idea. And there was some thought that maybe over the course of that episode, Stan would get his memory back and something that the kids had done in the past would help him in the present get his memory back. But it just was slippery. It never quite worked. We couldn't quite crack it. I remember the writers had pitched a totally different idea that involved like the clones. Remember Dipper 3 and 4 coming back? It was like, oh, how about the final episode is Dipper 3 and 4, knock out Dipper and want to go back in instead and be Dipper. Oh my gosh. And they're like, you know, as always, no lack of great ideas and funny ideas and interesting ideas. But it never quite made sense. It never quite fit. And while we were struggling with it, we also noticed that this episode number three was almost the length of two episodes. Yeah. And we weren't going to be able to do justice unless we made it longer. Right. So the decision was made, okay, we're going to take that sort of seven minutes worth of denouement from that concept that we never actually wrote. Right. And have it be the end of this episode. Yeah. Which I think was a necessary choice because we couldn't cut this story down and we couldn't plump that one up. Right. The one lingering, I think, negative from that choice is that, and I think it was necessary given the choice we had to make, but I think there's some audience members who watch this episode and they feel, well, Stan's memory came back awful quick. Yeah, I knew you were going to say that, and I felt the same way, and I feel that is the only weak part of this, which is that we had to rush that a little bit. In my mind, if I could have made one adjustment, I would have made it clear, and I'm not sure it is clear. we tried to explain it in the journal what's supposed to be happening here isn't that Stan's entire memory reappears in an instant it's supposed to be a couple days of work and we're kind of it's it's we see the beginning of that process when he looks at the um scrapbook yeah and then we're kind of jumping ahead a few days uh you know maybe a week of just like intensive memory therapy with Stan before he gets there right um and there's scenes that we wrote out and started to board out sort of suggesting that and again just couldn't do it for time well and also like when we were trying to crack the half hour episode after weird mcgetton it felt like we were just kind of wallowing in stan not having his memory it was a very depressing didn't get to have stan for the last episode which was also like it's a great it's great i think you get the emotion what you want out of the emotion of it like in this episode it tears you apart when you see it you could last a little bit longer on it but going much longer then you just feels like well what are we doing? We're just kind of wallowing in our own sorrow for no good reason. To me it lasted exactly as long as it needed to. I got emotional watching it and then there was a minute where you think oh it's not actually going to get better. And so it lasts past that first little moment of denial for me and then I was very happy I wanted him back. That is so terrible. The smiley face on the US. Well, and I think, you know, like, Gravity Falls is a show that's always meant to have a bittersweet feeling to it. And I think everyone has a different personal barometer on their ratio of bitter to sweet. Yeah. You know, I love these characters so much that, for me, I was like, I want to— What was valuable to me and was sort of a trump card in making these decisions was, I need to see Stan saying goodbye to the kids at that bus. Of course. And I don't want him to be some guy who isn't Stan, who doesn't even remember the kids. Half Stan, yeah. That would be really dramatic. It might make you cry more. but to me it doesn't actually mean anything. Yeah. Like their relationship, which they've built, he was, you know, he was willing to sacrifice his memories to save them. That's how much they meant to him. But because he was willing to do that, I think he deserves to get them back. I agree. I want to take this moment to say, I really love post-apocalyptic Toby determined. One of those characters you don't know what to do with. And you say, let's just, let's just do something weird. I just love, you know, There are those people who are waiting for the apocalypse to let their true color shine. And Toby Determined is one of them. I think Toby is the person who got the most out of Weird Big Ed. He came out a better man somehow. Exactly. I guess he couldn't come out much worse. One of my favorite things about Seuss is that he is a pop culture savant. And so he's the one who usually hangs a lampshade on obvious references. You know, Seuss talking about like, oh, we have much to discuss about anime, old man McGucket. Like, we felt like the Shaq is sort of a character in the show, and if all the characters are fighting back, the Shaq being part of that, building this Shaq-Tron would be a really fun, big conclusion. I remember we