Finn the Human

This article is about the character. For the episode, see Finn the Human / Jake the Dog.

Finn
Adventure Time character
Finn
First appearance	Adventure Time (2008)
Created by	Pendleton Ward
Voiced by	Zack Shada (Pen) Jeremy Shada (Finn) Jonathan Frakes (adult)
In-universe information
Full name	Finn Mertens
Species	Human
Gender	Male
Family	Martin Mertens (biological father) Minerva Campbell (biological mother) Jake the Dog (adoptive brother) Jermaine (adoptive brother) Joshua (deceased adoptive father) Margaret (deceased adoptive mother) Charlie (niece) T.V. (nephew) Viola (niece) Kim Kil Whan (nephew) Jake Jr. (niece) Bronwyn (grandniece) Shoko (past incarnation) Stormo (shared DNA) Fern (alternate self) Jay and Bonnie (children in "Pillow World") Shermy (possibly future incarnation)
Significant other	Roselinen (wife in "Pillow World")

Finn Mertens (also known as Finn the Human) is a fictional character and the protagonist of the American animated television series Adventure Time created by Pendleton Ward. He is voiced by Jeremy Shada in most appearances. The character made his debut in the original pilot, where he was named Pen and voiced by Zack Shada, Jeremy's older brother.

Biography

Finn debuted at age 12 but aged over the course of the show, and was 17 by the series finale. Finn sets off on magical random quests around the Land of Ooo. He would gladly fight or beat up anything evil, but would not harm anything good or "neutral". Having a strong moral code, Finn swore that he would help anyone in need and often performs heroic feats to save the day; however, Finn's enthusiastic nature becomes more toned down as the series progresses, suggesting he is both maturing and developing as a character as he ages. As shown in "Memories of Boom Boom Mountain", Finn appears to have been abandoned in the woods during infancy. He had fallen onto a large leaf and lay there crying until Joshua and Margaret, Jake's parents, rescued him from the wilderness and took him in to raise him alongside Jake, who became like a brother to him. According to the episode "The Vault", Finn has had a number of past lives. In "Red Starved", it is revealed that Finn is color blind, believing that an emerald was a ruby.

In the Season 6 premiere "Escape From the Citadel", Finn has lost half of his right arm, from which a flower protruded. He later regains his arm, now as a prosthetic, in the episode "Breezy", only to lose it again in the episode "Reboot" when his grass arm transforms itself into a humanoid, sentient being. In the following episode "Two Swords", Finn gets fitted with a new robotic arm, which can transform into many different weapons.

Finn's ultimate fate is not revealed; however, the series finale "Come Along With Me" implies that the rabbit-like creature Shermy, who finds Finn's discarded prosthetic arm, is Finn's latest reincarnation. A fallen statue of Finn also appears in the episode's opening sequence, set in this future world.

Age

Finn is currently 17 years old as revealed in the season 10 episode "Seventeen". At the beginning of the series, Finn was a 12-year-old boy who is supposedly the only known human in the Land of Ooo. During the episode "Mystery Train", Finn turned 13; it has been stated that the episode's air date (March 14) is Finn's birthday. After season 3 ended, Pendleton Ward stated in an interview that Finn was 14. Finn was 15 years old in the second half of Season 5, according to Adam Muto. In the Season 6 finale, "The Comet", Finn reveals that he has reached 16 years of age. And finally, during the episode "Seventeen", Finn turned 17 years old. This means that unlike in many other cartoons where characters stay the same age and age through time skips, in Adventure Time, time passes mostly regularly (from Seasons 1 to around 5). However, at some point, the rate time passed in the show became slower and it stopped being in real-time, as Finn is only 17 by the ending instead of 20. Due to Jeremy Shada, Finn's voice actor, going through puberty, Finn's voice is noticeably deeper in the later seasons, compared to his childlike voice in the first four seasons.

Status as the last human

Until the episode "Holly Jolly Secrets", Finn was the only known human in the Land of Ooo. The cause for him being the last human is alluded to by Finn and many other characters as "The Great Mushroom War", a nuclear war that wiped out the majority of humanity. Up until the character "Susan Strong" is introduced, Finn believes that he has never met another human. When Finn encounters Susan Strong, the other members of Susan's tribe of "Hyoomen" are revealed to be mutants, and Susan's identity as a human or mutant was left ambiguous. In the episode "Beautopia", it was hinted upon that Susan may also be human, but was not confirmed at the time.

In the Season Six episode "Dark Purple", Susan's hat was taken off, revealing that she is indeed human, but with a cybernetic implant on the left side of her head. The businessmen that Finn meets in "Business Time" were once human, though they had mutated over time. In the episode "Her Parents", Lady Rainicorn's parents, Bob and Ethel, attempt to eat Finn because they thought they would never get the chance to eat one, as they believed humans were extinct. Finn's female counterpart Fionna the Human is a human living in the Land of Aaa; however, she does not actually exist, as she is a character in a fictuitous parallel universe conceived by the Ice King, when he wrote a fan fiction based upon his life and experiences with Finn and Jake. There are many other characters in the show that appear to be human but have been confirmed to be humanoids or mutants. In the episode Be More, the character Moseph "Moe" Mastro Giovanni, the creator of BMO, was once human, but to ensure his immortality, he has replaced most of his body parts with artificial ones. In the episode "Betty," Betty Grof, Simon Petrikov's former fiancée, was brought from the past into Ooo, and later in "Escape From the Citadel" Finn's father, Martin, is introduced, making Finn no longer the last human.

