Speculation on Finn's Perception of Princess Bubblegum in "Don't Look" (Adventure Time)

In the episode “Don’t Look,” Finn gets cursed by magic eyeballs that transform anybody he looks at into what Finn perceives that person to be. When he gazes upon Princess Bubblegum, she transforms into a teenage boy heartthrob! Finn seeing Princess Bubblegum as a super attractive teen boy is really interesting and also quite perplexing (Finn’s cry of "I'm not a psychiatrist!" is quite applicable). On my first viewing, I had actually misheard PB, and thought she said “teen boy’s heartthrob,” whic

h would imply Finn still has lingering feelings for her while also establishing that Finn has a thing for tomboys. But that is definitely not what PB says. [Princess Bubblegum: "Teen boy heartthrob it is.”] Teen boy heartthrob – as in a teen boy who is a heartthrob, not the heartthrob of a teen boy. I mean, I had (and still have) a thing for tomboys myself, but in a general all-encompassing sense, that’s not really the standard for a teen boy’s desire. It’s pretty clear (after you’ve gotten over

the initial shock of the scene) that PB did turn into a boy. So my thoughts on what this could mean: One interpretation is that this transformation reflects that Finn has moved beyond his old crush on Bonnibel. Finn now sees PB as “one of the guys” so to say. But why a really dreamy and attractive guy? That aspect of it might represent the careful balancing act Finn is mentally undergoing. First crushes don’t break easily, and it’s normal for slight lingering feelings to remain for who knows ho

w long. While Finn no longer sees PB as somebody to romantically pursue, it’s not like he can forget about the magnetic attraction and the sensuality he felt for her in the past, so this manifests as Bonnie not just being a boy, but a boy heartthrob. Finn basically turned her into, for a lack of a better term, a bishounen character, which is briefly defined as “a young man whose beauty and sexual appeal transcends the boundary of gender or sexual orientation.” An alternative potential explanatio

n is that PB’s appearance is representative of the immature hyper-desire that young girls inexperienced with sexuality can form for members of boy bands or for other teen boy heartthrobs. This overblown dramatic infatuation (which Finn’s crush is really comparable to – down to the pictures and everything) can be hard to 100% recover from, even as one is maturing away from adolescence. Due to the differences in how sexuality is marketed toward budding teenagers based on their sex, there is not a

comparable phenomenon for teen girl heartthrob that captures the same spectrum of feelings, so perhaps this is why PB transformed into a boy. This interpretation would mean Finn’s attraction to Princess Bubblegum has still not been extinguished; the fire within still burns. Although perhaps both of these interpretations I’ve outlined exist in a limbo inside Finn’s mind; there is a self-realization that the crush is in the long-distant past, but those feelings Finn was subject to still never full

y died down. There is also a more general layer of meaning to Bonnie’s transformation that I absolutely adore. Princess Bubblegum, as we all should know by now, shoulders an immense amount of responsibility overlooking the Candy Kingdom and the state of the citizens in it. Finn is constantly getting called over to help PB with matters of managing the kingdom, and even in this very episode we have Bonnie trying to decide between two very adult-looking suits for a public awareness speech. [Princes

s Bubblegum: “Boss next door or hot president?] But despite all this, despite the burden PB carries, and Finn frequently partaking in jobs and quests to ease that burden, Finn sees PB as this laid-back sandal-wearing hot teen boy. It's so counter-intuitive to how Bonnie often acts and the many duties she performs; a major component of PB’s identity is that of an overworked ruler with control issues. But Bonnie as we see her in episodes like "Pajama War," where she takes a break from her endless

work and shows her more relaxed and vulnerable side, this is the Princess Bubblegum that Finn actually sees all the time. And there’s something particularly sweet and delicate about that. Out of all the transformations Finn caused, Bonnie’s depiction was easily my favorite due to its multi-layered complexity and all the tender implications that it packs. To hear my thoughts on the rest of this awesome episode, check out my review of “Don’t Look." I lambasted Finn for behaving like his biological

father before Finn had even met Martin.