had a number of gags that more specifically made fun of Pacific Rim in this. We're like, it was, Gucket's like explaining the thing. He's like, all right, and the only way the biometric brain machine works is if two twins control it with their minds concurrently. And Dipper and Mabel were like, why would you build a machine like that? It seems incredibly complicated. He's like, yeah, don't think about it too hard. You'll ruin the whole thing. And then I learned Guillermo del Toro was a big fan. I was actually a little grateful that we cut some of the gags that kind of went hard on Pacific Rim. I do love that Seuss's love of anime helps save the day. this is we try in these stories to if we can give every character some kind of hero moment and you know if sort of weird one is all about is all about sort of a dipper and Wendy's hero moment and weird two is kind of this sort of group hero moment and you know like Mabel standing up to her own fantasies you know this episode is supposed to show the town's hero moment and you've got each character having their bit but also Stan and Ford of course yeah this Oh, and more Stan than Ford, right? More Stan, yeah, actually. Even though we sort of do a misdirect, we think Ford's going to be the big hero. This whole time is about them wanting to save Ford and Stan feeling really put off about it. I just noticed that Dipper has a W neck. Wow. You guys brought that back. That's deep. I think you're seeing more than is there, Jason, but thank you. No, it's just a little tear, but you know. It works. Pay attention to it. You see, you've got to watch the show closely, carefully. Our artists did a phenomenal job on this episode. I mean, we've just breezed by a bunch of standout sequences. I believe Sabrina Coutinho did a lot of the I think a lot of this scene I think the pyramid scene was I think that was by Luke We had Dana Terrace storyboarded I think a lot of the opening with them in the shack Just really great memorable moments Who did the Building the Shacktron montage I think that was a lot of people working on it because that went through a lot of changes. Bill singing We'll Meet Again was something that just felt like the perfect reference because this is kind of an ending about endings in a lot of ways. and we know Bill's leaving. We know that Bill's going to be defeated as the writers of this story. And we know that people like Bill and have grown attached to him. And for him to sing Will Meet Again is sort of the perfect mysterious way to say, like, I might be going, I might not be going. Right. You know? I only recently realized that that was a song not written for Gravity. Really? Wow. You must think well of us. I did. I was like, that's catchy. It's also a reference to Dr. Strangelove, a movie that famously ends with nuclear apocalypse and the song Will Meet Again. So it's, for those pop culture savvy, it's already tinged with a kind of fear and an irony and the apocalypse built in. So it's perfect on a number of levels. Hey, do you hear that? What? I just fixed that door. When did you guys decide and was it hard to, like, did you get any pushback on, you know, taking the time to do a new opening credit sequence. I think it was something that I think everybody thought that's going to be really hard. And then one of our artists storyboarded out, I think Sunil. And when people saw it, they're like, we're doing like, it's so great. Once you've seen it, it's just so cool. It's so cool. They were, you're right. Yeah. I remember they were a little skeptical. They're like, it's, this is already really hard, but then they saw it. I think we put it in an animatic screening and they're like, Oh yeah, we got to do this. And I mean, most of it was done. Almost all of it. Well, no, that's, We did send some of the animation overseas, but a lot of it was done by Ian. Yeah, a lot of our in-house team really put in the extra hours. It's so great. It really is like everything is different. Speaking of extra effort, we have to give a shout-out to Rough Draft Los Angeles for doing the Shaktron 3D animation. They did an amazing job. Yeah. Oh, yeah. CG stuff like this, when it's sort of this elaborate and it's not part of the regular pipeline, is very difficult. and we made a concerted effort to reach out to the local team of Rough Draft and really work with them closely to try to make this stuff look good and satisfying because on TV budget, this stuff can look very rough, and we really wanted it to live up to the great work that our design and board team had done. Yeah, I mean, there was no way we were going to be able to animate this. I guess we could have done it in 2D, and there's a couple scenes that are 2D, but it's so complicated, and you really want to make it. It looks so great. It does. They did a great job. I've got to give a shout-out to also our composer Brad Breek doing this awesome, like hard rock cover of the Gravity Falls. Just, you know, Gravity Falls is always a mix between the normal and the weird, and this is as