When a Protagonist Never End Up With Anyone
Wherever a cartoon presents romance, they will always have the protagonist ending up with someone
Phineas and Isabella and many, many more
However, there are only two cartoons where they have their protagonists not ending up with a major character that they formed a very close bond with, but never form a romantic relationship and or had dated but ended up breaking up and they don’t even get back together, and they are
Finn Mertern from Adventure Time
Mordecai from Regualr Show
Those shows took more of a realistic approach to romance by having it be more complicated than two people loving each other. It didn’t shy away from being messy and showing the audience that love isn’t simple, it requires a lot of work and that’s something you don’t see a lot in cartoons, especially in kid cartoons. Throughout the whole series, they were chasing after a girl for a long time, trying their hardest to be with them but failed, leading them heartbroken.
Although they were heartbroken for not getting the girl they wanted, they have their best friends to cheer them up
Jake searches a new love interest for Finn for Princess Bubblegum is way too old for him
After Margret declines on becoming Mordecai boyfriend and leaves for univserity, Mordecai becomes depress, but his friends help him get out of that funk and actually did cheer him up.
They did at one point had a love interest before, but they messed it up.
Mordecai couldn’t decide to either be with Margret or C.J, so he decided to confess and break up with C.J during his friend’s wedding.
Finn manipulates Flame Princess by using her to fight Ice King for his own weird satisfying dream. When he told her the truth, they broke up
Thankfully, after a long time thinking of what they have done, they decided to make up with them
Mordecai and Margaret decided to stay as just friends
Finn finally realizes what he did was wrong and finally reconciles to Flame Princess, and her response was he grew up. They didn’t go back together but stayed as friends.
And then the boldest moves I’ve seen is they both ended with other people
While it would’ve been nice to have the characters ending up with their first-ever romantic relationship, but it shows them they finally moved on and had matured.
Regular Show and Adventure Time did what cartoons won’t do and is that having their protagonist not ending up with any other major character. It’s a good message to tell children, teens, and even adults that you’ll never end up with the person you share a close connection or having a romantic relationship doesn’t guarantee will last forever and that’s fine. It’s important to tell the viewers that and it’s something that I hope cartoons will do more in the future.
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