Lost Legends Short Review & Analysis

Like all my posts have been lately, this is going to be super short and to the point. To put it simply, I thought the long awaited Gravity Falls “graphic novel” was... bad.

Yeah, I kinda hated it. Don’t get me wrong! The stories were entertaining and the art was great, but none of it really felt like... Gravity Falls.

When I heard Gravity Falls was getting a graphic novel continuation, I thought, “Great! Maybe we’ll get some more backstory on everyone’s favorite triangular psychopath!”

But no, nothing. Well, not nothing, there were references to him here and there, but no new lore!

There’s one scene where Shmebulock is talking (yes, talking - that’s just one of the issues with this book) about all his theories, and everyone else I’ve seen talking about this book has been freaking out because the ciphers he uses decodes too, “DIP CLONES PLOT REVENGE?, WENDY’S MOM: IN ANOTHER DIMENSION?, AGE PARADOX? TIME TRAVEL CONNECTION?” Guys, these are just Shmebulock’s theories. He’s probably just as wrong as we were about Tad Strange.

Another problem I had in this book is, a lot of loose ends from the show that didn’t need to be tied up, are tied up.

I know a lot of fans weren’t happy with how many unanswered questions were left when the show ended, but I don’t think it would’ve been right to answer all of them. This is a show about mystery. There should be things left up in the air for the audience to deicide. Alex Hirsch even said that he isn’t going to confirm or deny any headcanons because those belong to the fans.

But Lost Legends took arks like Mabel’s selfishness (I personally never thought she was any more selfish than Dipper or Ford), Pacifica’s relationship with her parents, or Grunkle Stan’s apparent love for comics, and resolved them in such a way that didn’t really feel like Gravity Falls or the characters.

Mabel went to another dimension where she met a bunch of different versions of herself, Pacifica covered herself in garbage, and Grunkle Stan sold a comic with swears in them... okay, that last one is actually pretty in-character, but you see my point. These feel more like short fanfics than real Gravity Falls stories, right?

Honestly, I couldn’t be more disappointed in Alex Hirsch. It’s almost like he was trying to make this book bad. Well... maybe he was.

In the very, very first page of the book, after all the copyright info, is a coded message that reads:

A FANDOM’S WORK IS NEVER OVER/SO HERE’S SOME TALES JUST FOR FUN/YOU WANTED MORE?/YOU GOT YOUR WISH/DON’T STRESS-IT’S ONLY CANON-ISH.

This was Alex’s way of saying, stop asking for more, or this is what you’re going to get. So, we don’t have to take any of it as canon if we don’t want to. I’m not going to.

Well, I guess I do have to accept Dipper’s journal as canon since it was also in the official Journal 3, but I actually like that detail, and I don’t have to accept that it was given to him by Mabel who was given it by a “Mabipper”. I’d much rather believe he made it himself, like Ford did.

So that’s my opinion and analysis on Lost Legends. The analysis being, most of it didn’t even really happen. That being said, it’s alright if any of you liked Lost Legends and want to accept the stories as canon. That’s the beauty of it. “Canon-ish” means it’s up to us to decide.

Lost Legends made me realize that Gravity Falls is really over, and honestly, I’m happy with that.

Background art credit: Ana Laura Quiroz Estrada on Pinterest.