weird as we ever get. Everyone incoming. That, like, you know, everyone's using the Shaktron. She just does some leaps and some wing pulling and some eye shooting. The animation on this scene is completely out of this world. Oh, yeah, this is so great. This scene used to be way, way longer, we had board artists do lots and lots of fighting with shacks and monsters through the city and just again there are certain time restrictions that we had to follow so we hoped we get a little taste of the chaos yeah it feels it feels about right it feels about right so I'd say you know one of the biggest challenges of this sort of three-part apocalypse was it had originally actually been conceived as I did have some discussions I'm not sure if I talked to you about this Rob but with with the channel about can we make the whole thing all three parts just one actual proper movie yeah no I remember I remember the discussion of that because I knew that certain parts set up other parts and I didn't want them to be separated and their comment was yeah we could do it as one proper movie but we need to do three additional episodes to add to the season I don't know I think it works well as three episodes I mean now here we are what through two years three years later from when this aired and you know binge watching is the order of the day 100% so the idea that like you can't tell a big story if it's not all presented at one time is kind of obsolete yeah it is nice that we get to concentrate basically on one set of character story arcs at a time whereas in a movie we would have been interlacing all these different character character stories and having them all come to fruition at the same time, which we had discussed and kind of had roughly mapped out. We tried to see how it might work, but I'm really happy with the scale and the chaos and ultimately sort of the conclusion and choices of these characters. Mm-hmm. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh! Man, it looks even worse up close. I found great Uncle Ford. He's golden, but not in the good way. Great. Grab him and let's get out of here. But how are we going to unfreeze them? I don't know. I think originally this was a little bit more like he was like Salacious Crumb to Jabba. He was sitting on Bill Cipher's shoulder with a chain around his neck. He was wearing a loincloth or something. I like this. I like this version. I like that his own cute shtick has been used against him. Yeah, exactly. Now even he is sick of it. He's like, oh God, I got it. This design for the throne of humans. Oh, I love that. Stephanie Ramirez, got to give her credit. Probably the most ambitious design in the history of the series. So much work went into it. This is the kind of thing that 2D animation is not meant for a throne of a million humans. That would be a lot easier in CG. But they did a great job with it. I mean, animation-wise and whatever, we had a couple rough scenes. But overall, they hit it pretty well the first time around. Here we go. Here's the most important relationship has been resolved. A little tidbit for people online. that scene where Pacifica says mom dad that used to be a little bit longer there used to be a bit more of a meal of the fact that like even though Pacifica's mom and dad are like they're not good parents they pressure her very hard like you know at the end of the day like she does love them she hopes that they are capable of better and but there was a version where she spoke longer and then I realized we had to cut it for time and it was shortened by the storyboard artist too. Blubbs literally shoves Pacifica's head out of the frame. Mom, dad. And there's like a loud like, Darlene! And it was really funny, but I remember I was watching the animatic for this episode and I was seeing some people on like Twitter just be like, oh, I really love Pacifica. I hope she, you know, I hope we get to see more of her in the finale. And I was like, Pacifica became so much more of an important character in the series than we ever imagined. Well, yeah. We reformed her too much and everybody loved her. Yeah, I know. It's like one of these things where we did more with her than anyone predicted and then people were like, yeah, but why not more though? Here's a little. that's fine here's a little that's fine here's a lot more but what about way more a prophecy although it would be a pretty fun game of hopscotch many years ago i found 10 symbols in a cave some i recognized them some i only here we get the zodiac which we had no idea what we were going to do with there was i mean to be clear there was never a plan for the zodiac the zodiac was invented as a little easter egg for the intro and the symbols were chosen more or less at random because it becomes such a symbol of the series and people cared about it. There's an outsized interest in it relative to its single frame of time on the series. And I was always a big advocate of it ending up meaning something. Not that I had a clue as to what that would be, but I