However, during the season 6 finale, two episodes and their events bring a return to Finn's status as the last human on Ooo. In "You Forgot Your Floaties", Betty Grof becomes Magic Man's apprentice and in return for helping Magic Man, he promised her a cure for her fiancé. Things go awry and at the end of the episode, where Betty takes Magic Man's hat, thus becoming a wizard and losing her status as a human. Additionally, in the season finale episode, "The Comet", after Finn learns of his past and declines an offer to become a higher being, his father, Martin, takes the offer and ascends to another level of being, likely bringing an end to his human form. In the episode, "Preboot", it is revealed there are other humans outside of Ooo, and at the end of "Reboot", Finn destroys Susan's cybernetic implant, making her fully human in the process.

During the miniseries "Islands", Finn's status as the last human is completely dispelled. It is revealed that centuries after the Great Mushroom War, a group of surviving humans left Ooo and moved to a chain of islands. Finn's mother, Minerva, lives on one of the islands known as Founders' Island, and was a medic in service to her society, until she uploaded her mind to a network of robots after the island was ravaged by an illness. In addition to meeting his biological mother, Finn meets an entire population of humans. Although Finn requests that the humans of the archipelago may venture out of the islands and back to Ooo, they refuse to emigrate. However, in the episode "Come Along With Me", the humans return to the land of Ooo in several ships, bringing Minerva with them.

Physical appearance

Finn is a 5-foot tall teenage human. He has blond hair, of which the length differs due to occasional haircuts. His eyes and eyebrows appear black from a distance, but according to lead character designer Andy Ristaino, his eyes are blue. He wears a white bear hat, short blue pants, and a light blue T-shirt. He also has a green backpack, black shoes, and socks rolled down to his ankles. Finn is missing several teeth because they often face monsters that hit him in the face, also he often bites rocks and other hard objects. In the episode "The Enchiridion!" it can be seen for a moment that his left eye is green while his right eye is blue as if he has heterochromia. However, Andy Ristaino confirmed that this was a "special occasion" and that in fact, both eyes are light blue.

In "Escape from the Citadel", Finn lost his right arm after it was pulled off after an attempt to reach his father, which was then coated by the blood of a Citadel Guardian that made it grow into a small flower. He later got his arm back in the episode, "Breezy," where the flower stub matured into a tree and broke away like a cocoon, revealing a new limb. In the seventh season finale, "Reboot", Finn lost it once more when his grass arm tries to attack Susan and transforms into a sentient grass being called Fern the Human. Starting with the eighth-season premiere, "Two Swords", Finn has been fitted with a new robotic arm by Princess Bubblegum. In "Come Along With Me", when entering GOLB's mouth, his robotic arm is snapped off. It is unknown whether he was fitted with a new arm or remained an amputee.

According to the fifth-season episode "Dungeon Train:, Finn is about 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall. In the 23rd episode of the sixth season, The Pajama War, it is seen that he has grown considerably, being almost as tall as Princess Bubblegum, who, biologically, is many years older than Finn, however, his height can vary between episodes due to different animators. In "Elements, Part Five: Slime Central" Finn states that his shoe size is size 10.

Costuming

Finn typically wears a Munsell blue T-shirt, blue shorts, a two-toned lime green circular backpack, rolled-down white socks, and a pair of black shoes. Finn's most prominent attire is a white hat with two "ears" sticking out on top that covers his entire head minus his face. The hat is inspired by a character called Bueno, a bear from a Pendleton Ward comics. Finn can occasionally be seen in variations of his standard outfit. In "Ocean of Fear," his footwear appears to be black booties with white cuffs. In "It Came from the Nightosphere", Finn has a small pocket sewn onto his shirt that he carries Jake in. This appears again in "Davey" where he uses it to hide Jake while Finn steals the keys from the guards as he breaks the former out of jail. During "In Your Footsteps," the Bear wears Finn's clothes, which suggests that Finn has multiple sets of the same outfit, including his hat. However, in "Little Dude," when Finn's hat comes to life and is set free, Jake tells Finn that they should go skin an evil bear, which implies that Finn only had one hat.

Aside from his normal outfit, Finn can be seen wearing a cream-yellow sweater in colder areas such as the Ice Kingdom but currently wears his pink sweater made by Princess Bubblegum. In "Holly Jolly Secrets Part II," he wears a dark blue sweater with Christmas decorations on it and a green scarf. Finn also wears white briefs that make their first appearance in "City of Thieves". In "Who Would Win," he was shown to wear a different pair with red elastic. Finn sleeps in red footed pajamas that appear in many episodes, but in the animated short, he sleeps in a red sleeping bag in his regular clothes. In the series, the sleeping bag is beige.

References

Bibliography

• McDonnell, Chris (2014). Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-1-4197-0450-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)