I think it's because the fourth and last season of the show just premiered on April 15th. Ever since then, the internet has been all abuzz because of the conclusion to this mysterious show. In light of all of the hype, I recently watched the whole show on HBO Max, and... I have some thoughts, to say the least.
Infinity Train originally aired on Cartoon Network back in 2019 before it was canceled by Cartoon Network after its second season and picked up by HBO Max in mid-2020. The show was created by Owen Dennis, one of the guys behind Regular Show, which also aired on Cartoon Network before being moved to streaming on HBO Max last year. Keeping that in mind, it honestly makes so much sense that the two shows have the same creator, because despite the subject matter being wildly different, the two shows have a very similar vibe. They're both slightly offbeat and out of the box in a creative way- with funny scripting that make the characters feel real. I wasn't exactly a fan of Regular Show, but I was familiar enough with it to support its weirder ideas. Infinity Train is definitely its spiritual successor, and as such, it's a lot of fun to watch.
And so, as someone who hasn't consistently watched Cartoon Network since they stopped airing the original Powerpuff Girls (sue me, I'm old), I was interested to see what all of the hype was about regarding this new show. And so I binged all four seasons in the span of two days.
Now, for the uninitiated like me, I'll just say that this show is... a lot, to say the least. The show itself is very creative and weird, and yet still very much grounded in some very serious topics like divorce and humanity and finding yourself.
When I first went into this show, I honestly had no idea what to expect. This is mostly because the entire first season of the show is setting up the mystery of the show's premise: what is the infinity train, and why is it the way that it is? After that initial season of discovery, the rest of the show goes DEEP into developing its respective characters and making you care for them in a way that will leave you laughing and heartbroken all at the same time. It was honestly an emotional rollercoaster, which wasn't what I signed up for when I agreed to watch a show about a magic train.
Nonetheless, the whole series was a success for me. Overall, I would say that some seasons worked better than others, but they all managed to stick the landing at the end of their 10-episode run. Since Infinity Train is an anthology series, each season is a self-contained story about an individual set of characters, which made it really interesting to see where they were going to go with it. You don't necessarily need to watch all of the seasons in order like I did on order to enjoy the show, but it definitely helps to have context about the previous seasons when watching them, just to be sure that you fully understand what's happening.
In order to conduct my review, I will do as follows: I'm going to give a brief synopsis of each season, explaining generally why I think they worked, and why I think they didn't. I will also list each season's best and worst episodes in order to explain my thinking on the subject.
LIGHT SPOILERS FOR ALL FOUR SEASONS OF INFINITY TRAIN:
Season 1: Tulip- A
The first season of Infinity Train follows the main character, Tulip, as she is dealing with her parent's recent divorce very poorly. She wants to go to video game design camp, but due to circumstances out of her control (and due to her parent's poor planning), she is unable to go. After running away to get to her video game camp herself, she finds the Infinity Train and hops on.
When she wakes up on the train, Tulip finds that she is in a mysterious train in the middle of a pocket dimension, and each car on the train leads to mysterious lands. She also realizes that she has a number stamped on her hand, which can go up or down. However, she doesn't know what the number signifies, or how to get off the train.
Tulip's Number Going Down
Tulip's season of the show is very important, because not only is it an introduction into what the train is about and how it works, but it also sets up the premise for the remaining seasons of the show. A human passenger is joined by a companion who is a part of the train car, and they are there to assist them with getting their number down- which (SPOILER) is how they get off the train. The train is both literally and figuratively a person's path to self-improvement. Once the passenger's number reaches 0, that means that the passenger has resolved their issues in the real world- either with themselves or with those around them, and they can go home.
The best episode in this season is probably Episode 5, "The Cat's Car," because not only was this where we begin to build some of the lore of the train, but we discover more about Tulip and how her parents' divorce affected her. It's so amazingly animated and such a clear and honest way to look at how Tulip was feeling that it made the whole season better for me to watch. I had already been invested by this point, but this sucked me in even more.