remember pushing for us to try and like do something with it. And I like that. I like how we use it. Like it's a possible way to defeat Bill, but it's not the way they defeat Bill because it's just mechanical. Well, if they just all held their hands and then he went poof, it wouldn't mean anything. Right, yeah. It's like, oh, okay, well, that was easier than expected. Why didn't we do that two months ago? You know what I mean? I mean, as always, the decision always comes down to what storytelling we're working backwards from what unearths the most interesting and most important changes in our characters. So when we were having these discussions about let's have the finale include the Zodiac, the question is, okay, well, clearly it's a reference to many of our characters, and characters who've been friends and enemies. So this is the concept of the Zodiac as existing in our current canon, is this idea that the prophecy was that friends and enemies would need to come together. Seemingly impossible alliances would need to be made to stand up to Bill for this prophetic moment. And, you know, the characters like Gideon, who used to be an enemy, characters like Pacifica, characters like Robbie, that we've reached the point where thanks to the kids' kindness and growth, they are now friends with Pacifica. They've resolved Robbie's jerkiness. They've helped McGucket with his memory. they've even overcome this issue with Gideon in Weird and Again Part 1 and so it seems like friends and enemies have all been restored leaving only one thing which is Stan and Ford have to shake hands and their pride once again is what dooms the entire world oh but they get so close yeah well and it's like Stan even though he's being stubborn here and holds things up he's ready to do it he does he clasps Ford's hand And then Ford can't help but correct his ignorant brother at something that doesn't matter at all. After professing how important all this is and how important it is to put pettiness aside, he's the one who ends up being petty in the end. Yeah. Well, Stan here, Stan Pines. The original line was I said, you know, between you and me, I'm not always the bad twin. and then Ford said, between you and I, and then Rob Ranzetti here said, that's wrong grammar. Yeah, we had to reverse it. Oh, really? Yeah, between you and I is incorrect. Well, there's a real... That's right. The real life Ford is Rob. That's right. So I insisted that... And it stayed wrong for a long time through the production product. No, keep it wrong. I was like... So this is just live footage of me and Rob fighting over, I am actually not great in grammar. And Rob was like... And I was like, but it sounds wrong. The right one doesn't sound right for some reason. Oh, this is just too perfect. Didn't you brainiacs know the Zodiac doesn't work if you don't all hold hands? And what's better, you've brought every threat to my power together. The one way I was able to get the channel to agree to letting me make this an extra long episode was that if they could chop it in half on reruns. But there was some kid who only saw this episode the first half, and then it went to credits, and he thought that was the end. he thought the end was Bill shows up because it was called Weird Mageddon 3 well you got yeah you're done you're done for and like you know the parent was like oh so how was the ending and he's like I guess they all just lost and yeah did they call this the fourth half hour Weird Mageddon 4 when they split them up I think they called it they wanted a new title for me I think they called it Somewhere in the Woods yeah that's right the subtitle that I gave the sort of clipped second half I'm hoping that kid eventually saw the real end. I'm hoping he did. It's been years. Save your family. Last chance. Tell me how to take Weirdmageddon Global and I'll spare the kids. No, don't do it. Yeah, building's bad deals. Don't you toy with me, shooting star. I see everything. Ow. Not again. Why? A lot of those symbols was very obvious who would be who, but then we had to make some choices late in the game. Wendy had been associated with two scenes involving ice in Blenden's, no, Time Traveler's Pig and Inconveniencing. So that seemed appropriate. Stan could have been the... You mean Stanford? Stanford could have been the glove or the six-fingered hand or the spectacles. Or the spectacles. And we felt like nobody else could be the six-fingered hand. And then McGucket could be the spectacles. He does end up putting on glasses. when he gets more intelligent, so that felt appropriate. Pacifica is the llama was just she was left over. One of our writers, Jeff Rowe, had this great line about llamas are famously... It was something about them being like they have long blonde hair, they're beautiful, but they're stubborn and they spit or something. Some line about how to make a Pacifica. This scene is pretty scary. It is really scary. Jason, how did you feel when you actually... Because we're deep in the trenches. Because when you