Adventure Time (S01E17)

Episode #017
'When Wedding Bells Thaw'
Season 1, Episode 17

The Ice King shows up at Finn and Jake's treehouse to announce his engagement, and asks them to throw him a bachelor party as his last hurrah before giving up on kidnapping princesses forever. They comply as Ice King begins to doubt whether or not to give up his kidnapping ways, and the true nature of his relationship with the princess comes to light.

Of all the episodes featuring Ice King in the first season of the show, this one would have to be the most sinister and vilifying. The set-up is innocent enough as Ice King appears to finally be prepared to get married to a princess and settle down, and coyly asking Finn and Jake for a party and to come to his wedding makes it seem like it would just be a fun romp. But in the end when it's revealed that Ice King has given the princess a cursed engagement ring that has trapped her soul and he can now force her to marry him against her will as she is doomed to live out her life inside her own eyes but incapable of escaping or returning to her natural form...yeah, it turns a little darker than it seemed at the start. And, honestly, it's this kind of twisted psychosis that keeps Ice King interesting: his ability to switch back and forth between being a harmless, ineffectual villain and being so sick and twisted. It's a mostly light episode with a weird finale. I liked it, but it's a little too off-putting for me to really love -- in spite of the episode's relative levity.