That’s because unlike Adventure Time, which began as a fun kids’ show and later backed out a rich backstory, Gravity Falls had its history and revelations planned from the beginning. (Clocking in at only two seasons, it had to). And it sprinkled its first season and a half with clues, much like the secret codes it hid throughout.
And just like the codes can be broken with the right cipher, the show can be interpreted in a whole new light with the lens of the backstory, revealing a much darker and more tragic narrative.
The most obvious example of this is the episode “Headhunters” in which Mabel makes a life-sized wax figure that looks uncannily like Stan. When Stan first sees it he’s shocked and horrified, but pretty soon he starts bonding with it. After it’s decapitated, he calls the police to report its murder, and then has a full funeral for it, running out of the middle of his eulogy in tears.
At the time (this is the third episode, mind you), this all reads like an extended joke. Stan is a vain weirdo who loves himself so much he becomes best friends with a statue of himself. He overreacts to its appearance and its “death” because he’s in a kids’ show, and overreacting is funny. It plays seamlessly, and there’s no reason to suspect anything more.
But with the revelation of the backstory, the episode becomes something else entirely, and probably the saddest in a series of heartbreaking reinterpretations. Stan is overcome when he sees the statue not because it looks like him, but because it looks like his identical twin, Ford, and he bonds with it because it’s his first chance in decades to spend time with his brother, who used to be his best and only friend.
It’s the funeral that’s the worst. Stan has been trying for 30 years to get the portal running again, but despite his best efforts, he’s gotten no closer to bringing his brother back. Worst of all, he’s not even certain he can. As far as he knows, Ford died 30 years ago. And even if he’s alive, the likelihood that he’ll ever see him again is dwindling by the year.
This funeral is, in a very real sense, Stan’s acceptance that his brother is gone. It’s a chance for him to grieve normally for his death in a way that he can understand, a means of processing his loss more naturally.
It’s beautifully tragic, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have made it on the air if that context had existed at the time.
Another episode that can be completely reread is “The Legend of the Gobblewonker,” in which Stan desperately wants Dipper and Mabel to go fishing with him on his boat, the Stan O’ War. The kids ditch him to go monster hunting, and Stan spends the day trying to find someone else to bond with, with less than stellar results.
In retrospect, of course, we know that Stan O’ War was the name of the boat Stan and Ford refurbished as teenagers. They were going to sail the world in it, until Ford decided he wanted to go to college and Stan, after accidentally sabotaging Ford’s plans, was disowned by their family. It’s the representation of Stan’s failed hopes and perpetual state of abandonment, and Dipper and Mabel left him all alone on it.
Oh no.
At the end of the day, when the kids try to apologize to Stan, he tells them he’s been having a great time: making friends, running in with the lake police, and talking to his own reflection. It’s a total throwaway at the time, but knowing what we know, that reflection line is very telling.
It’s safe to assume that in between all the silliness, Stan found a little bittersweet peace looking at his own face in the water and pretending his brother was there with him, finally sailing the world like they always dreamed.
Oh NO.
Are these just coincidences? Or, to give the show a bit more credit, inconsequential elements that were retroactively given meaning? It’s a tempting assumption, but not likely. For every early scene that can be reinterpreted, there are just as many deliberate, indisputable hints.
In the first season, we see Stan find Ford’s glasses and stare at them longingly. We see Stan’s license plate, which reads STNLYMBL despite the fact that his name is supposedly Stanford. And we see a conspicuous two-person swingset (with one swing broken) in his subconscious.
Heck, we even see Ford, when Dipper and Mabel accidentally travel back in time to when he lived in the Mystery Shack. (There’s no better mechanism for hiding the truth in plain sight than identical twins).
In fact, the clues were so carefully and pointedly placed, and the spirit of mystery solving so encouraged, that fans developed and fiercely championed the secret twin theory long before it was actually revealed. (And other fans championed against it, making for some fun debunking videos from the time).
It’s with Ford’s introduction (only ten episodes from the end of the series) that everything changes. We get the cipher of the backstory to reinterpret past episodes, it’s true, but at the same time the present becomes much less cryptic and much less silly.
Stan becomes a legitimate character with strikingly apparent motivations and feelings. He’s jealous of Ford, whom the rest of the family so easily admire, and he’s devastated, because even though he spent 30 years bringing him back, Ford still resents him, refuses to thank him, and is in fact evicting him from the Mystery Shack.
All of a sudden, with the presence of an equal with a shared history, Stan’s characterization becomes clear as day. And the reasons for the things he does — running for mayor, taking the kids away on a road trip, declaring himself the chief of the Mystery Shack — make perfect sense. For the final stretch of episodes, Stan is no longer the funniest character in a comedy. He’s the unappreciated hero in a tragedy, who feels marginalized in his own home.
And the young audience is already in too deep to question it.
But very importantly, Gravity Falls treats its young viewers with respect, and with a lot of trust. It never gives the impression of tricking kids into seeing something they shouldn’t… just tricking their parents into letting them see something they might not be allowed to.
This respect goes for the characters in the show, as well. Crucially, Dipper and Mabel aren’t ignorant. They don’t know the truth about their uncles’ past not because they can’t figure it out, but because everyone thinks they’re too young to be told. This makes for another perfectly natural way to disguise the show’s darker elements, dealing out the more shocking and mature reveals piecemeal, as the adults try to protect the kids.
Related Topics: Disney, Gravity Falls