watched all this for the first time, what was your reaction? I was blown away. I mean, because I had heard about, I had read about all these things that happened, but the specific visuals were so beautiful and incredible, and I was so into it. And I also, it's such a funny process because by the time it aired, I had forgotten a lot of the plot points. So I was sort of on the ride with everybody in the audience for it. And I did not remember how they got out of this predicament with the twin switch. I'm just curious, as a voiceover actor, when you're watching Dipper, do you recognize it as your voice? Or do you get lost and just think that's Dipper and disassociate from the voice performance? Or does that, or does that, you kind of ride the line? I sort of ride the line. Yeah, there is a, you know, it's strange to hear your own voice coming out of another face. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's a strange thing because with any other acting job, you're sort of like, oh, I was there that day. I remember that. Yeah. So it's like, you know, this is my voice then being taken in a little bubble and being put into an entirely different universe, especially in Weirdmageddon when everything is so weird. But yeah, it is. It is. It's super bizarre. But I loved it. Because all my voices don't sound anything like me. I have less of that. I'm just like, oh, that's Stan. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But every now and then there'll be like an incidental. it's just my regular speaking voice, and I always feel briefly exposed. It suddenly feels like somebody is playing home movies from me being a kid or something. I'm like, wait, what am I doing? Get me out of there. Yeah, right. I think that's why. I think his dipper is basically my voice just a little bit higher. It's very much you. This whole sort of conclusion here is what we needed to happen in this scene was we needed pressure to be at the point where Stan and Ford recognize their lifelong rivalry, and Ford does a sincere apology to Stan. And almost more importantly, he acknowledges Stan's intelligence. He says, you wouldn't have fallen for Bill's nonsense. He recognizes that his brother has a kind of intelligence he doesn't. And I always imagined that his kids, Stan and Ford, were this dynamic duo. That they were getting into scrapes and planning pranks, and that with Stan's creativity and Ford's genius, that they were an unstoppable, awesome team before life turned them against each other. And I imagine that as kids, they were always swapping glasses and tricking their parents so that they could get double presents or whatever. And this is a move they did back in New Jersey constantly. We had to figure out, who's going to make a sacrifice and how? And even though it's Stan who agrees to be, I'll be the one, erase my mind, it's fine, it's worth it. it's a sacrifice for both. Ford, at this point, is willing to get his brother back and he has to lose him again. Both of them are just doing what they have to do here. I like that Stan is just thinking, all right, think white, think white, think white. Think living rooms. He's like, think about nothing but sitting on your lazy boy. Stan and Bill had never interacted in the series up until this moment. Oh, wow. I guess not. Because he had just been taken over. He was asleep. That was also part of this, is we'd seen a lot of Ford and Bill, but Stan and Bill has never happened. And Bill is sort of, Stan's the kind of, Bill sort of represents all the mystery and weirdness, and Stan is the guy who just wants to have a good life and protect his family. And he's the one who never invited Bill in, but he's willing to take Bill out. this whole Bill final kind of raging transforming sequence is so rad. Well this was Dana right? This was Dana again. I gotta give huge credit to this. The sequence I believe was storyboarded by Sabrina and then this part where Bill transforms where he thrashes. I always imagine that if you're a character who can transform yourself and you're being destroyed you're gonna try to transform your way out of it. We see it with the shapeshifter and bunker and And I drew a bunch of sketches of how Bill might try to build his way out of this. And Dana was willing to animate. She did that whole thing herself. Her animation is mind-blowing. And originally, actually, this was originally animated and complete, and Stan didn't punch Bill. It used to just be that Bill has this transformation, and then he's just gone. And then Stan picks up the thing. He's like, yeah, I did it. And watching that, I just had this feeling like this is Stan's hero moment. And he's about to potentially lose it all. and it doesn't feel enough like a hero moment. So we, at the last minute, added the idea that he punches Bill because it just felt more satisfying. It is very satisfying. Bill probably would have died without it, but it definitely is nice putting that exclamation point on the end of it. My theory about this, because there's a lot of folks