Each episode of this show is only 11 minutes long, but honestly don't let that deceive you into thinking that the show doesn't go deep into what's bothering these people.
That being said, the worst episode of this season was probably the one directly before "The Cat's Car," "The Crystal Car." This episode wasn't bad so much as it was... unnecessary. I liked this episode if only for its use of "Word Up" by Cameo, but otherwise, this episode didn't really reveal much about the train, or tell us anything new or interesting about Tulip. I thought it was a decent episode, but if you're willing to skip episodes of content, this one definitely seems more like a filler episode.
I will say, though, that this season was definitely a good way to set up an anthology show, with all of the endless possibilities in each car, and all of the unique, fun characters that were in them along the way. I didn't even mention the recurring cast of characters such as Amelia, the "evil" train conductor, One-One, who is very reminiscent of Marvin from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (if he was cheery every once and a while), and The Cat, Samantha, who are very present in this season, and the follow up seasons in this anthology.
Cut to-
Season 2: MT/ Lake- A+
This season started off somewhere where I didn't really expect it to- it started off with a minor character from season 1- Mirror Tulip (MT), who was released from the Mirror Realm in the season 1 episode, "The Chrome Car." This entire season is about her following up with what she planned to do in the first season, become her own person, and discover who she was without having to reflect someone else.
I really like this season, and I think it's the best season of the whole show. I think it's much darker than the first season in terms of themes, but in the best way, because it made me laugh and cry and feel about the characters more than I did in season 1. Season 1 was lighthearted until it neared the end and revealed the truth of the train, but this one starts off a little more intense, as MT is running from those attempting to capture and kill her for daring to be different, until she is joined by her friend Jesse and their magical pet deer, Alan Dracula.
Now, after I saw this season, I saw some people on Twitter say that MT was queer-coded as trans, and while I'm not saying that I don't see it, I am saying that this wasn't what I got when I initially watched the show. I read this season as more of a take on humanity, and what we value as "human." While I can see how that can be interpreted as wanting to come out as trans, I don't necessarily think that's what the creators were going for (although I very well could be wrong, IDK).
In my mind, MT just wanted to be recognized as a person who could feel and think and believe in things herself, which honestly put me more in the mind of something like Blade Runner (or the book it was based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). It was a little trippy and meta to consider that this person who doesn't look like a human being is only trying to stake her claim to what the rest of humanity has to offer. I was definitely thinking more along the lines of that game: Detroit: Become Human while I was watching this season.
I really loved the last five episodes of this season. "The Lucky Cat Car," "The Mall Car," "The Wasteland," "The Tape Car," and "The Number Car," are all perfect episodes to me, because they run the gambit of emotional depth and have some deep philosophical questions in them that left me literally in tears at some points. I think this season had the best episodes, and honestly some of the best dialogue. I especially appreciated the interactions that MT had with Jesse and the Reflection Police in these episodes specifically.
The worst episode in this season is probably the "Family Tree Car" but only because I eventually got sick of Jesse and MT fighting all the time without getting anywhere. As I mentioned before, each episode is only 11 minutes, but sometimes if nothing is happening for too long, the episodes can feel like they're dragging. Even still, this episode is fine, as by the end of it, both Jesse and MT form a truce that they're going to work together to get Jesse off the train so she can be left alone with the deer.
Season 3: Grace and Simon- B
My goodness. This season was a DOOSY.
Following the same format as the previous season, this season follows characters that were already introduced by way of the other characters, Grace and Simon.
Grace and Simon are the leaders of a group of kids on the train known as the Apex. They don't care about breaking the train's rules or killing the magical creatures, because they're not people- they're nothing, according to them. In fact, the whole point of the Apex is to achieve the highest number on the train. Soon Grace and Simon are separated from their pack, but on their way back to the rest of their group, they run into a little girl named Hazel who is being protected by a magical talking gorilla named Tuba. Soon after they learn Hazel's secret, things go awry.