who say, oh, well, Stan's mind was erased and Bill was in Stan's mind, but then Stan got his mind back, so then maybe he got Bill back. The way that I'm imagining this is that Bill, genuinely believing he's about to be destroyed, is trying to change in any way he possibly can and actually is invoking a very rare rule of the universe, a sort of, well, if you listen backwards to what Bill screams, he's invoking a very rare rule of the universe that is actually not sending him, it's putting him somewhere other than where we saw him. You know what I mean? He's thinking, oh, no, I'm about to melt. I'm about to die. So I'm going to invoke this desperate plea to put me somewhere else. and as a result the idea that he's I'm not sure he's necessarily still in Stan's mind what does he say backwards? you're just gonna have to play it backwards and find out okay alright you know give that stuff away for free who you talking to? come on it's me it's me but yeah I mean well there's a statue of him in the forest and this is a heartbreaking scene there certainly is a statue of him when we had discussed the idea of an episode beyond this episode you know a fourth episode it was basically 20 minutes of this scene and it was brutal yeah this is so intense you might think you want it but good lord yeah this is enough it's really intense this was all storyboarded by Dana Terrace we would often give her some of the sort of most heartbreaking scenes really good with getting the sort of pathos of the characters we like this idea of them sort of returning to the shack this familiar thing it's also hard to see Stan so kind of vulnerable. Docile. Yeah, vulnerable. Because he's such a tough, cool guy. That to see him sort of... In his own mind, yeah. Yeah. And we did a little thing with this character, which was that the Fez wouldn't sit on his head right until he started to... Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Until he started to get his memory back. Until he gets his mind back. He starts adjusting the hat and he starts looking like himself. That's very cool. Seuss kills me in this, too. Yeah. Yeah, that's the worst. I think of any of them, Seuss would have the hardest time recovering from this if Stan never came back. Yeah, because it's like Surrogate Dad, basically. It's the dad that never showed up, basically. I know my buckles in there. I think it would be hardest on Seuss, second hardest on Ford, but Seuss would show it. Probably third hardest on Mabel, fourth hardest on Dipper, just because of where their hearts are. Dipper's not heartless. I think he would feel really bad that's a testament to just how heartbroken those other characters oh yeah for sure they'd all be heartbroken so we really like this idea that Mabel's scrapbooking and her constant love of every moment her need to record every moment has this surprising necessity to it which is it has the ability to bring Stan back and in Society of the Blind Eye we see McGucket's memory begins to return by watching this old video that the way these memory rays work is they don't actually delete a memory. They deeply, deeply, deeply sublimate it. But if you're able to look at something personal enough, and particularly quickly, that the effects can begin to be reversed. Show him the chest hair! Show him the chest hair! I also like that Waddles is the first one that he recognizes. I know, I love that too. Sweet Waddles. Waddles is basically... And this is like a real thing for Alzheimer's patients. Something you don't expect. Maybe a song or a pet or something can begin to trigger a memory that might have been lost just by face conversation So this final I think it around seven minutes maybe Yeah, a little more, but yeah. All this was written, all this was something that was sort of written as a, these were ideas that we had for a potential Denny Ma episode. But we couldn't think of a story for it. Robbie's parents kill me. Yeah, they were They would love to kill you. They would love to generate new business like that. Oh, the mayor's back. Yeah, briefly. This was the last thing I wrote for Gravity Falls was all this sequence, this runner. And I have a very clear memory of being in my office and hitting period on the end of that and just feeling really, really good. It was less like, oh, no, these characters that I love, I felt like they all got to where they needed to get to. Yeah. Amazingly, those two. Including Blubbs and Durland. Blubbs and Durland somehow. Yeah. I feel like I can sort of speak to that now. I mean, this was one of these things where Blubbs and Durland were originally conceived just as best friends, as we've talked about in other episodes. And then a lot of people saw it as more. And it felt like, well, if that's the feeling, then maybe that's the conclusion they deserve. And I remember speaking to one of my board artists because I felt like he had a valuable perspective on this saying, you know, you, you seem like somebody who might be kind of close to this. Do you think that it's more respectful or less respectful for them to have this moment? Is it too silly? And, you know, I think his reply was like, I think this is, this feels true to them. Yeah. Yeah. And it feels like they've earned it. Yeah. So that was definitely one of like listening. I'm like, let's talk to the crew. How do they feel? Is that the right, is that the right move? And everybody liked it. Here's the right move for Toby to stay in that persona. Exactly. Right next to Shonda. She might have a chance with Shonda now, honestly. Now that he's accepted his true self. Yeah. He can move out. Remember, Josh Weinstein worked on this section and a lot of this sort of concept behind these speeches and stuff. I like that Gideon's mom is smiling here. Yeah. Even she has a little upswing. Her little boy is going to try and be a better human being. Yeah, exactly. Maybe. I mean, he's going to try. In my mind, he's going to not last long. Well, yeah. I mean, he still has his two henchmen that he uses to beat up that boy that just dissed him. So, yeah. I mean, we show that it's, you know, it's a work in progress. Dude, make a wish, dog. You know, on my first day here, if you had asked me what I wanted, I would have said adventure, mystery, true friends. But looking here at all of you, I realized that every wish came true. And this is kind of accurate. is like Dipper is pretty satisfied. Like, you know, he originally, he had briefly flirted with this idea of being Ford's apprentice. And I think seeing Stan and Ford and the life of just, you know, them kind of going off in their own, you know, purely selfish directions and kind of, and both being isolated, right? Ford being isolated, Stan being isolated. And that Dipper briefly had a choice to be like, I'm going to spend the rest of my life in a basement cataloging abnormal flies and moths. with an old man. It's like, maybe I need to live my life. Yeah. And also, I think he just can't stand to be away from Mabel. It takes him a while to realize it, but it's like as nuts as she drives him a lot of the time. I mean, that's really the central relationship of the show and the central relationship in his life, at least for now. And they do, you know, when the show is firing on all cylinders, they bring out the best in each other. Absolutely. And Stan and Ford, when they can finally work together, do bring out the best in each other. They just have been missing it for so long. Yeah. Yeah. I love their coda. These two brothers out on the sea, finally, together, fighting a big, crazy thing. I like that Ford has this photo with him. I know. That's sweet. I never thought about that. I mean, if you really kind of track it out, he's had that for a really, really long time. All the way through his time. Multiple dimensions. Yeah, exactly. And he's probably told himself, you know, I almost imagine if McGucket found that photo in his, you know, coat while they were working on the portal or something, he'd be like, what is this? What's this here? And Ford would say, oh, yes, that's a photo of a very important moment. That's when I first decided I wanted to be an inventor. Right. There would be no reference to the real reason he's keeping it. Exactly. If this is me and my brother, it would be like, oh, yes, I was thinking about science as a horizon, a frontier to reach towards, you know, like a boat, like a ship, like science. It's about science. Yeah. We always, I always knew what I wanted Seuss's end to be. Seuss runs the Mystery Shack. Like, to me, it's clear. Like, I imagine that Seuss is actually way better at giving tours than Stan is. Because he loves all that stuff. Yeah. Truly. And he believes it. Yeah. Like, that's part of the difference. and Stan's like, alright, suckers. This stagnant puddle is the befuddle puddle. And when Seuss is like, yeah, one time I looked in there, I think I saw like a Cyclops, dude. Like, I really think I saw one. Like, might have been a reflection combining my pupils, but people are like, whoa, really? I love all the hat swapping that happens in this episode. Fez gets passed around. Fez gets passed around, Dipper and Wendy, a little trade. Well, the first episode had hat swapping, Dipper's, you know, losing a hat, gaining a hat. No, I love it. Mabel picking up a weapon. This idea of some visual way to show a change. Well, that's the thing. You always insisted on this, Alex, in the show, and I remember we would struggle sometimes. This is a hard scene to watch. Well, let's talk about something else. The idea that there's a visual component to some kind of story point about something's going to change this summer. Dipper gets a new hat. This is his Gravity Falls hat. It's interesting that it makes sense that he leaves it behind and gets a new hat. Yeah. You know what I mean? when his Gravity Falls mission is over. But we were always struggling. We need something. We need a picture. We need a poster. We need something that is a visual signal or symbol of what's going on in this episode. And you always insisted on that