Even though I may not have ranked this season as high as the first or second season, I definitely think that it's worth checking out. Without too many spoilers, I'll just say that this season definitely follows the philosophical ideas of the second season and runs them into the ground. (Not in a bad way, just in a way that might make you go, "OH MY GOD.") Out of all of the seasons of this show, I would say that this season was the darkest, and it's the most insane season because of it.
(SPOILERS AHEAD) I'm not going to lie to you- Hazel made me bawl my eyes out. At the beginning of episode 9 when Grace was crying after Hazel left with Amelia, I was ugly crying exactly like her. When Hazel was singing Tuba's song at her funeral, I was literally sobbing just like Grace. I mean, how can you not? Listen to the song, OMG:
By the end of this season, I liked Grace's arc, especially when compared to Simon's opposite arc. It has a real Zuko and Azula energy to it. Speaking of Zuko and Azula, I have to say that it was nice to see Grace be humanized after her horrible actions in season 2 and the beginning of season 3, however, when we see Simon after he left Grace for dead, it seems like he went incredibly evil entirely too quickly. I wish they had taken more time to flesh out him going fully over the deep end on his own. Because of this, I will say that Infinity Train's villain arcs are not nearly as effective as the villain arcs on Avatar: The Last Airbender, but they are very reminiscent of it.
Season 4: Men-Gi and Ryan- C+
When I saw the first episode of this season, I was... disappointed, to say the least. I thought we were going to get a follow-up of Hazel from the previous season, just like what happened with MT in season 2 and Grace from season 3. I think one of the main reasons why I didn't like season four nearly as much as I liked the previous seasons was that it felt so loosely connected to the original cast of characters who had left or were going to leave the train. It felt like the show was making me start all over again with brand new characters, which didn't exactly click for me.
I was hoping that we would see what was going on with Amelia and Hazel from season 3. I would've been interested to see if raising Hazel would have brought Amelia's number down significantly, as she had the highest number on the train. I was even hoping for perhaps some more backstory regarding Tuba, or even how Amelia's number got to be so astronomically high. In the end of that season, I think it would have been cute to have Hazel grow up and take over the train with One-One (if it's even possible for her to grow up, all things considered).
Instead, what we got was the story of Men-Gi and Ryan, two boys from British Columbia, Canada, who want to be rock stars. They both came onto the train with the same number. This is strange, because that doesn't happen, (or so they say at the beginning of the season) but it's never exactly explained why they have the same number. Their lives are displayed as parallel in the beginning of the season in episode 1, but the show doesn't exactly dive deeper into why they are so alike, yet so different.
One of the worst episodes of this season was episode 2, "The Iceberg Car," because the episode not only revolves around these two guys bickering (which grew tiresome very fast), but an unlikeable bell character named Kez explaining the rules of the train to them- which we, the audience already knew. As someone who had binged the previous seasons of this show before this one, I was annoyed that they were rehashing this information and starting all over. It felt like I was wasting my time re-learning all of this information with the main characters.
In the showrunner's defense, I'm assuming that they did this purposefully in order to remind people of the stakes of the train since this was the final season, and it was premiering so long after the third season, which ended nearly eight months ago. However, I found this annoying, nonetheless.
To be honest, it took me at least five episodes to get into this season, as I wasn't truly invested until "The Astro-Queue Car," in which Men-Gi and Ryan are stuck trying to figure out how to get into a space themed club, only to discover that both of their ideas were bad, and that they should be kinder and more patient with one another. I really liked this one, because for me it was one of the first instances of actual forward momentum in the season. From there, things really seem to kick off, and the season gets better.
I will say that one of the best things about this season is the ending song that they perform: "Train to Nowhere," which is honestly a pretty good sendoff for this season and the show as a whole.
Men-Gi and Ryan singing "Train to Nowhere" in the show's finale