when we didn't have it. If we're changing them inside, this is animation. It's a visual medium. Can we change them outside? If Mabel's going home with a pig, Dipper's going home with this symbol of his friendship with Wendy. I bet he never takes that hat off. I bet people in his new class are like, the year is that weird hat he's like don't worry about it well and even Stan he's wearing that Mabel sweater yeah yeah the visual symbol of like he's softened up he's him he's embraced family he doesn't need to be the tough guy all the time the Wendy Dipper hat swap specifically was I think I'd seen a storyboard artist had done a sketch of that just like a goofy sketch sometime during like season two is a doodle and I saw it and I was like that feels right it's cool he's like a little Holden Caulfield that's Kyle McLaughlin the The voice of Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks. With the visuals of our editor, Kevin Lacaro. Yeah, designed after our editor, Kevin. A mixture of both of those. I didn't know that. I wrote a personal letter to Kyle just saying, like, you know, Twin Peaks is such a huge influence. And, you know, Dipper and Mabel are kind of Agent Cooper's babies, you know. They're going off to a place we don't know where they're headed. And we'd like to know they're going to be in good hands. And I like the idea that, you know, Agent Cooper is taking them home. There was even a time that their their hometown is referred to as a Piedmont here Which is my hometown, but there was a draft of the pilot where I referred to their hometown as Cooper Dale Which is just Dale Cooper switched around Oh, that's so funny Welcome aboard, you can sit in the front row We wanted to see something else we wanted to see in this in this episode Is that post post mind return that Stan and Ford get along and like that's Just that scene where they both threaten the bus driver is like, just to give a hint of what would happen if their powers were combined. We've never seen them working together as adults. They would be a really formidable duo. That moment with Stan really got me emotionally going when I saw this episode. This whole last part was just like one big feeling. It's one crying jag after another. Stan and the kids is for me the most emotional part of this. Of course, and that's why it had to be last. Dana did a great job storyboarding that, and that was a tough line to read. I remember when I was writing this scene, I thought back to a lesson I had learned from Pat McHale, who's a great writer and who I worked with on Flapjack. There's an episode of Flapjack where Captain Knuckles, who's sort of a Grunkle-Standlight character, briefly seems to die and then comes back to life, and I couldn't think of a line of dialogue for him. And he's like, what if he just says, Captain, I thought you were dead? And his reply is, I'm not. I was like, oh, sometimes a little can say a lot. Like, I thought, Grunkle Stan's a tough character. He would just say, you're a nuisance. Get out of here. And clearly not mean it. That was a perfect line. Jason, you did a wonderful job of this closing monologue. I felt like the show started with Dipper's narration, and it should end with it. We should get a glimpse of where everybody wound up. Right. Stan Brothers, friends. Awesome. You know, Seuss has got this rad new life, running the Mystery Shack, his ultimate dream. With his girlfriend. It's a little coat on the seat before that And this scene is kind of an ambiguous scene To me this scene is about Two things One it's about mystery We wanted there to be a final question in Dipper's head And two It's just about like It's about endings It feels like did something just die here Is it over all these things we loved Are they just gone And that's how you feel at the end of the school year Or at the end of the summer At the end of a job At the end of a relationship and it's like endings are opportunities for beginnings and the completion of this one summer is the invitation to a whole new life full of new summers for Dipper and Mabel changed by these adventures. Fiddleford and his son have reconciled. Hanging out together. Hanging out. There was, I think, Three and four. Dipper three and four. There used to be this gag about a place called Camp Loose Ends. Dipper three and four were there and Quentin Tremblay was there. because this was thought of as a movie I sort of demanded that we do proper credits because this shows such a labor of love and everybody works so hard on it and every single name needs to be read and everybody's name runs past you so quickly at the end of a normal episode and a special shout out to and you get all these little vignettes these were storyboarded by Emmy Cisariga she did a wonderful job I just asked her give us a bunch of sweet moments with the characters and Ian Worrell our art director posited the whole thing in After Effects and it's nice to see the kids They're back safe and sound in Piedmont. Dipper's doing a crossword puzzle, as I do. Bye, everyone.